It seems almost poetic: already an adminstration going down in history with an imperfect corruption not seen by the public since Watergate; already a fledgling president who seems actually mentally ill, growing more so by the day with each new responsibility he didn’t know came with the job. It’s so bad now that we yearn for the days of George W Bush, romanticizing his post-9/11 speeches, and wishing for just simply his questionable tactics and general buffoonery. Already? Let’s not forget how we got here: an oilhungry base; a coal-carrying train so backwards you’d wonder where the caboose could be and feign no surprise that there isn’t one. What’s worse? Is that we had it in our grasp for a moment after the Bush debacle. Let’s not forget a President Obama who felt obligated to Us, and not just to our obtuse safety. Let’s not forget a Good Man who in front of the world loved his family deeply and carried himself with grace and swagger. But let’s not forget the running thread this past half century or so: that for all intents and circumstance, our government has repeatedly engaged in unlawful and immoral warfare that we’ve turned numb toward. Warfare performed by both Liberals and Conservatives. Let’s not forget that there were 26,000 bombs dropped by the United States last year alone in countries we are not even at war with. Yes, we shouldn’t forget the Man who openly cried about that which deserved his tears, but please don’t forget those tears he caused with his recklessness; with his continuation of the Bush decree. Will we never get passed September 11? Is it all still too fresh in our minds? I was 12…I’m 28 now and we’re still randomly pulverizing a people we see as those from Their Side. The Others who hate us so we hate them so we kill them so they don’t kill us…

What are we to learn from all of this in the time between now and whenever Trump and the country and the world completely derail? Perhaps only that Neoliberalism is dead. Conservativism as well. There is no room for those in the middle anymore. Like magnets, we are drawn toward one or the other pole. We up North believe in human rights for everyone as they pertain to a standard of living free, however you define that freedom. We believe in radical peace and prosperity for all people. Them down South believe in defined freedom for anyone whose idea of freedom matches their idea of freedom as it relates to Normalcy and the Status Quo. It isn’t Left and Right these days. Maybe it never was. Maybe it’s always been Right and Wrong, but we just got caught in the semantics of it all: that a beast of burden denies not his weight upon the host but merely transfers that weight to the host itself, each faction rendered false. We don’t need each other. We don’t balance. I suppose all we really need to figure out is at which end of the slide we will each be stationed.

Strive to be a conveyer belt, I suppose. Progress moves forward. Look to the past for precedent and look to the opposition for guidance. One of Us knows what’s going on. Which one? The one who knows the answer to the proverbial ‘Why?’

Do you know? Someone must, right?