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The Desolation of Trump
Nine Years of Noise
By Morrow Hall
At first, I thought I’d use a dripping faucet as a metaphor, but it’s more like the guy with a proximity alarm who parks next to a busy city sidewalk. And then leaves for the day. It’s a repetitive series of alarms and sirens and whistles and hoots and honks. Over and over.
Thus, has been the enduring contribution of Donald J. Trump – a sing-song recitation of wrongs and fears and hates and grievances. And honks. Over and over. Since June 16, 2015, for crying out loud! That was the day he came down his golden escalator and began reciting his catalogue of the errors and deficiencies and inadequacies of others. Always of others.
Since then, through that campaign and his dismal term, and his disruption when he lost the election; through the whole series of indictments and hearings and appeals, the end of which is still in the dim future; and through the desperately outrageous statements and proposals and assertions of the present campaign, Trump’s noise has been blaring in our ears, inescapable if we read or hear the news. Nine years!
Most of what Trump says is negative, and that has gotten really old. The only time he’s positive is when he is buttering-up someone or crowing about his own superiority. If he makes a mistake, he doubles down and says it was shrewd and intentional. Or he fixes it with a Sharpie. He never apologizes.
But we should have learned from his first term that he is profoundly unqualified to be President. If he has “read” the Constitution, he didn’t understand it. It was reported that an aide read a paragraph to him to explain a point, and Trump replied, “It’s like reading a foreign language, isn’t it?”
Trump keeps suggesting that his opponents submit to a cognitive test (“person, woman, man, camera, TV”). I think instead that prospective Presidents should pass the same exam that is given to prospective citizens. I’m sure Trump couldn’t do it.
In his current situation, with Kamala Harris changing the whole election landscape, Trump has ventured deep into the wasteland of authoritarianism and despotism, promising Christians that if they give him another term, they won’t have to vote ever again. There are many who are right with him, some contriving ghastly new impediments to civil liberty. He, and they, disgrace the very first words of the Constitution, “We, the People.”
Vice President Harris and her ebullient running-mate, Gov. Tim Walz, have brought a zephyr of fresh air to the campaign that blows away Trump’s continuous fog of hate and fear and derision.
Trump's term was a disaster in many ways. A second term could only be worse. We owe it to history to reject him, and if we don’t, we will deeply regret it.
But I want to go further. I really want to stop hearing his voice. It has poisoned our lives for far too long.
It’s time for Donald Trump to shut up.
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