Over the past couple of years, I've generated a lot of hot air about American politics; I've given more than a dozen public talks, done lots of radio shows, and had a few things to say on this blog. I do my best to offer something meaningful along with the odd insight into what's going on. It's getting tougher and tougher. In fact, it's only August and I'm completely exhausted! Trump exhausts me! When I reflect on what has transpired in just the first 6 months of this Administration, I need to stop and catch my breath. There's a daily diet of outrage, incompetence, and mean-spritedness that leaves me feeling dirty for having watched.
Every other day, I find myself saying "he did what?" As I shake my head over yesterday's development, my head snaps in the other direction as the next one hits. I've developed a number of the signs of whiplash.
However, as the Whiplash President wreaks havoc, I have also frequently felt some combination of despair, frustration, anger, and resignation-- sometimes all within the space of about 15 minutes. I am old enough to have appreciated Cold War tensions (I remember watching The Day After with my parents), worried about domestic terrorism in the mid-1990s, lived in some state of anxiety in Washington after 9/11, and agonized over the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Yet, I've spent a lot more time worrying about Donald Trump.
