So many questions:
- Is Agent Orange crazy? Probably.
- Is he illiterate? Most definitely.
- Does he have a narcissistic disorder? That was a rhetorical question.
- Does he have high emotional IQ (as to others)? Undoubtedly. He is a tremendous salesman.
- Will he use his powers to punish his enemies (real and imagined) and states that went for Hillary? Undoubtedly.
- Is he mentally unstable? Narcissistic disorder isn’t his only psychological issue.
- Does he let the truth get in the way of anything? That was another rhetorical question.
Too many questions; no legitimate psychiatric analysis.
Except the one theory, which resonates for me: that, as head of state, he is woefully ill-prepared to lead and dangerously disinterested in learning how to do so. And lazy, to boot.
Personally, the bright spot in all of this is that the veneer of him as a populist president is cracking, even among his supporters.
[SIDEBAR: Different parties can have control and implement their policies, as long as they are based on reason, research and love of country above party.]
This has given me hope now. But not when I needed it last February.
When Dad died, I looked for hope. Dad was such an optimistic person. He came from nothing to rise in the tide of the American Dream. It was not an easy rise. Not for him and not for his brothers. They fought in the wars — the ones that meant something and those that didn’t. But he had an optimism that every day could bring something new and wonderful.
So, I looked for reasons to be optimistic after he died, to balance the grieving.
[SIDEBAR: I did not inherit the optimistic gene. Don’t ask me whether the glass is half full, ask me whether there is even a glass there and, then, whether you are filling it with water or poison.]
And I found nothing in the national conversation, nothing in the political rhetoric, nothing in the day-to-day anti-immigrant, anti-religious, anti-persons of color, anti-LGBTQI — just “anti” — incidents in our streets and in our communities. His seeming iron grip over a volatile voter constituency darkened my everyday.
I was lost.
But even despair inevitably gives way to hope because despair is so very exhausting.
And the current open conversation about this potential evil despot being unfit gives me hope.
Because tyrants must fall if we are to be the democracy of our forefathers’ dreams.
And, they are my dreams, too.
Rest in peace, Dad. Your youngest child was wounded but recovered and is battle-ready.
