Despair

This is a time when adults walk around with angry faces and short tempers. This is a time when those to whom we look for comfort haven’t any left, especially not for themselves. This is a time to summon strength from nowhere. This is a time to be brave.

In days like these, we begin to understand the troubles of earlier centuries. We had no idea such a thing would come in our lives; this time last year, we Americans merely had an administration that was less interested in governing and far more interested in mining riches for themselves and their friends. And that was bad enough.

But now look at us. We are comfortless, shivering in the chill of what feels like the wrong timeline. We sicken and we die gasping and without dignity by the hundreds of thousands because we are saddled with a leader who would rather play with his phone than mobilize a response plan to the worst pandemic in a century.

Those we are meant to trust spray poison in our eyes, shoot at us with bludgeoning rounds, yank us out of cars, push us down on the unfeeling concrete, humiliate us, broadcast lies about us. Hate us. Kill us. Because we have a leader who would rather have this be the story, the one about the bad people who must be punished because they look, act, believe differently than those who are currently in power.

The Trump administration and their supporters in Congress would do well to not underestimate the rage of a country full of people who are sick and tired of fascism, who are sick and tired of watching a narcissistic old has-been, a failure at business as surely as he is a resounding flop at politics, rasp through inflammatory and lie-laced ad-lib speeches in our Rose Garden and become breathless, obviously aroused at the lurid idea of military might turned against his own people.

This administration must step down while there is still time. The world watches us with pity for the American people.