Why Does This President Make Me So Sick?

Every morning for the past year, with a Groundhog Day-like frequency and certainty, I have woken up enveloped by uncontrollable rage. And…

Every morning for the past year, with a Groundhog Day-like frequency and certainty, I have woken up enveloped by uncontrollable rage. And agita. And melancholy, free-floating anxiety, severe panic disorder, abdominal distress, fecal urgency and a lethal combo platter of shpilkes and tsuris. It’s a veritable Jew’s Who of nervous ailments. And all that is before I’ve even checked the President’s Twitter feed.

Just another day in Donald Trumps’ America. Thanks Orange Hitler!

Perhaps a smidgen of the anxiety can be imputed to that dream where I have a calculus final in a class I was certain I’d dropped. But even that heavy rotation nightmare has given way to a nightly dream where America has been turned into a post-apocalyptic dystopia, where civil rights have been abrogated and we meet in secret to plot our resistance. It makes me nostalgic for the soothing bosom of a missed math final dream. And that doesn’t even factor in how unflattering a red Handmaid’s Tale skirt looks on a heavyset Sephardic man.

So what is it about this presidency that has brought on physical manifestations of illness and even made my nightmares exponentially scarier. In the course of my lifetime, I’ve been on the losing end of more presidential shellackings than triumphs and I still slept like a baby. A colicky baby after the Mondale drubbing. But I slept!

I lived through Nixon’s “stain on the American presidency.” And Clinton’s stain on the blue Gap dress. Ew. Sorry. Okay, I lived through his perjury under oath and obstruction charges. That’s better.

And let’s not forget, we’re still fighting an Iraqi War that W started with the flimsiest pretexts, all of which can be reduced down to “daddy issues.” Seriously, the White House health plan doesn’t cover 12 sessions of cognitive therapy?

So, having survived other dubious presidencies, what is it that makes this one so all-consuming and profoundly exhausting and unsettling? I mean, I now watch the Nightly News and read two periodicals. Something isn’t right here.

Especially when I’m a white male during an era that in the Right, is all about the restoration of white male privilege from the shifting demographic hordes.

It’s true. I am not directly impacted by much of what makes Trump Time so particularly heinous. And yet I’m more engaged and horrified than any time in my life. That includes playing McGovern in my kindergarten class mock debate. If possible, I fared even worse than the actual McGovern.

It’s true that I’m not a woman, but I still care deeply about reproductive liberty and pay equity and freedom from workplace harassment.

I’m not a member of the LGBT, but I care deeply about marital equality and job protection and the right to live life freely and with dignity.

I’m not Muslim, but I’m outraged by immigrant bans aimed to punish a third of the planet strictly on the basis of their religion.

I’m not a Dreamer, but I believe deeply in DACA and other paths to citizenship for those seeking a shot at the American Dream.

I’m not African-American, but I care about civil rights enforcement and voter suppression and ending disproportionate police brutality. And I couldn’t be more in favor of their inalienable rights to peacefully bring attention to said issues. Even somewhere as “sacrosanct” as the sideline of a football game.

I’m not a child, but I’m offended to my core by efforts to use CHIP as a political football, thus denying health coverage to 9 million children in the most need.

I am a Jewish-American. So I am deeply aggrieved when the sitting President offers moral equivalency to Neo-Nazi marchers and those opposing them.

But most importantly, I am an American. And a human being. One that tries to live a life that embraces tolerance, diversity, compassion and empathy.

I cherish the U.S. Constitution and the American Experiment. I’ll fight to the end to protect a free and unfettered press. I believe in the rule of law, the right to dissent and our most basic democratic norms. And of most paramount importance, I see truth as the cornerstone of all democracy. Not as a malleable propaganda tool used to batter political adversaries and protect POTUS’ self-interest.

In short, I love my country. And I am genuinely terrified at what it’s at the risk of becoming.

Probably what I find most maddening is that Donald Trump is and always has been a con man. He’s selling a snake oil potion of impending catastrophe and racial division. His goal is to so terrify you with his American Carnage/ Hunger Games description of our nation, that only an authoritarian-style strongman (him) can save us from the Mexican rapists and Islamic shoe bombers and shady Chinese trading partners.

Trump has been shitting on America since Reagan was in office. In the exact same terms. Our nation is in rapid decline. Our military is weak. Our economy sucks. Our trade deals are skewed to bone the American worker. And only Trump can restore past glorify. It’s compelling. Nobody wants a weak America. But it’s nothing but schtick. Incredibly dangerous schtick.

First is the importance of lies to make his case. Birtherism. Obama wiretaps. Inaugural size. Hand size. Whether he said “shithole nation.” Trying to fire Mueller. All dissent or objection is dismissed with cries of “fake news.” Just as it is in the banana republics and totalitarian strongholds that Trump so inexplicably admires.

There is no value more American than truth. And there is no value more disposable to our current American President.

Second, Trump’s appeal is predicated entirely on getting enough white Americans to fear the other, fear people of color and sow racial fissures among American neighbors. Shithole-gate, the Border Wall, the thrice unconstitutional Travel Ban, Judge Curiel, Mexico sending us killers and rapists — its all about playing “real Americans” against “them.”

It’s always been about race to Trump. His housing discrimination suits. His falsely accusing New York black youths. His defense of Charlottesville White supremacist thugs AFTER they murdered Heather Heyer.

Take immigration. Trump knows full well that coal isn’t coming back (at least I hope he does.). Nevertheless, he has scapegoated immigrants as the source of the white working class’ economy anxiety. Because it’s a lot easier to blame some Mexican guy than it is to blame an inexorable shift towards automation and and information-based economy.

I don’t know if there’s actually a Dictator’s Handbook, but Trump’s surely playing from it. Cherry picking singular acts of gang violence to enact sweeping punishment against all immigrants. But a mass school shooting every other day this January has engendered a deafening NRA-mandated silence.

Treating our cherished right to dissent as fundamentally non-patriotic and specifically a fuck-you to our soldiers. As opposed to his actual his actual fuck-yous to Gold Star widows after the Niger fiasco. And Gold Star families like the Khans.

He trashes our constitutional liberties and democratic norms.

He disrespects our traditional allies and alliances while paying off homage to our most pernicious adversaries.

And I’ll just gingerly touch on Russia. Forget collusion for a second. We’ll deal with that another day. But we do know with absolute moral certainty that Russia did interfere with our electoral process. And in the year since, the President of the United States has done NOTHING to safeguard our system and insure it won’t happen again.

Instead, he’s actively sought to undermine and delegitimize the American intelligence agencies with crazy man canards and deep state conspiracy theories that sound like they’ve come from middle of the night AM radio.

If there’s truly nothing to see here, wouldn’t the Prez want full transparency. Not seek to impede and obstruct the inquiry at every turn. But that’s Mr. MAGA, the great patriot. He doesn’t care about America or its highest ideals. He cares about revving up his sliver of the electorate and holding on to his tenuous power at any cost. Including all the things that actually make America great.

This man, and I’m going to use the clinical term here, drives me “bonkers.” It’s all cons and smokescreens and racist dog whistles. I finally reached my breaking point during his State of the Union where he all but said “if you don’t oppose immigrants and support border walls, you are on the side of ultra-violent Salvadoran street gangs.” And half the room bought it. Like half the country has.

I turned the TV and doubled my dose of Xanax and listened to ABBA’s “Chiquitita” on heavy, heavy repeat. My rage was all consuming. I was very close to also adding Merlot, hot fudge cake and a mega mix of Ace of Base and KidzBop 12.

But instead, I sat down to write this. To acknowledge that my daily outbursts of anger and outrage aren’t good for my long term health. (They have been good for Twitter, but that won’t mean much from the great beyond).

And so, with all the current evidence to the contrary, I’m going to fall back on my faith in the fundamental goodness of Americans. Before this administration, while we were never perfect, I still saw us a nation based on tolerance and diversity, kindness and acceptance.

I believe that America is better than what we are seeing now. I believe that Americans themselves are too. And that soon, this long national nightmare will end. And America will stop being a pariah nation and an international punchline and go back to being a beacon for all the world.