A Hard Rain

The rain was coming down like a giant rippling curtain, greying out the color of the trees and forcing the birds to take shelter among their branches and the bushes. It wasn’t like a summer thunderstorm, menacing and loud, but more like an ocean of water pouring down in a steady, expansive stream with hardly a sound. I finished my morning walk down the steep hill behind our house, made up my little single bed, and emptied the few dishes in the washer. There was not much to do except watch the rain and hope that the lightening sky meant the storm was passing . . . or be forced to think about the disturbing news I heard that morning on PBS.

“Which disturbing news?” you might ask. There is so much of it, both here and abroad, and I’m not numb to any of it. But this was almost unbearable and, perhaps as I think about it, it will become more unbearable.

President Trump’s approval rating has actually gone up this past week. Gone up despite ripping babies from their parents, lying continuously to the American public, and displaying his buffoonery to adoring crowds who are still chanting “lock her up!”

Is this really where America has arrived? Concentration camps—oh, excuse me, detention camps? Armed teachers? A press whose critiques are called treasonous? Exploitation of the environment at unprecedented levels? This is not the doing of just one man; the president is just the drum major to the marching hordes, among whom not one can claim to be a descendant of indigenous Americans. Have they forgotten the struggles of their ancestors to get to the United States? Have they forgotten how long it took many of their relatives to be accepted, to speak the language, to become American?

One last revelation for the day: Americans didn’t find Trump. They earned him with years of poor government, a lack of effective assistance for those in need, a lack of stewardship, and broken promises. Many good Americans voted for Trump in the belief that he wasn’t just another politician. He isn’t. He’s worse.

Trump disgusts me, revolts me, but those who enthusiastically follow him—or those too weak to stand up for decency—scare the hell out of me!  As Bob Dylan famously sang, “A hard rain is gonna fall.”