Anchor Struck

It’s not that I don’t have enough to worry about just around the farm.  Our septic system may be starting to back up on us.  We’re behind in our wood-cutting because I’m post-op from hernia surgery.  And we’re experiencing the driest March in our eleven years of record-keeping here.  As we welcome the triumphant return of spring, we have only 33 millimetres of rain so far this month, with no more predicted.  We usually have 300.  Plus we just survived the coldest February in those eleven years.

But all this blanches in the toxic glare of Trump.  I suppose that, as the most powerful man in the world since Stan Lee died, he can only punch down; but now he’s punching six feet under ground.  His attacks on John McCain are so odious that even U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, a solid conservative, called them “deplorable”.

McCain himself was fairly conservative, but he did stray from the elephant herd often enough to earn his reputation as a maverick.  I respected his principles.  My heart leapt when he turned his thumb down on Donnie’s health care near-disaster, Mitch McConnell standing by with arms folded, even quieter than usual.

I share a kinship with McCain as a Vietnam veteran.  I didn’t go over there with the starry-eyed belief that I would be keeping the Viet Cong out of our shopping malls.  However, I understand the sacrifices that all the troops there made, and McCain bore the brunt more than most of us.

So while Trump obsesses about McCain when he’s not obsessing about George and Kellyanne Conway, he can’t be bothered to condemn the rabid racism of the New Zealand slaughter.  Apparently, the national emergency at the border resolved itself.

He’ll continue to strike out as the steady stream of bad news from the Mueller probe and all the skeletons it’s finding gets steadier.  How Trump maintains his approval rating through all this is baffling and dismaying.

As Trump and his henchboy Steve King drop broad hints that they have all the muscle and munitions for a civil war, I call bullshit.  Donnie thinks he has the military behind him if push comes to gunfire, but I don’t think so.  He has fucked over the troops and their leaders too much.  Their sworn loyalty is to the Constitution.

Rest easy, John.  Your family is holding up with a grace that Trump can’t fathom or buy.