MANY HAVE SAID THAT PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS LED THE COUNTRY INTO THE TWILIGHT ZONE, BUT NOBODY HAS BEEN THIS SPECIFIC

8/28/19

Robert Feder, the long-time gold standard of Chicago media columnists, runs a blog that I read nearly daily and enjoy.    I often find myself commenting on the observations of Mr. Feder or of the many who read his observations.   A few days ago, Mr. Feder ran the story of former Congressman Joe Walsh, currently a talk show host in Chicago, launching a quixotic bid to wrest the 2020 GOP nomination from President Trump.   While reading this story, I was suddenly struck, albeit in a far from Damascene fashion, with a perfect analogy for the Trump administration.    This analogy was doubtless helped in its efforts to come to the fore of my mind by Mr. Trump’s then fresh “orders” to business leaders to modify their supply chains, his observation that we might be better off without the Chinese (a comment that could be dangerously misconstrued by people who speak a radically different language and are heavily armed with nuclear weapons), and Mr. Trump’s proclamation that he is the “chosen one.”   At any rate, I wrote the below comment on Mr. Feder’s blog.  I think it also appeared on my Facebook page because, when one comments on Mr. Feder’s blog (or when I post on  my blog) and checks the appropriate box, that comment also appears on Facebook.   But I can’t be sure of that because I am not a Facebook aficionado and rarely, if ever, go directly to my page.

Bear in mind as you read my comment that I voted for Mr. Trump…even in the primary.   If I have now been dissuaded from my prior propensity by the man’s antics, what does that say about Mr. Trump’s re-election prospects?  But then I, and doubtless millions like me, look at what the Democrats apparently will have on offer and conclude that four more years of going down the Trumpian rabbit hole might be the preferable of the two alternatives.   I suppose I could resort to my usual post-1980 practice of voting Libertarian, but, as I grow older, wiser, and more cognizant of human nature and the ongoing deterioration of our society, I find myself far less attracted to libertarian ideas.  But I digress; my major point in writing the following comment is that the country is in, as they used to say, a whole heap of trouble:

Trump's presidency is starting to resemble the Twilight Zone classic "It's a Good Life," in which Billy Mumy, as a young monster named Anthony, controls an entire town, and maybe the entire world, with his childish mind. No one in town has the guts to stand up to him; instead, the town becomes a babbling gaggle of sycophants who can do little more than repeat "That's good, Anthony; that's real good" as the six-year-old destroys whatever in the town does not please him. I have to give Joe Walsh credit for standing up to the increasingly troubling, and seemingly unhinged, Mr. Trump, but, clearly, Mr. Walsh is not the guy to mount a real challenge to Trump for the sake of conservatism and, far more importantly, for the country.