We’re in the alternate universe. It’s quantum physics enlarged to national scale. Atomic particles are swirling about in the uncertainty principle of what Donald Trump will do next. He is actually executing exactly what he said he would do.
Keep the base believing in the miracle of Trumpocracy that will return American jobs for American workers and make the world cower to the military might of our armed forces. It’s a way of making the world subservient to America. We will only need our allies and the rest of the world to buckle to our righteousness. We’ll show them what the deal is all about, but our deals will benefit America first!
That’s maybe comforting to the folks who are struggling. It’s not comforting to those of us who believe that to do this will mean the forfeiture of civil liberties in the avalanche of presidential proclamations that are more illusion than reality. The alternate universe is a universe here of his own design, but we’re in it regardless. In this universe, an outright lie or even dubious claims beg credence in the new marketplace of manipulative facts.
Let’s get rid of counter narratives and gag the various agencies divergent opinions. Let’s just cut the pretense and deal with terrorist immigration the old fashioned way — close the borders. Build a wall. Isolate ourselves and be the architect of a government that adheres to a power base that can supersede and replace any of the previous democratic norms it so desires under the pretext that it is carrying out the divine plan that his base of voters is expecting.
The means to do this becomes irrelevant. Government will be completely restructured to facilitate what I call the “Trumpian dissolution.”
Whereas Heisinberg’s Uncertainty Principle of physics offers scientific comic relief as a theory about knowing what exact action of a particle like Trump is about to commit at any particular moment, the Trumpian dialectic of conflicting illusions creates the same unknowables but it’s atomic construction is all hucksterism. It’s uncertain because uncharted territory has installed by decrees the usurpation of power by ideologues and demagogues who in this administration are putting ego, narcissism, and personal aggrandizement before egalitarian, and simply open and sensible dialogue and governance.
Trump rules by Twitter. His brand of fascism installs itself by divine right of the elected. Keep online for the latest. War by Twitter. Denegation by belittlement. Fire the uncooperative. Sign this and presto! Liberty? Facts? They went the way of the Dodo bird. Truth? It’s gone. Don’t cry for me Argentina.
But watch out folks, we’re not seeing even the tip of the iceberg. This great march of cacophonous calumny is spreading its wings, and these may well melt in the sun of public reckoning. Close staffers are panicked. The inner circle has their eyes on the door.
There are no consensuses among Republicans on how to actually carry out the radical changes they prescribe. The ACLU across the country is sounding the alarm and raising funds for the resistance. Supreme Court appointment will be filibustered, but defeated? The counter lawsuits are in the pipeline.
Rank and file Republicans are slowly reassessing this dance of death as every day a new controversy erupts from Trumpian impulsiveness and authoritarianism. The political fallout is always the key influence.
We are in the crosshairs of Trump and crazies like Stephen Bannon, whose influence now includes the National Security Council, and on and on. The family circle rules. Madness at the highest levels.
Blind governance, a Twitter obsessed leader, a pack of reactionary misfits, ideologues, and incompetents. A staff in panic mode, a press treated as a pariah, a middle class awaiting their salvation, a world agape with confusion at America, a Russia that sits back and smiles while jailing the supposed leak on their Trump connection, and a population taking to the streets to denounce the president, his policies, his personality, his prevarications, yes!
He’s not our president. He’s not our leader. The resistance is growing. Trump cannot pretend to be dismissive for much longer, though he will do everything he can to ignore and marginalize the opposition. We will say no to climate denial, no to rolling back Obamacare, no to marginalizing minorities, no to building stupid walls wherever, no to rolling back all the progress made in the Obama era.
Sorry folks. Just watch the telly, tap on iPhones, Twitter, consume. Go to work, come home, see a movie, do what you usually do. The alternate universe is U.S. Unless we stand behind middle America and identify with it — talk the language, walk the walk — our eastern intellectualism is dead.
Times have changed. The causes are many. Our task is to walk into the future toward a world we know can and should exist, of inclusion, without compromise, without hesitation, with absolute conviction, and most importantly, all the love we can give it and each other. It’s the higher battle we must wage.
We have to unite. Keep the demonstrations rolling. No one wants a universe where reality leaves truth in the dust. The principle of truth can never be uncertain.
A playwright, Harris has been a well-known chef for 40 years in Franklin County. He lives in Shelburne Falls.