Like many of you, as much as I love my country, I need a break from an America that seems more unhinged every day. She’s like a spouse who’s suffering a mental collapse and has become unrecognizable—even scary—after years of marriage. And like investing in therapists to help an unstable spouse, eventually you have to move on to save what you can: yourself. In much the same manner, I feel I have written what I can in the moment to help my readers understand our country and have offered as many suggestions and remedies I can to promote change, or at least to allow us to cope—to hold our collective breath without turning blue, or worse. That said, I do not intend to wither on the vine and I hope you don’t either, even though somedays withering sounds masochistically inviting.

A tipping point when Americans have finally had enough of the greed and cruelty emanating from the White House may come sooner than we think. Most of the world has already written off  our dear leader as a charlatan and grifter. They know they only have to patronize him for a few more years, which in many cultures is like a long weekend. I have no doubt that Trump will go too far; his sociopathy is rabid. His administration has no stop button. Its insatiable appetite for power and money and vengeance is inherently unstable and will result in either implosion or explosion. The physics of the conditions are undeniable and unstoppable; the energy fields created by these behaviors produce so much dissonance as to inevitably cause spontaneous destruction, also known as a meltdown. As Sun Tzu, the sixth century BC Chinese military general would certainly agree, the best way to defeat an adversary is to enable them to defeat themselves—maybe even cheer them on. It appears that America’s adversaries, both old and new, understand this strategy well. Trump believes he is the king while other world powers view him as a mere pawn.

As resilient as our country has been thus far, its continued abuse is clearly unsustainable. How many more little girls must drown in flash floods before we realize that hundred year floods are now every year floods, and that weather forecasters and warning systems are essential in the world of climate change? If that deadly debacle in Texas doesn’t break your heart and slap the MAGA hat off of your head, what will? Regardless of these now frequent catastrophic events, if we don’t get off fossil fuels none of these events and our many other issues will matter anyway. Without long term thinking, eventually there is no short term. I take some morbid comfort in the notion that even if we can’t fix our mess with the tools of democracy, Nature will cleanse us of this dirge-worthy era. She always prevails.

Of course, such damage is potentially catastrophic to us all, regardless of our many and varied persuasions—political and otherwise. For the MAGA crowd, those red caps may become […]