What I should do is go out and take a photo of the damn thing, which is sitting in San Juan harbor, anchored behind a multimillion-dollar yacht.
It’s a destroyer, and it’s big, easily a small city block. Trump decided, last week, to bomb a speed boat which he said was carrying drugs to the United States. The attack killed eleven people, which immediately raised a red flag. Apparently, 11 people on a small boat are not only unnecessary, but actually a drawback. Eleven adults, assuming that they are men averaging 200 lbs each, is about a ton of weight. Why put all those people on a small boat when you could put bags of drugs?
Nobody knows who they are, and nobody is precisely sure if the attack occurred in international waters (in which case it would be illegal, maybe) or Venezuelan waters (still illegal, though in a different way). Trump declared that the Venezuelans were “narco-terrorists” and members of a gang, Tren de Aragua. Experts in international law declared that Trump cannot blow up boats on the high seas, even if we suspect them of carrying drugs. We’ve been stopping and confiscating drugs for years in the Caribbean, but it’s usually the Coast Guard, not the US military, operating under what is now called The Department of War (it used to be Defense Department—the distinction is subtle, but important).
Venezuela responded a few days later by buzzing a guided-missile destroyer with F-16’s. We have sent ten of our own F-16s (which are called F-35s) to Puerto Rico, and we are ready to go. We also, as I have just found out, have put a 50-million-dollar reward for the head of the Venezuelan government, Nícolas Maduro.
Eleven people were killed in the attack. And yes, these deaths were in vain—as so many of our deaths are. The issue was never keeping drugs off the streets of Miami, but diverting attention from the Epstein files, which a surprising number of people care about. Trump bombed Tehran a couple of months ago, for essentially the same reasons.
Mea culpa—the news went totally over my head last week, until I saw the ship in the harbor. But it’s a message that no matter where you are, or how much you want to stick your head in the sand, Trump is making his influence felt.
Nor is it just war games. ICE is now offering a 50,000 $ sign-up fee to anyone willing to work for the agency (starting salary, 100,000$ and absolutely no education / experience required). And arrests of immigrants have soared in Puerto Rico, from 95 in 2024 to 468 in the first six months of 2025. Nor are they working alone; here’s what the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo has to say:
Federal Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents have asked for access to that registry(editor’s note: of names / addresses of undocumented persons who have been issued special drivers’ licenses). In an NPR interview, Rebecca González, HSI’s lead agent in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, stated: “The Puerto Rico government is cooperating with us in anything that we ask them for. And we’re asking for that to move forward with the mission. And we’re waiting.”
It's a Monday morning in 2025, and I’m in good shape, generally. I’m not drunk, not hungover; I’m on my feet and going about my day. I probably won’t go off to photograph a boat, even a destroyer, in the San Juan harbor. The official reason is that I have replaced my daily bottle of whiskey for a quart of Espresso Chip ice cream. I buy it for six bucks at Walmart, instead of 9 bucks at the local store, and I carry it home on the bus. Since it’s fiendishly hot here in the tropics, I have to get the stash home quick.
The real reason is that I’ve succumbed. We all have, in varying degrees, even those of us who didn’t want to. Simply put, the destruction of our democracy has happened too quickly, and too dramatically for us to react. We have been shocked and awed.
Or disgusted. Our courts have ruled that the use of military for police duties in American cities is illegal. Trump is sending troops to Chicago, possibly even as I write this. The Salvadorian torture camp is now empty of US imports, but immigrants are now being sent to four African nations, most of which no one has heard of, and all of which are sketchy, to say the least.
Congress has checked out, the Supreme Court (most of it) is licking its chops in delight silently and at a distance, the press is bending over backwards to pretend that “Mr. Trump” (The New York Times preserves this convention) has some plausible reason to act in what it calls “extrajudicial” fashion.
There are protests. There is resistance. But there is something I’ve never felt before, at least in myself. I am so thoroughly repulsed by the Trump administration that I feel an outsider in my own country. In fact, I wonder if it is my country, and if it is, whether I like anyone in it or anything about it. Trump’s disapproval rating is now up to 59%: it should be 95%.
I’m repulsed by my country, but I’m also repulsed by myself. I have made calls, I have written letters, I have protested whenever possible.
And I have made no difference whatsoever.
Nor does the drop of water wash away granite. A mote of dust doesn’t make a house dirty. Time, I tell myself, takes time. In the meantime, I will go off to the store to buy my new fix. I will go to the Poet’s Passage and bind a couple of books. I will not save the American Experiment (the title of my 7th grade history text) today. Still less tomorrow.
Who knows—maybe I will film the destroyer. But if I do, it won’t be because I think anything I write, or think, is of any importance. I’ll do it for myself, since the one fate I want to avoid (in addition to not dying of active alcoholism) is bitterness.
Ah, bitterness! It’s the oldest whore on the block, along with her sister, ingratitude. I succumb too often, and I’m angry at my compatriots, who have checked out or who don’t care.
In Alcoholics Anonymous, we go on and on about the dangers of resentment—it is, supposedly, the number one offender on the road to relapse. But resentments of actual people don’t get to me. It’s groups, institutions, and ideas that I resent.
I hated it when the teacher left the room when I was in grade school. I knew that the boys (always the boys!) would start making jokes, begin flying paper airplanes, and (given enough time) burn down the school. I waited for the click of teacherly heels returning to her classroom.
I’m resentful, and well on the way to bitterness. I can live in a world of bigots and bigotry. But what do I do about a country that either embraces it or shrugs its shoulder at it?
I’ve had enough, and I’m sick about it.
The problem is that they haven’t.
