Unhinged

Not my word for it, but Heather Cox Richardson’s.

 

Nor was it an “it” that Richardson was describing, but rather that always-present him—Donald Trump. The fact that a respected scholar and the quintessential measured voice has no other word for the president of the United States (and formerly leader of the free world—remember that?) was jarring. That she thinks it will get worse is horrifying, but inescapably true.

 

Before I tell you about Richardson, let’s just outline what’s going on in the world today, 15 July 2026.

 

1.    The war in Iran continues, as it has for the last 4 or 5 months, despite the alleged “Memo of Understanding, (MOU)” that was to lead to peace talks last month. In fact, a couple of days ago, the president said the MOU was kaput, Iran is controlling the Strait of Hormuz, Trump is bombing Iran cities and infrastructure, and has just submitted a second notification to Congress, as required under the War Powers Act. The war violates all international law, and…

2.    …so there is now a push to eliminate the World Court by Marco Rubio, our Secretary of State. Smart move, since everyone who is complicit with Trump will be investigated, if any sort of normalcy returns to the world.

3.    ICE continues to kill people in traffic stops—this time a guy in Houston and a legal immigrant from Colombia in Biddeford, Maine. Maine happens to be where the head of the Senate Appropriations Committee (which funds ICE), Susan Collins, lives and (putatively) represents. The last anybody saw of Collins, she was being roasted in a ribbon-cutting ceremony by her constituents, who were shouting “SHAME!” constantly. She is a disgrace to the seat she holds, which once graced Margaret Chase Smith.

4.    ICE is now claiming that the Maine shooting was necessary, since the agent claimed that the Colombian guy had “weaponized his vehicle,” and the agent feared for public safety. 

5.    (Translation of item 4 for those unversed in Totalitarianism: driving a car if you’re brown is illegal, since you are dangerous by birth and will turn your car into a speeding behemoth plunging into a crowd. For that reason, you have to be sent to a…

6.    … concentration camp, of which we have over 200. These are almost always built by the prison “industry,” which tend to be controlled by rich guys who like Trump. They should—he’s providing a wonderful income stream from poor immigrants who have NO access to the US court system, who can be detained indefinitely in subhuman conditions, and have essentially been “disappeared.” Richardson, by the way, foresaw the pearl-clutching that would follow her use of the word “concentration camp,” by crisply pointing out that the term simply meant a place where people are concentrated. It’s one step down from an extermination camp, if that’s any consolation. That, along with the fact that…

7.    …we are only in authoritarianism, not totalitarianism (fortunately, I don’t have to capitalize these awful words). Good news, maybe—in authoritarianism, I just have to do what the Dear Leader says, I don’t have to believe it. In totalitarianism, I have to believe that…

8.    …the 2020 election was stolen! Yes, and Trump has new “evidence” to prove it, which he will reveal tomorrow night in a major address to the nation. Fortunately, he has the SAVE act, which will effectively make it impossible for married women and trans people to vote. Which means that the mid-term elections in less than four months are in real jeopardy, since there is no way that Trump could win legitimately. So we have that to worry about, as well as the fact that…

9.    …we have run through our reserves of oil, which was the only thing that has kept gas prices from truly skyrocketing, in the way that German inflation was out of control just before World War II. That, and who knew that…

10.…25% of the fertilizer we need to grow the “food” that we eat comes through the Strait of Hormuz. So what food there is is gonna be very expensive, though none of us need to worry, since…

11.…the reflecting pool in Washington, D.C., has been drained, once again, and will be painted with the same stuff by the same company that made the original mess under a highly profitable and non-public contract. A third of the White House is gone, the south lawn is still ripped up after Trump’s July 4^th event, the All-American State Fair was an utter failure, and it’s clear that we will be suffering the inevitable…

12.…corruption and shoddy work that comes from an authoritarian ruler. The only question is whether it’s a good thing or a bad, this inability to run even the Roman Circus in some reasonable manner. But honestly, can any distraction disrupt the true corruption, which is…

13.…that Trump and his family have engorged themselves with real estate deals in the Middle East, cryptocurrency deals, market manipulation by timing sales / buys to current events. Good to know he can do it, since nothing else about Trump suggests that he’s at all cogent or thinking linearly. He’s falling asleep everywhere, staying up all night reposting deeply-worrisome nonsense on “Truth Social,” unable to recognize world leaders or to get himself seated in the right delegation of G7 leaders. Which means that…

14.  …we’re right back to the Nixon years, when our president was getting sloshed every night, abusing his wife physically and emotionally, and stumbling through the White House delivering maudlin, drunken speeches / excuses in front of the oil portraits of his predecessors. Pat Nixon, presumably, was asleep in bed at the time, but who knows where Melania (Trump’s wife) is, since she only drops in when she has to (birthdays, Fourth of July, etc.) This means that Trump is completely nuts, deteriorating fast, and nobody is around to monitor, much less stop, him. Not that Melania may be the best choice, since…

15. …look, I hate to shame the victim, even if the victim has done very, very well for herself. Melania was a beautiful girl from a repressive and poor country who came to the US and was one of the “models” surrounding Jeffrey Epstein. I don’t know what she did, or had to do, to survive—but the “artful” pornography of seeing her in handcuffs and half naked in Trump’s private jet told the story. She’s not a lady you take home to mother, or at least to my mother, who would be horrified to know…

16. …that the essential fabric of American society has been ripped up and burned. I don’t trust anybody anymore, and that trust means that I go from sleepless nights wondering what will happen to Social Security to mornings where I sit with drunks in a room discussing God. These people think I’m crazy, which is true, and irretrievably lost in my rabbit hole. I am, of course, but I also would like a government that has weathermen who have access to buoys which can measure water temperature and atmospheric conditions, since it is blazingly hot here in Puerto Rico, and we’re in hurricane season. But Trump and Elon Musk have slashed all of those services, as well as funding for a whole host of necessary things like getting the sea lampreys out of the Great Lakes or taking care of Ebola outbreaks. We had basic trust in each other, even after the 60’s and Vietnam. We could agree on shit, like getting the eels out of the lakes, or reducing our reliance on foreign oil. Now, we can’t, and every gringo I meet carries an unseen burden: prove to me that you’re not a Trump supporter. If you’re wearing any religious paraphernalia, like a hajib or a crucifix around your neck, you’re my enemy.

17. …Punto! Which means that…

18. …the one defining and valuable thing about the American Experiment (as my High School History text titled itself) is finished. Good will is lost, and if I loved truth, good will was infinitely more…precious? Important? Or maybe just…

19. …comfortable. Easy. Sane. We will get rid of Trump, but we will also never get back what we had—a sense of trust and belief in the better nature of our fellows. Sorry, but we’re all enemies here, not brothers, which means that we’re all…

20. …alone. We have our tribes, perhaps, but those too will prove illusive. If I can’t trust my deepest enemy, my closest friend is worthless.

 

Did I mention that the cat died?       

 

 

On Moral Proximity

Well, it was pure indulgence, but it was also a time to re-evaluate the idea of moral proximity. You remember—if an old lady falls in front of me in the supermarket this afternoon—I know what I gotta do and I’ll do it, automatically. But if an old lady falls in an outdoor market in China….

 

….puejjj! (…as we say down here…)

 

I’m off the hook.

 

That’s moral proximity—you’re only stuck doing, well, what you can do.

 

This works brilliantly with falling (or maybe even fallen) ladies—but what about falling (or fallen) democracies? Yesterday, a casual news story revealed that a tattoo artist had been arrested and convicted for THIRTY YEARS—all for moving a box of political / cultural pamphlets in his salon. 

 

Of course, I have to be outraged by this. 

 

Things are falling apart spectacularly, as you probably don’t know, since I am imagining this as a document that will rest undisturbed for decades or centuries while the United States sloughs off its tyranny like a really bad night drinking. Nobody has a moment here to pause and take stock (much less read a blog) and I am totally down with that.

 

Greetings to my next, and perhaps only reader! It doesn’t matter to me that you’re a graduate student, totally not interested in a family of writers that ran around Southwestern Wisconsin in the mid twentieth century. I salute you, and commiserate with you, since the 22d century can’t be easy.

 

Anyway, we’ve been busy back here in 2026 worrying about pressing issues. Birthright citizenship has been retained, says the Supreme Court. Mail-in ballots can be counted after the election if postmarked before the election. Trump can now fire heads of Independent Agencies but cannot fire Lisa Cook, who is a governor of the Federal Reserve Board. No explanation needed, since absolutely none is possible.

 

All of this is vitally important, as important as a war with Iran that clearly never ended. The Iranians won, and won generously. They now have full control of the Strait of Hormuz, lifting of sanctions, return of monies frozen for decades, the end of independent nuclear inspectors. They are waiting for our oil reserves to wear out—and they are very close to doing so. Once that is used up, the price of gasoline will soar. 

 

It is a criminal war started by a malignant narcissist who is also an arrogant fool and who is also clearly demented. 

 

We think it’s all normal, but it isn’t, of course. 

 

It’s not normal to have a president that does more damage to the White House than a gang of meth heads ever could. The East Wing is gone, and the “ball room” is iffy—they have no approval to do anything. Two weeks ago, the entire front lawn of the White House was taken up with an enormous and hideous “cage fight” for the visitors sitting under a 600-ton “claw.” During the event, a “champion” shouted out that Michelle Obama is a man.

 

Nor is it normal to have a reflecting pool turn into an algae-infested slimy mess.

 

Wait—it’s July in Washington, D.C., and the temperatures have been hitting the mid-nineties. So yes, every president has had to deal with a conceptually breath-taking reflecting pool. The reality is different, as it so often is.

 

But what’s not normal is that the President would obsess over it, to the point of imagining that “vandals” had “slashed” a 250-then-300-and-finally-350-foot “gash” down the center of the pool. Nor that he would arrest an Olympian canoeist for touching the water, along with a bunch of other tourists who came by to see (and sadly smell) the pool. The ducks are dying, by the way.

 

But that’s all in the past, because the big event is the Great American State Fair, and here, only a video can capture the lunacy:

 The fact that over 100 million tax-payer dollars has gone into this debacle means nothing, since we are not—most of us—sleeping in the streets, which is what over three million people are doing in Caracas, which had 7.2 and 7.5 Richter Scale earthquakes in under 40 seconds almost a week ago. The death toll is already over 1500, and reports are that over 50,00 people are “missing.” Dozens of multiple-story towers “pancaked” in a way rarely seen before, and the situation couldn’t be more grim.

 

What a relief, then, to discover that the moral universe is somewhat intact, since the Supreme Court also refused to do anything about the E. Jean Carroll case, since what could they do? So yeah, Trump is a rapist and he owes one of his victims 5 million and over 80 million bucks for one rape and multiple defamations. 

 

I am responsible for this, as you know, since it’s my job, dammit, to keep the White House intact, stock the Great American State Fair with prize potatoes from Maine and strawberries from California, wrest the olive branch from the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards and open the Strait of Hormuz, rebuild Venezuela, and drain the Reflecting Pool.

 

Since I can do absolutely nothing about any of this, it is my moral duty to obsess about all of this. This will establish me as a good person in the eyes of my father—a saint—who is dead but still very much looking down from Heaven.

 

God, is he looking down!

 

And God am I worrying!

 

Which is why I felt terrible—as indeed any moral person would—about going to that poetry slam last night at the Poet’s Passage.

 

Terrible, just terrible.

 

But I have to worry as well, I tell myself, about a younger generation of poets who are many of them dreaming of the day that they will have their first book of their own poetry in their hands. It’s a cool feeling: you look down and see your hands, and see it holding a book. Then you see your name. Then you realize…

 

…the book will live longer than you will.

 

So I’ve done Whitman, and Cavafy, and Auden, and finally Lord Byron—who were all young men, at some point, holding their first book of poetry in their hands.

So I go off to the Poet’s Passage and bind some of those books, and then I read some of those poems.

 

Moral proximity, you remember. The Passage is two blocks away. So yesterday brought the happy realization that Auden and Byron and a lot of other poets can still pack in the crowds. 

 

There were 150 people at the slam last night, at varying points.

 

Enough to fill up a State Fair!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back from the Brink

What happened?

 

Duhhh…I was terrified, of course. Easy to see it now, and easy to acknowledge it at the time, but very difficult when you are actually in the midst of the terror.

 

Here are the facts as I dimly remember them from the last two weeks.

 

Almost certainly, it started with my visiting a friend in the program that I’m not in. The friend is a lawyer, his specialty is family law, this was a formal visit.

 

I’m getting divorced at 69—not on my bingo card.

 

Holy Week—which is big / not big in Puerto Rico. The words of Miss Jean Brodie—undoubtedly uttered through pursed lips—apply: “For those who like that sort of thing, THAT is the sort of thing they like….” So yes, the Catholics do their best here, though it’s small beer compared to the Philippines or Málaga. They get out the papier mache or Styrofoam cross, dig out the scourges they bought from Condom World all those years ago, and fashion a new crown with all the thorns pointing out (and their tips capped). They walk down the street. The rest of us go to the beach.

 

Except for me, of course, since if there’s a negative emotion around, I have to feel it. So I absorb the misery of those around me, and enjoy the company. But it is a hard week.

 

Made no easier by the news, on Easter Sunday, that the President of the United States…oh, let’s just show it.

 

  

 Oooops, that’s not the one.

 

That’s actually appropriate—sort of—if you don’t mind a blurring / erasure of the line between church and state. But the other (Trump being famously liberal in his posting) post is the one that got everyone’s attention.

 

This was followed, very predictably, by this on Tuesday:

 

 

Today, I’m marveling at the distance that Trump has created for himself. He announces the destruction of a civilization, denies any role in that destruction, expresses insincere sorrow that the world’s oldest civilization is going to be annihilated, puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Iranians, and then blesses them!

 

This post appeared on Tuesday at 8:06 AM. I read it several hours later and then sat on a park bench, smoking a cigar. 

Trump had gone on to say that 8 PM eastern time would be the hour. If a deal had not been secured, all bets were off, and destruction assured.

 

The Iranians had submitted a 10-point plan that looked very naturally towards Iranian interests. They wanted….oh, here it is again.

 

 

In fact, Trump announced jubilantly in a post that a two-week “truce” had been secured, that everybody was on board with the peace plan, but that the remaining “details” were yet to be worked out.

 

He caved, and in the worst possible way. There’s no disguising this—he chickened out (THANK GOD) and the world is safe.

 

This time….

 

For the moment…

 

Until the next time that the rat—errrr, president—is backed into a corner.

 

The president is completely bonkers. His lies were never convincing to anyone with half a brain—now, even a moron can see through them. His impulse control is shot. He clearly has no plan for ANYTHING—not the tariffs, not the immigration policy, not foreign policy. His emotions are wildly out of control. 

 

The enduring question is, “what happened?” The “truce” was declared a couple of hours before the 8 PM deadline. I, by this time, had decided to pass the time waiting for the end of the world by binding a book, rather than drinking (which I chose not to do, out of deference to those people in those meetings that they, at least, go to). By the time the book was bound, the news was creeping out that the US top command of the Armed Services may have—they were very cagey in describing this, and they should have been—not refused Trump’s orders, but rather adduced the various complications (military / political / legal / moral) that might ensue if the admittedly bold plans of the dear leader were carried out.

 

Did the last line of defense in our little democracy hold?

 

It was reassuring to be lied to in such a soothing way. Some four-star general got on CNN and assured the world that there was a sane mind left in Washington, and that the situation was normal. In fact, their commander-in-chief is bat-shit crazy, and the books that are going to be written about this fuck-up in American history is going to make the post-Nazi avalanche of memoirs / documentaries / books / movies / etc. look like a snow flurry on an otherwise crisp November day.

 

The president had his finger on the nuclear red button we all imagine is on the Resolute Desk, but then the aide came in with his diet-Coke, and he forgot all about it.

No worries, see?

 

To recap: 

1. Visit to lawyer to end my marriage

2.  2. Awaiting end of world

3.    3.  See below

 

Nobody in MAGA saw this as a Jesus-like figure. Nobody accepted the notion that Trump had posted it (and he admitted he had) thinking he was being portrayed as just a doctor, not the pathway to eternal salvation. Nobody was outraged by the attack on Pope Leo—God knows, I called His Holiness a whore a score of blog posts back, but Trump really went after him. He called him “weak on crime,” which seemed an odd thing to say. Does the pope also have an economic development plan, a scheme to fix our broken healthcare system, and a revision of the penal code?

 

True—the Catholics, who had favored Trump 60 / 40 over Harris in the 2024 election, now put him at a 48% approval rating. 

 

The cumulative effect is staggering. Not, of course, that it would affect many people, because people have tuned out the news. Worse, they have turned people who care deeply about the news into moral lepers, who insist on squandering their time in the filth and decay of current events when they could be looking higher!

 

Their thoughts could be elevated!

 

Their minds purified…

 

Their souls complete! 

 

But no, there was little Marc, sitting on a park bench smoking a cigar because why not? Trump might have blown Iran up, but every other Islamic country would have bombed our military bases in the region the next day. Terrorist attacks on American interests in London and Paris were inevitable, and here in the United States as well. 

 

Americans are not seeing this as the Iranians are seeing this: they know that they are in a Holy War. The crusades that are open wounds to this day in Iran and are just paragraphs in a History textbook for us—well, the term “Great Satan” to describe the US is not metaphorical. It is real, it is evil, and it is upon them. 

 

Of course, this is a Holy War for the evangelical Christians, who have been waiting for this for the last two thousand years, this moment when the struggle between good (us) and evil (them) will at last celebrate its glorious victory on the world stage. The curtain will come crashing down.

 

The rest of us are worrying about the price of gasoline.

 

The monumental disconnect is jarring.

 

I was terrified.

And I still am