The American Island

If you’re a fan of the Electoral President of the United States, don’t bother to read this. Just click the pretend Thumbs Down button on FB and move on to the next post on your newsfeed.

One of the New York Times op-ed columnists, Gail Collin, had a catchy title to her opinion today: Trapped on an Island with Trump.  I thought she was claiming that all Americans were trapped

 from The Saturday Evening Post

on the island, but Collins was actually referring only to Republicans. That disappointed me a bit, but after reading the article I was actually feeling sorry for all the Republican Congresspersons. I feel their frustration.

But let’s face the unpleasant reality. It is all Americans who are trapped on the island with Trump. The USA once was a powerful country that stretched from sea to shining sea, but we’ve eroded to a tiny leper colony island that the rest of the world is trying desperately to avoid. Mexico and Canada are close enough to our island to have developed anxiety problems. No more friends in Europe, other than Russia. A few friends in Asia, but only because of North Korea.

In my lifetime, half the people in the country didn’t like whoever was president, but they understood him. He was predictable. The president didn’t cause us to lose sleep or develop nervous ticks because we can’t go for an hour without checking our cell phone to see what the President was up to now. With whom was he trading insults? What were his latest thoughts on tax reform? Who would REALLY pay for the wall? Who would be allowed into the country without having to pass through a dark rendition site? Was he really going to nuke North Korea?

I’m thinking some of you don’t buy into my tiny island metaphor. Okay, I’ll go along with you. It’s a big island, stretching from West Virginia to Florida to Arizona. The northeast coast is actually a barrier island. The West Coast is its own island. Trump is not their problem. They’ve got marijuana and everything is cool, man. And it might be significant, and understandable, that the majority of Republican voters now favor legalizing marijuana. Which may be the only hope for resolving the discord between the small towns and big cities on our little island.