I face a dilemma.  It will make no difference but, seeing human health and lives sacrificed to Fear, I feel compelled to speak.

When villagers reneged on paying the Pied Piper of Hamelin one thousand guilders for piping their rats into the Weser River, the charmer returned to dance their children into the River or—accounts vary—a cave and never seen again.

Failing to pipe all of Barack Obama‘s rats from his Village, proving tragically incapable of leading America through a COVID-19 pandemic, seeing his prospect for reelection inexorably slip toward a cliff, hoping True Believers can pull him back from the edge, The Pied Piper of D.C. stages star-spangled, red-white-and-blue “Campaign Rallies,” tosses out Red Caps and t-shirts, boasts, bullies, clowns, insults—“Pocahontas.” “Sleepy Joe.” “You’re a terrible reporter.” “You ask stupid questions.”—but not one substantive word!

Mocking experts’ counsel to wear masks and maintain social distance, like the rats and children of Hamelin, Donald Trump hazards the health and lives of followers with shoulder-to-shoulder, back-to-back COVID 19 “Super-Spreader” events in homage to a single Monster Ego!

As numbers of deaths approaching 250,000, infections 8,500,000 and COVID 19 continues mushrooming across America, death threats compel a man who devotes his life to battling infectious disease and public health, Dr. Anthony Fauci, to walk with bodyguards.  I’m stunned to hear President Donald Trump says, “People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots!”

Could such baffling pronouncements reflect a sane mind?

Because a small, radical group of Muslims hurt and kill non-Muslims, Donald Trump barred Muslims from America.  A small, radical group of Americans, the Ku Klux Klan hurt, killed, and would again, hurt and kill non-Whites.  Indications are that with permission (“Stand down and stand by.”?) White Supremacist, neo-Nazis and assorted White Militias would hurt and kill non-Whites.

What happened to?

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The retched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Emma Lazarus’s sonnet, “New Colossus,”
on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty

In 1972, when it became known that Thomas Eagleton had been treated for Depression, George McGovern felt forced to drop him as a running mate.  Today, three dozen mental health professionals, folks with fist-hand information, and his niece, a Clinical Psychologist, agree the man sitting in the Oval Office, Donald J. Trump, suffers from Malignant Narcissistic Personality Disorder (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM5).

The Brief Life of A Buck, a Dummy’s tale of a dollar:

New York Federal Reserve Bank creates and loans one dollar to Citibank which it in turn loans to Ford Motor Company.  Ford includes the buck in line worker Jerry Scudnick’s paycheck.  Jerry’s wife, Ann, passes the buck to Safeway for Enfamil.  Safeway moves it on to California Produce Co-op for tomatoes. The Co-op pays it to migrant picker Juan Garcia who wires the dollar to Juanita, his mother in Mexico City.  Juanita pays pharmacist Roberto a dollar in pesos for heart medicine.  Roberto passes the buck to Eli Lily Pharmaceuticals who include it in Connecticut Research Chemist Mike Young’s salary.  Mike hands it off to Wells Fargo in his $1225 mortgage payment.  Part of a loan payment ,Wells Fargo passes our dollar to the San Francisco Federal Reserve.  Depending on the economy, The Fed may loan it back out or erase it from the books.

For me, three snap-shots leap from the photo album publicizing President Donald Trump’s Narcissism: Descending, as from Heaven, on a Golden escalator, posing like a cardboard cutout holding a Bible in front of a church and, most recently, posturing like Mussolini on a White House portico, swiping off the detested mask to reveal grim determination in place of the trademarked grin, directing a Presidential photo op for Red Cap Minions.  All to maintain the image of a man who, today, feels his back to the wall.

What began as “The greatest infomercial in political history” and led to the Oval Office, may prove Donald Trump‘s greatest curse.  Citizen Trump may well have continued skating around ethics, morals and the law, to a posh retirement at his Private Golf Club.  Presidency drew increased exposure and focus to a lifetime of blurred shenanigans and felonies.  As polls show diminishing hope for a second term, a potentially out-of-office Donald Trump faces litigation and indictments which could lead to financial collapse, even prison.

The tragedy of our forty-fifth President lies behind the photo ops and charade, the bluster, bullying and name-calling.  In the most inaccessible recesses of Donald Trump’s heart a sad little boy yearns and schemes for Love he never knew and has no notion of how to get or give.     

If President Trump may lean on the United States Department of Justice to dig up dirt on his opponent, Citizen Biden may request likewise. The individual most devastated by the findings of parallel, impartial, in-depth investigations lies beyond question.

They show the finger to Dr. Fauci and fall with the Autumn leaves.

Abe Lincoln founded the Republican Party and freed the slaves.  A Racist President who refuses to condemn White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis is not a Republican.

The Atlantic Editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reports that, among other derogatory comments, Donald Trump referred to  American’s Armed Services personnel as “losers” and “suckers.”  Employing his trademarked kill-the-messenger attack, our President labels Goldberg’s allegation “a disgraceful situation by a magazine that is a terrible magazine, I don’t read it but I heard about it.  They made it up and probably it’s a couple of people who had been failures in the administration and I couldn’t get rid of them fast enough, but, or it’s just made up  .  .  .”  Who to believe? 

Founded in 1857, James Russell Lowell its first editor, what evolved into today’s The Atlantic numbers half-a-million readers.  Named American Society of Magazine Editors’ 2016 Magazine of the Year, The Atlantic remains an unchallenged standard of journalistic excellence.  Inevitably, radio, televised and print journalists will misconstrue or get the facts wrong.  But to insinuate Jeffrey Goldberg would deliberately concoct a report is outrageous as labeling The Atlantic a “terrible magazine.”

Writing instructor James Frey counsels authors to employ the “Would he or she really?” test. Would a character really speak or behave as I want her or him to?  Would fifty-five year old, Nebraska wheat grower Abner Brown really abandon a wife of thirty years, children and grandchildren to run off with an Exotic Dancer?  Would International Consolidated Coffee heiress Priscilla Vanderwood really become a Methodist Missionary in Darkest Africa?

Would a journalist with over three decades unchallenged veracity, whose accolades include the National Magazine Award and Overseas Press Club’s Joe and Laurie Dine Award, would Jeffery Goldberg really concoct and publish a lie?  Would a man with countless, easily disproved assertions and distortion of fact, who claimed sore feet to dodge military service, who refuses to call John McCain, and by extension all POWs, a “Hero,” who admits lying about the lethality of an impending COVID 19 disaster, would Donald J. Trump really label America’s Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guard “losers” and “suckers?”  Is the Pope really Catholic?