Time to clear the air

Once again, we are masked.

Eight years ago, Donald Trump blamed China for a global pandemic and refused to take any responsibility for managing the outbreak when it reached our shores. A million Americans died. Throughout, Trump gave Americans false information and quack remedies, and used our very real anxieties to sow distrust and division for his own gain.

Now climate change has increased the number and intensity of forest fires and, as I write, from Chicago to New York, America is covered in smoke. Over 100 million people are affected. For many, it is dangerous to breathe the air outside. People are finding their old N-95 masks and new fury.

In the budget Republicans are currently pushing through reconciliation, there are billions of dollars allocated to refit naval bases to adapt to rising sea levels. At the same time, our government calls climate change a hoax, pays wind farms to stand down, and went to war in Venezuela for American oil companies. In return for selling out our future, Trump and his political operation receive millions in cash.

We can expect no help from our government. Rather, we must expect this “unitary executive” to make things even worse.

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Last week, I wrote about Trump’s views of the Justice Department. After listening to Todd Blanche’s horrifying confirmation hearing, I need to say it again: Justice, for Trump and Blanche, is just an idea. Indictments, investigations, and imprisonment—those are real. They are tools Trump can use to shut us up.

Trump and his movement have murdered people because they are Black, because they speak Spanish, and because they are white and dare to protest. When Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, Americans were enraged. Trump and his crowd called us anti-police. Then they stormed the Capitol and attacked police. Now their paramilitaries in ICE are killing citizens and immigrants alike. Once again, Americans are enraged. On cue, they call us anti-police. Trump and the executive branch that acts in his name do not understand the difference between “serve and protect” and “occupy and coerce.”

Stephen Miller gave a speech in which he talked about violent Antifa demonstrations. No one in the self-selected audience stood up to ask what demonstrations he was talking about. Miller went on to describe the demonstrators, apparently violent, as misshapen creatures. This week, Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, blamed ICE killings on Democrats and told them to “shut their mouths.” In this Trumpist revision of Nazi fantasy, those who oppose being ruled no longer count as human.

But unlike Germany in the 1930s, America is not going along. Those of us they want to rule will simply not be ruled. Those they want to silence are instead speaking up. When they murdered Rene Goode, tens of thousands of others took her place amongst the protestors. When they slew Alex Pretti by shotting him in the back, we did not stand down. This week, in Maine and in Texas, people flooded the streets to protest the murders of Joan Sebastian Guerrero and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.

Still, their dangerous fantasy persists. In it, Vice President Vance is expected to order the government to raise river levels so he can canoe more easily and to order government helicopters to fly his children to golf practice. The delusion is even grander when it is Trump’s own: Iran’s leadership says they love Trump and will do everything he desires; he rules Venezuela and Greenland; and he did not lose both the popular vote and the Electoral College in 2020.

The rest of us live in the real world. We see the damage caused by their reckless, selfish, dystopian fantasy. This week, we don’t just see it, we breathe it.

The gap between Trumpian fantasy and our reality has widened beyond repair and beyond credibility. Last night, Trump gave a prime-time speech that was carried only by stations owned by his allies and watched by a tiny audience. When he finished, people either yawned or pointed out that he was simply and utterly wrong.

A warning to those whose bribes fill Trump’s coffers and whose flattery sustains his dangerous fantasy: the movie is about to end, and a reckoning is coming.

It will be a breath of fresh air.

Edwin hosts "It's The Democracy Stupid" on Lincoln Square & a weekly radio show on WCPT820AM/ Heartland Signal. He is the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago's public schools.