Trumpilosis

I’ve said it before, even on this blog (you may have said it as well): I am sick of Trump. Such a statement may appear straight forward on the surface, but in looking deeper I wonder if perhaps this illness is the waxing side of a healing process.

If you’re like me, you’re sick of Trump not because of the man he is. Sure, I have become more incredulous weekly, even while believing each week that I couldn’t become more so. I am amazed how a man so blatantly unbalanced, so clinically narcissistic, and so unashamedly crude, could rise to the threshold he is currently at. 

Therein lies concern, perhaps even fear, but both have less to do with the mental queasiness that sweeps over me nearly each time I pick up a newspaper, magazine, or turn on my computer or TV. The man evokes responses of laughter to anger and all in between, but it’s his incessant presence that now induces nausea.

Think about the process you or I go through when we catch a viral infection.  It starts with a questioning awareness. Hmm…what is that feeling in my throat? It’s then followed with a struggling denial; it’s probably something I swallowed that scratched…please, please.  We’re then faced with acceptance, but cling to the hope that what we’re about to experience will be fleeting and non-consequential.  If it ends up bad, as it usually does, the whole event will occupy the biggest portion of our conscious awareness for days.

Now take that nasty cold (which everyone can relate to) and stretch it out proportionally over 16 months (June 16, 2015 to November 8, 2016) and you have what this Nation is experiencing with Donald Trump.

The first months of his run for office were filled with disregard, the only annoying little questions that popped up related to the extent of his following; a minor protest vote…perhaps… or just disgruntled talk radio yahoos? As the weeks passed it appeared he wasn’t a joke, even as he acted like a clown. Still, pundits and experts alike, especially Republicans, denied his candidacy was real, even as they speculated on the absurd outcome of his success.  It was notable that speculation was entirely on his possible success for the nomination, not his Presidency.

 Now we’re in full blown, snot-filled, gut-wrenching immersion of Trump and it’s everywhere. The rest of the news or even provincial conversation has become a backdrop to the subject of Trump.  If I tune to a TV or radio news station, or other talk entertainment I’ve begun to count the seconds before I hear the word Trump. It’s like waiting for your next cough. Watching Peppa Pig with my 3 year old granddaughter is like getting a little shot of nasal spray.

Trump, like a visit from an unwelcome disease, came in through the backdoor, fattened himself up a bit in the kitchen, and now he’s sprawled all over the living room. Even if we’re confident he’s eventually leaving, we would feel so much better if he was gone today.

I and others who share thoughts have contemplated the hole that will be left in a world without Trump. What will it be like when at the end of the day my son-in-law no longer says “…so let’s see what that idiot Trump has done today”? Will there be a collective sense of emptiness?

I am pleased to hypothesize that the analogy will hold true.

There are few non-event experiences we have in life that are more agreeable, in fact pleasurable, than the realization that we are no longer sick, even if our noses are still running a bit. The weather becomes unimportant, we focus on what’s good in people, and we feel empowered. When all is said and done, we simply have less fear.

I’m encouraged to believe that Donald Trump may be a most fortunate circumstance for Hillary Clinton. Not just in making her electability uncomplicated, but primarily in making her Presidency begin on such a positive note, much better than the so-called honeymoon periods afforded other Presidents.

When the nation realizes that the disease we might know as Trumpilosis no longer runs through our collective veins, when we can see the petty nature and misinformation that forms the basis for Hillary Clinton's detractors, when the Republican Party has purged much of the extreme right-wing from its Conservative viscera, when Obama can no longer be used as an emblematic excuse to block the work of Government, it very well may become a new healing for the Nation.

Democrat equality in Congress wouldn’t hurt either.

I believe that even though Hillary Clinton is not a naturally dynamic and competitive campaigner, it's because she is smart, because she is impassioned, because she's experienced, because she is connected, and because she is a woman that she has the potential of ushering in an era of good health. The likes of Trump will be forgotten as quickly as the Nyquil squirreled away in the medicine chest.