What now?

The problem with getting old is you’ve seen this movie before. Even though America reveres youth, with Boomers and Gen-X’ers getting plastic surgery in order to look like their children, as if they are truly fooling anybody, there are many benefits to getting old, other than being closer to death and possible frailty old age is a golden era, one of happiness (this has been well-documented) and one of wisdom.

But no one gives a sh*t about what old people have to say.

Now my head is spinning because this is exactly what us oldsters protested against for decades, involvement in foreign wars, messing with foreign governments, regime change. And what is even more confounding is that Trump ran on a doctrine of America First, isolating our nation from the rest of the world, stopping our investments elsewhere, just focusing on the U.S. Saving money and taking care of our brethren all at the same time.

And if you believe that…

Now I’ve got to say, waking up for this past year has been an exercise in surprise. You never know what the headlines will be. Hollywood can’t even compete with what is going on in D.C. Then again, if they wrote a script, no one would believe it.

And if we’re worried about the rest of the world, why did we cut USAID and gut the Voice of America? I mean you don’t have to be a Democrat to know that this all doesn’t add up.

So how far is Trump going to push the envelope? The plane from Qatar, the demolition of the East Wing, the renaming of the Kennedy Center…it’s not like he asks for permission, there are no guardrails at all. What we’ve got is a rubber-stamping Supreme Court that bases all its decisions on what the Founders were thinking when they wrote the Constitution, which is like ignoring computers and asking a blacksmith what he thinks about technology.

I’m numb.

Now this is not the only day, however… If you’re my age, you remember the hangover of World War II. It was in the rearview mirror, but not by much. The death and destruction. We were fighting bad forces, then again today we’re in cahoots with bad forces. Russia invades Ukraine and it’s Zelenskyy’s fault. So therefore Volodymyr has to kiss Trump’s ass, the initial criticism being that Zelenskyy wasn’t dressed appropriately in the now gilded-up White House, which has become akin to the abode of an Eastern European dictator.

Then there was Vietnam.

Forget Iran-Contra, what about the invasion of Iraq. Which was not responsible for 9/11. But Dick Cheney wanted to use the attack as justification for regime change and…

Look at Afghanistan. The Russians pulled out having made no headway, but somehow it was going to be different for us? I mean as Depeche Mode sang, people are people. There is nothing inherently superior about Americans. Meanwhile, we’re falling behind China militarily, this is the fight we want to pick, under a false pretext? The man who ran Honduras is pardoned for drug offenses and we pull Maduro from Venezuela when that country is not a haven of drug production, saying it is. Does the truth matter?

And there are many Americans who will support Trump in whatever he does. Primarily because they hate the Democrats, the woke, Joe Biden… You’d think that the years before Trump returned to office were hellish. Were we really living in the same America?

And then Marjorie Taylor Greene says she had no idea what was truly going on, because like a good foot soldier, she refused to read or be exposed to any news outlet that was not spewing right wing dogma. She saw the other side and she woke up. And now even nitwit Lauren Boebert is in a snit.

The truth is if you’ve been paying attention to the news you know all of what I’m referencing above, from the Supreme Court’s originalism to the Colorado water project.

Now you used to be able to live in a bubble, ignoring what is going on. But today you feel the consequences. Like high prices in the grocery store. You’re just trying to live your life and a profiteering dictator is running over not only the country, but your rights, willy-nilly.

Forget what’s next in Venezuela, an absolute quagmire, what’s next in the U.S?

And what signal does this send to Russia… That it too can invade countries whose governments it dislikes?

And Greenland must be freaking out. They’re next. One thing about Trump, he does what he says. He’s been wanting Greenland long before he got his knickers in a twist over Venezuela.

So now the entire world order has been upended. And if we’re going to start changing regimes, why begin with Venezuela? Oh, that’s right, they’ve got the oil!

Like the United States can run the world. Like every country needs our interference. Like we know what is going on in the landscape better than they do.

Of course Maduro was heinous. But the balance of power in Venezuela… It’s not just one bad guy against the nation, there are factions of power…what about the colectivos?

WHAT?

Hell, even I wasn’t aware of the colectivos until today. Was Trump? It’s complicated, and it’s not a movie, this is real life. And it’s being done on our watch, try to distance yourself all you want, but you are an American… We learned this traveling in Europe in the sixties and seventies… Some kids sewed Canadian flags on their backpacks so as not to be mistaken for U.S. citizens…

So do you believe in the system? Do you believe you have power? So far, Trump has acted with impunity. What’s the cost to you? Forget financial, is your kid going to have to go overseas and…

Play this out. What does this look like?

Be rah-rah all you want, but the oldsters have seen this movie. And it has played out poorly again and again and again.

This is scary.

But in truth I have not gotten to that emotion yet, because I’m in shock. I saw the headline on my phone and…my first reaction was this was a joke, that I was on a parody site.

But no, this is real, and this is real life.

This is what an uninvolved, somnambulant public gets, while it is focused on Jeff Bezos and Kim Kardashian in Aspen and musicians are afraid of taking a stand for fear of alienating a potential fan and…

Citizens are on the back foot. But Trump is not, he’s aggressive, acting without permission, even when it’s required. You need to consult Congress before you start a war. Then again, if you change the board of the Kennedy Center you can rename it and bend it to your will…

Forget Joe Biden, forget the Democrats, forget arguing the last election. It’s time to live in the now, because what’s coming down the pike is not pretty, it will have consequences, and if you think you’re immune…

You’re not really thinking at all.