Yes, today isn’t the Ides of March, but rather the Ides of September – Friday the 13th, a day when bad things happen. I didn’t sleep well at all last night, having gone to bed tired, and then had fitful dreams until now – 2:05 AM. I have that creepy/crawly feeling something bad is going to happen. Let’s talk.

My relatives whom I have affection for contemplate voting for Trump. If they read this, they will be horrified, no doubt, but I feel compelled to say it. They are living in a dream world, and behave as though they are children. Their candidate of choice, particularly now in his dotage, behaves like a child.

He said at the debate that the words he uttered on January 6th were simply the result of “they wanted me to make a speech.” Men are in prison today because of his words that day. He is a dangerous baby, as anyone for whom the spell was broken can attest. So we have children voting for other children as though we are back in fifth grade and we’re voting for hall monitors.

If we make it through to November without the Democratic candidate being assassinated, I will be greatly relieved. Another child could pick up a handgun, go to a rally and shoot her, thinking he’s saving the country. Alternatively, after she wins, Trump could enlist his Supreme Court to declare her candidacy illegitimate because of the Biden stand-down, paving the way for the House of Representatives – another classroom full of children – to put him in the White House. There will be chaos.

This chaos has been coming since Barack Obama had the gall to get himself elected president. That day I saw what looked like reasonable people in front of the post office in Vero Beach presenting pictures of him with a Hitler moustache, I knew it would eventually end up here. The eight years we wasted with Obama – a black man who was forced to act as one by a hostile electorate and an even more hostile Congress – set us up for the cult half the country has joined.

I suppose all this means I’ve lost faith that we as a country will survive. I wrote about that in the Suffer the Children series. Now I’m working on the sequel, set in a time frame twenty four years from now, where grown ups try to rebuild the country. I suppose it is necessary to destroy what was in order to build anew, but there will be pain and suffering – There Will Be Blood to name another movie – along the way. The inevitable cycle of rise, trial, destruction, resurrection, renewal. It’s just our turn, and I suppose we deserve it. So as I showed in the Suffer series, foreign enemies just have to wait for us to implode..just like I’m waiting for Trump to finally throw himself on the floor with a temper tantrum, pounding his fists on the ground and bawling – like a baby. Will that get their attention? Likely not.