” Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” – The White Rabbit, Alice in Wonderland.

“Hopefully George is looking down and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country. (It’s) a great day for him. It’s a great day for everybody.” – Donald Trump, announcing the drop in unemployment today.

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I got a text message from a friend this morning; he was in despair. “I feel awful today; the media is reporting a huge drop in unemployment, and Trump is holding a news conference to take credit for it.”

This, he said, darkly, is good for Trump.  That was terrible news for him.

I was uncomfortable hearing this.

I hate the idea of seeing the whole world through this angry and tiny prism.  I don’t want to see every good or bad thing in such a suffocating way.

This either is my country, or it isn’t, and if it isn’t,  I need to make plans to get to Canada or Costa Rica.

I don’t plan to go anywhere.

I told my friend I didn’t want to see it that way, and I thought I don’t want to start the morning in this way. He has not answered me back, perhaps instead finding a more receptive audience.

My first thought when I went to look at the news was how great it was that people could get back to work again, the refugees, Jean’s Place, some of the working families getting hungry around here, millions of other people.

It is good for some small business to save themselves, and for people’s shattered lives to be restored, and children get back to school.

The country can begin returning to normal again, and maybe the economy will heal faster than everybody thought.

In our divided country, there is no such thing as good news for some people, just as there is no longer a common understanding of good or truth or compassion.

We are called to face up to the reality of racism, and perhaps to begin the grinding work of reconciliation beyond. There’s a lot of work to do.

It does not seem noble or worthy to me to be unhappy when so many people’s lives can improve, and they can feed their families again.

I don’t see justice or pride in becoming what I dislike or don’t wish to be.

Joe Biden is correct when he says that most people in the country are good.  And some people are not. I’d like to be one of the good ones.

I’ve certainly learned that lesson myself over the past four years.

How does one find a healthy balance in the middle of so much conflict and division and anger, when it is no longer possible to differentiate between good and evil, truth and lies, right and wrong?

I can only speak for myself.  I can’t tell anyone else what to do.

When I stop believing in the good news that helps people,  I am no better than anyone I ever judge or disapprove of, perhaps even worse. How does one live peacefully in a country while wishing for people to keep losing their jobs?

What kind of victory is that?

As for people worried about politics, the challenge is to stay even and grounded; this is a roller coaster, not a carriage ride, the news will ride up and down, the truth stands still.

Don’t worry; the Pandemic isn’t over; racial turmoil has not been resolved,  the economy is not booming, and the President had dug a bottomless hole for himself in the past few months and weeks.

President Trump has profoundly damaged himself, and if, for some reason, he should survive this turmoil, the people of good heart and mind will just have to start again. I don’t see that happening.

I do not believe the President can now undo the damage he has done, and the damage he will undoubtedly continue to do. I don’t care to ride a roller coaster every day, I may be crazy, but I will find my firm ground and stick to it.

Donald Trump has proven that he cannot manage the really difficult crises, that he will not even try to unite the country. He can’t.

He has demonstrated again and again that he is demonstrably and dangerously unbalanced. He shows us that every time he opens his mouth – or doesn’t.

People are free to love him all they want; I am clear about what I see, and believe me, there is no joy in it.

After ten days of grief, protest, and some violence, the President has his good news. And is what he said: “Hopefully, George (Floyd) is looking down and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country. (It’s) a great day for him.”

I have no idea where George Lloyd is today, but wherever it is, I can only imagine him crying, if he is listening to that speech.

A central function of Greek tragedy, according to Aristotle, was to arouse the emotions of fear and pity in an audience. Tragedy, he said, “is an imitation of a high, complete action. One presents an imitation of things that arouse fear and pity.”

One thing our President is very good at is snatching defeat from the joys of victory. He never fails to remind us who he really is, even when we might forget for just one second.

My job is not to ride up and down with his manipulations and fury. My job – I’m with Socrates – is that it is better to suffer than to do wrong, and better to help the people who suffer the most in a time like this.

That’s the proper path for me.

When many people begin to talk nonsense and accept nonsense, and if intelligent people are among them, there is usually something more deeply involved than just nonsense. It isn’t just that our President is broken; it is that our country is broken.

We all pretend that there are only two kinds of us, saints or hypocrites, and in either case, we want to be left alone.

My job is to discern right from wrong and do right. I can’t carry other people on my shoulders; they are not big enough or strong enough.

Trump’s Washington Bible stunt in Washington last week was a landmark for him, the beginning of the beginning of the end. They simply cannot be rationalized or lied away or excused, at least by most people.

His efforts to militarize American cities, his transition of the White House, the “People’s House” into a fortress-like Papa Doc’s was in  Haiti years ago,  his profound insensitivity to African-American grief and rage,  or the victims of the coronavirus, his brutal suppression of dissent or accountability, his obsessive lying, efforts to brand protesters as terrorists will not carry him to victory.

And these very tragic flaws – for him, for us –  won’t magically go away; it is woven into his DNA and a good chunk of our country.

The hole he is in is this: Everything he does is focused on pleasing or appeasing somewhere around 30 to 40 percent of the country. They will not abandon him no matter what he does; there are not enough of them to get him elected.

He has permanently alienated a  more substantial amount – closer to 50 percent. These numbers ride up and down a bit, depending on what is happening, but they will almost certainly not change dramatically.

He has seen to that, he sees to it every day,  passions about this man are burned into everyone’s consciousness.

I often flip-flop in presidential campaigns; I cannot imagine ever voting for this person, no matter how the economy does. And it is not because I am on the left or the right; it is because I believe in right and wrong.

As for Donald Trump, he will get some bumps, and then do something hateful or stupid. That has been his pattern from the beginning.

He has unaccountably written off the middle – women, minorities, the young, the moderate, the college-educated, the urban,  me. He just can’t pull it off without these people, no matter what you hear on the news, or how much of a sporting event they want you to think it is.

Ratings and hits online call for drama, not truth.

If you can’t trust Trump to run the country, trust him to self-destruct. He has been doing it for months.

The impression is of an angry older man riding a bucking horse he can’t stop or control, wildly through the woods. We see how unequal our economy has become, how angry and aroused African Americans, women, and centrist voters are, how his foundation is beginning to crumble.

The thing is people are sick of Trump. We are not programmed to live in crisis and anger every day of our lives. “If you drink much  from a bottle marked ‘poison,'” said the White Rabbit, it is certain to disagree with you sooner or later.”

There is no longer any good news for the people who dislike him. Even the people who love him don’t like him. My poor friend has lost his perspective and moral compass when he is sorry; people are working again. That is the real enemy.

The good news is bad news for the people who hate Donald Trump. There is no longer any bad news for the people who love him. So we are living in Wonderland, the White Rabbit gives us the news, the world is turned upside down.

Resistance is not about the President; it means keeping perspective, seeing reality.

It will take a commanding and radically different kind of leader to begin to sew us up. There is no sign of that person yet.

He or she will not come from the left or the right, but from a different place than we can even conceive right now. If he wins, Joe Biden might make a worthy transitional leader to the kinder America. How could he do more than that?

The poor man. I’m younger than he is, I couldn’t do it for a month.

At this point, it is difficult to imagine Biden losing. It is just time for a healthier life.

Trump has screwed things up beyond imagination for more than half of the country, and the 20 percent he most needs to win are running for shelter.

Nobody wants to live in this daily angry and disturbing morass; nobody wants their kids to live like this or see this, most of us are eager to try to come together once again and make America kind again.

H.L. Mencken wrote that “the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

I don’t care to fall into that hole.

I don’t need for Donald Trump to be a hobgoblin. My happiness is not dependent on his existence; I am quite happy in many ways after years of him.

A lot of people voted for him and believe in him; I think his great and fatal mistake was in refusing, as General Mattis suggested last week, to be the President of most of us, or even more of us.

Presidents I didn’t vote for or care for always seemed to include me when there was trouble or danger. George Bush included me in his efforts to soothe after 911, and for that matter, so did Rudy Guiliani.

They were my leaders too, I appreciated it.

President Trump has always made it clear that he has no use for people like me; I am an enemy, not only of him but “of the people.” I don’t think that gets my vote. That was his decision, not mine.

Trump, for whom I have tried to keep an open mind, has abandoned me, and almost everyone I knew and spoke to – I don’t talk to Washington pundits – sees that Donald Trump only cares about Donald Trump.

But that doesn’t mean that I have to abandon me, and who I am.

Over the long haul, and no matter what happens to our Pandemic or our economy, that is his fatal flaw. There simply are not enough people to look past his gassing of peaceful protesters while waving a Bible around in a closed-up church.

Mencken took a cynical but long view of politics in America. He believed in democracy, but never took it too seriously:

“As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and a downright moron will adorn the White House.”

I get no pleasure – I will be honest – in believing that day has come. I don’t think Donald  Trump is a moron, far from it. But I get the drift, and I can’t say it doesn’t apply.

I  believe the most powerful political position for me is to work hard always to feel and do the right thing, even if it is difficult. That is my politics, I can’t do the left and the right thing, that is not politics, it is something much worse.

Real courage comes from living and even suffering for what you believe. I make my label.  Ther is glory and redemption in that.

One finds nobility in all of the oddest places. I don’t need to hate the good news, and I hope that we will soon begin the complicated and lengthy process of seeing our country become whole again.

I am not powerful enough by a million times to bring this about, but I can practice it in my own life. I have faith in the future; I will not enjoy or cheer on the destruction and havoc this broken man will bring on himself or his country.

I can almost feel, see, and sense the great awakening going on right now, perhaps because I am part of it.

Trump helped instigate this awakening,  but he can’t stop or control it. It has gone way beyond him and what the media likes to call his “base,” (instead of the people who support him. I wouldn’t want to be seen as part of a “base.”)

I don’t control him,  and I don’t want to, but I see more and more that he will destroy himself by a thousand cuts, he will never get past what he did these past few weeks, it will be a turning point for him.

And he will find a way to do it again and again because that is who he is and what he does.

I don’t care if unemployment drops to zero, he will find a way to sabotage himself and make a hundred new crises and upset a million new people, and shoot himself in both feet.

We have lost faith in him, and this isn’t Brazil; in our country, that means he can’t govern.

And he did it all to himself. I am not responsible for him, only for me.

As for me, I will follow the guidance of the poet Philip James Bailey in his poem Festus:

“We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives, Who thinks most, feels noblest, acts the best.”

Our damaged and visionless President is running out of time. I’m not going there with him. And I will caution myself to remember and celebrate good news when it comes.

We all need it.

“Alice: How long is forever? White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.”