I keep thinking that good, rational people are going to exert their control as the responsible adults in the room and wrest control of our country back from the evil, psychotic, racist, child-monsters currently occupying the echelons of government. But with each passing day and each thumbing-of-their-noses to the Rule of Law, I’m coming to the sad, sackcloth-rending realization that this is never going to happen. We are witnesses to the decline and fall of the United States of America—and truth be told, probably all of western civilization. “All this has happened before and will happen again.”

We have a demonstrably insane man occupying the White House, one tiny hand hovering over the big red civilization reset button, while methodically dismantling everything this country has built over the past 240 years with the other. What surprises me the most is the rapidity with which this destruction has been allowed to occur.

I had hopes that the newly elected Democratic Congress—hobbled as they are by having to deal with a solidly Republican Senate—would effect at least some change; that they would be able to at least lightly apply the brakes to this out of control administration and yet, except for a very few notable exceptions, all they’re doing is politely asking that the Orange Menace stop steamrolling over anything and everything that made this country the envy of the world for so long.

Let’s face it: the Russian Wig Stand is old. If he wasn’t in such close proximity to the nuclear football I’d rest a little easier knowing that the vast majority of us would outlive him and survive long enough to start putting the pieces back together of what used to be our country. But I’m not so sure any more.

The 70% of the country who are not racist and certifiably insane are counting on the hope that 2020 will take care of the profound mistake that was made in 2016. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think they’re putting way too much faith in the belief that there will be an election next year. Trump is a sociopath, a malignant narcissist. Even if there isn’t some manufactured crisis where he can issue an Executive Order to suspend elections, do you honesly think he’ll voluntarily give up the Presidency even if he loses? And considering the Russians—or whoever is responsible for him occupying that office in the first place—have had four additional years to hone their psyop and hacking skills, who’s to say he won’t “win” again, no matter who actually receives the greatest number of votes?

The only thing that gives me the tiniest glimmer of hope is the knowledge that no dictator—or wannabe dictator—ever holds onto power forever. Even the mythic AntiChrist was prophesied to maintain control for only a few short years, so it’s guaranteed that both Trump and his puppet master will end up worm food. That doesn’t mean they can’t wreak havoc; they can and will, but even that will come to an end.

And while the Bloviating Orange Anus is trying his best to fill every position of government with people as vile as he is, damn few of them actually last in those positions. Who knew working for the monster could be so universally disagreeable?

Be thankful it is. And be thankful the vast majority of them are incompetent fools. While things are bad and have the potential for getting much worse, imagine how truly awful it would be if Trump or his minions were actually competent at what they did?

That’s not to say that a great deal of damage cannot be wrought by incompetency and enabled by the other wholly owned subsidiaries of the Russian government and those they have enough dirt on to maintain control of (I’m looking at you, Mitch McConnell and you, Miss Lindseybelle Graham).

If we are indeed more than just flesh and blood, if we are—to paraphrase Yoda’s famous admonition—”luminous beings, not this crude matter,” then it’s a little easier to step outside this madness and simply embrace the philosophy that we all incarnated in this place and time to witness humanity vomit up thousands of generations worth of hate and ultimately self-immolate. And with more stars in the heavens than gains of sand on all the beaches of earth, it’s not like there aren’t other worlds and other civilizations we can’t move on to when we’re done here—hopefully not repeating the same mistakes me made in this here and now.

I’m a little too young to be a part of the generation of school children who grew up with “duck and cover.” I was a toddler during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but thanks to popular culture, the fear of nuclear annihilation remains firmly planted in my consciousness, although it wasn’t until November 2016—suspecting Trump to be completely batshit insane even then—that worries of dying in an atomic conflagration returned to the forefront of my awareness.

When I was in high school, I had a nightmare that remains with me to this day. I was standing on the front porch of a house I’d never lived in, talking with my mother. The subject of the end of the world (and the Second Coming of Christ—I was pretty traditionally religious in those days) came up. And almost the moment we started talking about it an incredible boom was heard and the sky cracked. I’ve thought about that for years, and have been keenly aware to not move anywhere that had the type of front porch present in my dream…until we moved into this place. While Mom is now gone ten years, I am living in a house with a front porch similar to that dream, and while the view wasn’t as expansive (there’s a huge tree in the yard not an open field across the street as was in the dream), there are now lots of women who could easily stand in metaphorically as a mother-figure in my life that I could find myself talking to out there.  I’m now convinced the sky didn’t actually crack; it was just the last thing I saw before dying: the pattern of ocular blood vessels seared into my retinas as a nuclear bomb detonated nearby.

I warned you I wasn’t feeling very positive…