We will get what we deserve

I find it both laughable and unsettling when I scroll through Twitter and see the AI-generated images (popular on the Right) of Donald Trump with huge muscles and movie star good looks, wielding a machine gun, riding a lion, or decked out in a Superman cape. 

Donald Trump is no Superman. It is pretty obvious by now that he is a petty little man who has never been loved by anyone. I do not say this mockingly but instead with much pity. Donald Trump has never known one second of what it feels like to be loved simply for being himself. When I let myself imagine what that absence might do to a person, it gives me real pain.

In Donald Trump’s case, this lack of love was combined with an abusive and impossible-to-please father, a self-involved mother, and an enormous fortune. His bluster and fake tough guy persona are efforts to impress and hide the needy child at his core. If you have ever seen the animated movie Spirited Away, then you know that Donald Trump is much more like the oversized destructive baby named Boh than like Superman. He demands attention and revels in chaos.

The past nine years, ever since that ridiculous ride down that ridiculous golden escalator, have left me increasingly saddened by my fellow Americans. So many good people seem to have adopted a petulant huckster as their hero. And no matter what he says or does, his idolators lap it up. I have never seen a more obvious example of the old adage about it being easier to fool people than it is to convince them they have been fooled.

Donald Trump has never cared about anyone other than Donald Trump. He does not care about the people who work for him. He does not care about the people who voted for him. And he certainly doesn’t care about doing what is right for the American people. He uses people until they are squeezed dry and then he throws them away. There is nothing heroic about his narcissistic behavior. Nothing.

Compare Donald Trump to Jimmy Carter. Carter attended the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis during World War II, ready to serve the country wherever he was needed. He graduated in 1946 and was stationed on submarines in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. He then did graduate work at Union College in reactor technology and nuclear physics and served as senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew of the Seawolf, the nation’s second nuclear submarine.

Donald Trump avoided serving in the armed forces during Vietnam by getting a doctor to attest to the “fact” that he had bone spurs in his feet. (Funny how those bone spurs never seemed to bother Donny one day of his entire adult life since…).

Jimmy Carter married Roslyn Smith in 1946 and they remained married for more than 70 years, clearly still in love right up until she died in 2023. Donald Trump has had numerous wives and numerous affairs and treats women like he treats everything else in the world—like objects to be used until he is done with them.

President, Jimmy Carter locked himself away at Camp David with Menachim Begin and Anwar Sadat and refused to let them leave until they had signed an historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. He used the power of the United States to champion human rights throughout the world. He created the Department of Energy to focus on making America more energy independent. He doubled the size of the national park system and tripled America’s designated wilderness areas.

Donald Trump in his first term gave the top 1% a massive tax cut (increasing the national debt by TRILLIONS of dollars), weakened environmental protections for America’s land, air, and water, weakened relationships with long-time allies around the globe, and praised Vladimir Putin, Jair Bolsonaro, Viktor Orban, and Kim Jung Un. He also promised to repeal and replace Obamacare and to create and pass a much-needed infrastructure package to rebuild America’s aging highways, ports, airports, and bridges. Needless to say, he reneged on both of these promises.

(Obamacare is still the law of the land and Joe Biden finally did in fact pass an infrastructure bill.)

After losing the election of 1980 Jimmy Carter went on to live another 44 years. He spent those years working to make the world a better place. His Carter Foundation eradicated a terrible disease called river blindness in many countries. He worked to shine a light on unfree and unfair elections around the world. And he helped build houses with Habitat For Humanity.

When Donald Trump lost the election of 2020 he lied about it. He whined and moaned for four solid  years about the unfairness of it all. In other words, he remained true to the petulant, spoiled, insecure brat at his core. 

And now here it is, almost January 20, 2025 and Donald Trump is about to be sworn in again as President of the United States of America. At this point all I can say is that we get what we deserve. We have voted for a proven failure to lead our country. There is something rotten at the core of America these days. Rather than choosing to be led by people like Jimmy Carter, we are opting for Baby Boh.

What could possibly go wrong?

 

I’ll tell you some of what I predict will go wrong. These are in no particular order:

Most cabinet picks and other high positions will be approved by the Senate. Trump will have the Supreme Court, Senate, and a closely-divided House all in Republican control. And still he will not act on his “concept of a plan” for healthcare. Too many people benefit from the ACA for him to really mess with it.

He will push all of his people to ramp up deportations and the actual results will not come even close to his promise to deport millions of people. It will become clear that behind the scenes Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, and many wealthy GOP donors are lobbying Trump to be very selective in his deportations so that the building trades don’t grind to a halt.

Likewise, wealthy GOP donors and some Senators will push Trump hard to scale his tariff plan waaayyyyyyy back.

If Trump ignores their pleas and institutes widespread tariffs, prices (and inflation) will rise, unemployment will rise, and China and Russia will strengthen their alliance while the US loses even more global influence. The European Union will put some real distance between the US and EU and the US will be bargaining from an increasingly weak position.

The quality of the air and water in America will decrease as Trump loosens environmental regulations.

Trust in vaccines will plumet even further as RFK, Ladapo, Joe Rogan, and other fully unqualified people steer public health policy and discussions. Deaths of children from previously-controlled diseases will spike.

Likewise, maternal mortality rates will rise.

On the world stage, Vladimir Putin will feel emboldened to do whatever he wants to do—this will mean harsher crackdowns on any perceived dissent within Russia and more overt meddling in other countries.

Same is true for Netanyahu in Israel (if he manages to stay out of jail). He may feel empowered to annex parts of the West Bank and starve Gaza.

Christian Nationalists in the US will push as hard as they can to get Christianity into schools and other publicly-funded realms.

The Justice Department will see mass resignations as Trump uses it to punish anyone he sees as an enemy.

Trump will leave office on January 20, 2029 with approval ratings around 23% and will be widely viewed as the worst two-term President in our long history.

Predictions for January 2025 to January 2029

I am posting this here as a place to have these on record. Skip to the bottom for a summary.

In no particular order:

Most cabinet picks and other high positions will be approved by the Senate. Trump will have the Supreme Court, Senate, and a closely-divided House all in Republican control. And still he will not act on his “concept of a plan” for healthcare. Too many people benefit from the ACA for him to really mess with it.

He will push all of his people to ramp up deportations and the actual results will not come even close to his promise to deport millions of people. It will become clear that behind the scenes Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, and many wealthy GOP donors are lobbying Trump to be very selective in his deportations so that the building trades don’t grind to a halt.

Likewise, wealthy GOP donors and some Senators will push Trump hard to scale his tariff plan waaayyyyyyy back.

If Trump ignores their pleas and institutes widespread tariffs, prices (and inflation) will rise, unemployment will rise, and China and Russia will strengthen their alliance while the US loses even more global influence. The European Union will put some real distance between the US and EU and the US will be bargaining from an increasingly weak position.

The quality of the air and water in America will decrease as Trump loosens environmental regulations.

Trust in vaccines will plumet even further as RFK, Ladapo, Joe Rogan, and other fully unqualified people steer public health policy and discussions. Deaths of children from previously-controlled diseases will spike.

Likewise, maternal mortality rates will rise.

Women will be raped and assaulted at higher rates.

On the world stage, Vladimir Putin will feel emboldened to do whatever he wants to do—this will mean harsher crackdowns on any perceived dissent within Russia and more overt meddling in other countries.

Same is true for Netanyahu in Israel (if he manages to stay out of jail). He may feel empowered to annex parts of the West Bank and starve Gaza.

Christian Nationalists in the US will push as hard as they can to get Christianity into schools and other publicly-funded realms.

The Justice Department will see mass resignations as Trump uses it to punish anyone he sees as an enemy.

 

TL;DR. Inflation and unemployment will rise, most measures of public well-being will fall, America will lose much of our standing and power in the world. And though it all Trump will blame everyone but himself.

“Sorry about this, Congressperson Mace…”

“Sorry about this, Congressperson Mace…”

“Uh—that’s CongressWOMAN Mace, thank you very much!”

“Before I can let you in, Congressperson Mace, I’m going to need to perform a visual-and-possibly-manual inspection of your, um, well, you know…”

“What!? That’s utterly ridiculous. You know me. You’ve seen me here since I was elected to the House of Representatives from the great state of South Carolina in 2021. I was the first woman elected to the House from South Carolina EVER. Now let me in—I need to pee. We’ve been debating the Law for the Protection of American Blood and American Honor Act for hours and I really cannot hold it another minute. ”

“I can’t do that, Congressperson Mace. Speaker of the House Johnson—who, as I found out a bit earlier is VERY appropriately named—has decreed that ‘Women deserve women’s only spaces.’  So, before I can let anyone into the Big Congressgirl’s Private bathroom I’m going to need to see what you got in that skirt.”

“That is ridiculous—get out of my way. Now!”

“As much as I would love to make way so that you can relieve yourself in peace, these times demand that I see your genitalia.”

“Look—when I was the first female to graduate from the previously all-male Citadel in 1999 nobody demanded to see my…ladybits…before they let me in.”

“I understand that, Congressperson. But times have changed and now people want proof of biological sex. (Some people, anyway.) So you’ll need to Stop-Drop-and-Show. (Do you like that? I came up with it myself. Get it? STOP—that’s self-explanatory. DROP—like, drop your pants or your skirt. And SHOW! Like, Show me what you got.)”

“Yeah. I get it. But there’s no way I’m going to do it. Now let me in.”

“No can do, Congressperson. I’m gonna need to see some incontrovertible proof that you really are the first female to graduate from the Citadel—and I’m not talking about a framed diploma.”

“This is absurd. I. Am. A. Woman. Any fool can see that. And I need to pee.”

“I understand that it might be frustrating to have someone question your gender, but Donald Trump was elected with a mandate to make America great again. And “America” necessarily includes the women’s bathrooms IN America. So, are you going to show me what is in your underwear, or am I going to have to do a manual inspection?”

‘What!???!”

“According to rules set down by Speaker Johnson—(a REAL man if ever I saw one, especially for such a short guy!)--and I quote ‘if a person of unproven gender seeks entry to a bathroom reserved for people of just one gender, said person will be given the opportunity to prove their maleness or lack of maleness by showing their genitalia to a proper authority. If said person refuses to show his or her genitalia, a mandatory manual inspection is required before entry to previously denoted bathroom.’ So, if you won’t drop your drawers I’m going to have to feel for myself what you got hiding down there.”

“This is a total invasion of my privacy and I refuse. Now let me through!”

With this, Congressperson Mace tries to shove past the brave Capitol Police Officer assigned to bathroom duty just off of the floor in the House chambers. In the struggle and scuffle, Congressperson Mace loses control of their bladder and pees on the floor. Nancy Mace then slips in the pee and falls so that her skirt is hiked up far above her waist and it becomes clear to one and all that she is indeed CongressWOMAN Mace.

”You are cleared for entry, Congresswoman Mace. Have a great day!”

The cruelty IS the point

 

I NEVER ask people about their reproductive plans. And when I hear someone ask any variation of the question, it makes me want to pull them aside and put duct tape on their mouths. (“So…do you guys want a family?”)

There is no more painful minefield. Why would someone intentionally tromp through the emotionally explosive realm of infertility, miscarriages, abortions, and unaligned reproductive wishes with someone other than their partner? You never know what someone else is experiencing, so to conversationally ask if they are planning to have children strikes me as some of the worst casual cruelty a person can inflict.

I know couples who tried for years to conceive, with no success. I know women who have had multiple miscarriages. I know people who have divorced because they could not agree on whether to have children. People carry these things around through their days out in the world, but they don’t wear a sign. You can’t tell by looking at them.

So when I hear politicians like J.D. Vance and others, (who mostly seem to belong to the same party as J.D.), make a woman’s reproductive decisions the object of ridicule and scorn it makes me angry.

It also leaves me shaking my head in disbelief. Why would an allegedly smart person purposely poke at some of the tenderest emotional pain people can feel? Is he trying to lose votes? I don’t get it.

Unless, of course, (just like with his running mate), the cruelty IS the point.

My first--and worst--interview

 

The first interview I ever did as a professional writer started out as the worst interview I ever did as a professional writer. 

 

I had recently transitioned out of a 20-year teaching career and into a provisional position creating “web content” for an Ivy League college of engineering. The school had just paid several hundred thousand dollars to a marketing firm to create a new brand for the college. They needed lots of written stories for their website to highlight the new tagline and signed me to a six-month contract.

 

For years I had harbored quiet aspirations that someday I would be a professional writer. So it was thrilling to suddenly find myself getting paid to be that very thing. Additionally, I have always been a total science geek, and in my new position I found myself surrounded by professors and students doing cutting edge work in fields as diverse as biomedical, civil, mechanical, and electrical engineering.

 

Driving to campus shortly after starting the position, I heard on the local public radio station that one of the faculty members at the college had just been named a MacArthur Genius. I parked the car, went straight to my boss’s office, and proposed writing a profile of the newly-minted genius. She went for the idea and I emailed the professor right away, requesting an interview.

 

He was game, and we agreed to meet the following morning in his office.

 

It took me longer than it should have to find his office. It was in a building on a part of campus I had not yet been to. Worse, the system they had used to number the offices in that building had no obvious logic. So I did not get to the genius’s room until the exact moment I was supposed to, which for me feels like being ten minutes late. I did not have time to take a deep breath, collect my thoughts, and calm down.

 

Still, I felt okay knocking and going in because I had spent a solid four hours the previous day finding out all I could about the professor and his work—which was in an area where physics and materials science overlap. It was a real slog for me to get through descriptions of the field in general and of his work in particular. But by the time I knocked on his door and pushed it open at his “come in,” I felt pretty good.

 

I felt ready.

 

In college back in the 1980s I had worked as an editor for the student newspaper and had developed a lifelong love of yellow legal pads. Twenty-five years later, when I was hired to be a writer, the first thing I did was go to Staples and buy a 10-pack of yellow legal pads. As I entered the professor’s office I clutched one of those pads, and it had the results of my hours of research written two-to-a-page in blue ink.

 

Remember—I had never conducted an interview and had no real idea of what I was doing. So I had written out interview questions on the yellow pages, one at the top of each page and one halfway down. I figured this would give me plenty of space to write down what the genius was saying and to capture any useable quotations. I assumed an interview would follow a logical progression, dictated by the questions asked. I was proud of the progression of questions I had crafted the previous day. (It may even have struck me that this yellow legal pad would end up in the science writer’s hall of fame one day in recognition of the brilliant way I had led the interviewee to unexpected and revealing places that shined a light on his particular genius…)

 

But as you can probably guess, that is not what happened. I had agonized over the first question, figuring it would set the tone for what followed. I didn’t want to be cliché and ask about where he was born or if he had been one of those kids who liked to take things apart. No, I wanted to ask something surprising that would get the reader right into his mind immediately. I had written and then crossed out literally dozens of questions before I settled on the one that I thought wouldn’t just break the ice but would instead shatter the ice and allow for the most amazing interview of this professor’s life.

 

He sat down; I sat across from him and let fly:

 

Q—“On my way to work a few days ago I heard someone on the radio call you a genius. And then again in my office I heard several other people refer to you with that same word: genius. It seems everyone is calling you a genius. What I want to know is, who do you think of as a genius?”

 

I should mention at this point that he was sitting cross-legged on a tattered couch, bare feet glowing an almost-unnatural white, hands clasping his knees, coke-bottle glasses magnifying his eyes so it looked like he was trying to melt me with his stare. He released his grip on his knees and crossed his arms tightly across his chest.

 

A—I’ve always hated the word “genius”…

 

And then he just trailed off into silence, alternating between eye contact and looking at his own feet.

 

I could feel the panic rising quickly in me as I looked at the next question I had planned to ask, and then at the one after that, and the one after that. It was one of the clearest “aha” moments I have ever experienced: I knew instantly that none of these preplanned questions were going to get me anywhere with him. He was closing down and I knew I had to come up with a Plan B and I had to do it fast.

 

To buy a little time I said, “Is that a Philly accent I’m hearing?” as my brain scrambled to find a way to get things back on track. I was flipping through my notes and trying desperately to remember what I had read about his research the day before, thinking maybe he would be more forthcoming about his research than he was about geniuses.

He said, “Yeah. I’m from Philly…but I didn’t think I had much of the accent. Are you from Philadelphia?” I told him I grew up just south, in suburban Wilmington, Delaware. I mentioned that one of my brothers had gone to Villanova. The genius had also gone to Villanova, so we chatted about that a little and I noticed that he had uncrossed his arms and relaxed the rest of his body a bit. We were having a conversation, but the stuff we were talking about was not anything I had scripted out. I could feel my wheels turning, trying to figure out how to get back on the track I wanted to be on.

 

But then a funny thing happened. I got curious about what he was saying about his time at Villanova. He mentioned punk rock and powerlifting and being a bouncer at a bar and doing terribly on standardized tests. So I asked him questions about those things. And his answers to those questions led to even more interesting places, and before long we were deep into a really enjoyable conversation that found its own natural way to his work and to the topic of genius.

 

I was scribbling notes furiously the entire time and by the end of the hour my hand hurt, but I felt really good about how the interview had gone. I went back to my office and typed up notes to myself. And then over the following week wrote a 1500-word profile that, to this day, is one of my favorite pieces of writing. I felt like I was able to capture something of the man that rang true. I sent him the first draft and then checked my inbox dozens of times over the six agonizing hours it took him to write back. You have to remember—this was the first real interview and profile I had ever done. 

 

I was 48 years old and about to be told by a genius whether I was any good at my new job. Finally, at 6:36 p.m., while getting ready to eat dinner, I heard the ding of an incoming email. It was from the professor and I opened it to find the first five words: “Hi Chris, This is awesome.”

 

This. Is. Awesome.

 

That short declarative sentence brought me so much joy. And confidence. And trust in myself. 

 

It is no exaggeration to say that his reply changed my life. From that day on, when people asked what I do for a living, I was able to say without any hemming or hawing or qualifiers “I am a writer.”

 

I never again went into an interview with a list of questions. I still do my research before I sit to talk with someone and I know there are certain things I want to get to, but that first disastrous five minutes of that first interview taught me something that guides every interview I do to this day: it is all about listening. 

 

I believe that when given a chance and a sincerely curious audience, most people really do like talking about themselves. And if you listen you can hear something in their voice when they seemingly parenthetically mention that they took ballet lessons for years or that they play the oboe or that they failed freshman physics. 

 

That little intangible something you can hear is your cue to ask more about that very thing. An interview is a conversation, not a Q and A session. And because it’s a conversation you have to leave space for it to go anywhere. You have to listen. Whether it is a slight Philly accent you hear, or maybe a passing reference to a great high school math teacher someone had, or a throw away comment about maybe starting a company someday, if you are listening and curious, you’ll follow up and sometimes that will lead to gold.