Folks tell me I should write something. This is easier said than done because what “thing” in “something” should be written about?

I suppose I could pile on in criticizing our impeached president, but what can be said that hasn’t been said (and probably said more artfully) already? Who wants to be a member of the chorus if the fat lady has already sung?

The Great Trump Faithful are always worth a skewering or two. “Well, the thing is, Captain Trump is doing the best he can to save the ship, and we passengers on the RMS Titanic owe it to him to remain loyal and steadfast in our belief that only he… blub, blub, blub …”

Long term, you wonder what will happen to his devoted followers when the Trump In Whom They Trust is no longer around. I mean, the ranks of those assumed body and soul into heaven are rather thin. More than likely he will occupy a six-foot-deep scrap of earth similar to that which lies in wait for most of us, albeit his will undoubtedly be in a much more upscale cemetery.

Will they take the Rip Van Winkle approach and suddenly awaken, look around, and exclaim “What the heck just happened?”

Or maybe there will be denial, which is always a convenient out. It obviates the need for an apology, since no apology is needed for that which never is admitted having occurred in the first place.

To illustrate, my late mother was with the British Occupation Forces in Germany in the immediate aftermath of World War II. The Third Reich had just been defeated. Remembering those days, she would say, with tongue firmly in cheek, “In all the time I was in Germany, I never met a Nazi.”

(Before the angry cards and letters begin to come in, no comparison is being made between the Trumpistas and the Nazis – beyond the universal human tendency to distance one’s self from membership in a divisive movement once that movement has run its course.)

Alternatively, there is also the Argentinian model. Long after Evita asked her fellow citizens not to cry for her, and long after her husband Juan had followed her into the great whatever, if anything, that comes after, there was a continuing Peronist faction in Argentinian politics that survives to the present day.

The trouble with pontificating about Trump World after Trump is that while there are gun-toting thugs, science deniers, social-distance violators, conspiracy aficionados, and religious and political loonies among the faithful, it is also true that, if among a demonstration by Tiki Torch-bearing neo-Nazis, it is possible to find good people, then so it is possible to find good people among The Donald’s faithful. No blanket characterization should be made unless, of course, one is a gun-toting thug, science denier, social-distance violator, conspiracy aficionado, or religious or political looney. In that case, at a minimum, professional help is indicated ASAP or the dark forces embedded in the Trumpian ideology may spread and infect  those good people whose existence in the flock is the only apparent saving grace of our impeached president’s dystopian vision of our country.

This upcoming election is likely to be very close and will probably turn on who gets their voters to the polls – either physically, or by other means.

Should the current tenant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue win re-election, it would not necessarily be the end of the world. However, it could be the Gotterdammerung of our republic as we have known it. The institutions that give meaning to “We the People” may not weather another four years of being constantly undermined, even when the undermining sometimes has the vocal support of a demonstrably undemocratic populist fringe.

Sweet dreams, America.