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D Is for Donald (and Decline)
The Big 3Ds (or Is It Four?)
Count on one thing: in some almost unimaginable future, no American president (if we even have them anymore) is going to rename a mountain for Donald Trump as he's recently tried to do with North America's tallest peak. He wants Alaska's Mount Denali (to hell with Native American names!) to be called Mount McKinley in honor of President William McKinley, the man who, in the 1890s, launched this country as an imperial power of the first order.
Of course, it's just possible that someday someone running (or do I mean: walking, hobbling, limping?) this country might rename the Bertha Rogers Borehole, the deepest hole (now plugged and abandoned) in North America, for President Trump. After all, it should be clear enough that, with a helping hand from the world's richest man, he's already taking this country down in a remarkable fashion. It seems that we now inhabit an ever more strikingly 3D world and call me D (as in depressed) about it.
Once upon a time, 3D was a form of movie-making in which -- I remember this from my youth in the 1950s -- something could seemingly fly off the screen and grab you by the throat (or an arrow, spear, or missile could whiz right at you).
Today, 3D (at least to me) has quite a different meaning. The 3Ds of the world of my old age (and believe me they, too, can in some fashion reach right off the screen and grab you by the throat) are The Donald, Dysdopia, and Decline. And yes, I've admittedly done a little 3D fiddling of my own with that classic word "dystopia" meant for a deeply negative, apocalyptically horrific future world (think 1984, or do I mean 2025?) -- the very opposite, in other words, of utopia. I've replaced its "t" with that extra "d" in "honor" (and indeed, that word does have to go in quotation marks) of Donald Trump who is already ushering us into what looks to be the most devastatingly disastrous presidency in this country's long history.
Denier-in-Chief
In case you don't think he's taking us all for one hell of a ride, think again. After all, he and his family started cashing in on his second presidency even before it began. As the New York Times reported, three days ahead of his inauguration, he announced on his social media account that his family had issued a cryptocurrency called $Trump. And if that stumps (or do I mean $trumps?) you, I'm hardly shocked. Perhaps you won't be surprised to learn, in fact, that each of its memecoins quickly surged in value from eight cents to $75 before -- of course! -- dropping off a cliff. It's now estimated that it made the Trump Organization and its partners an instant $100 million or more, while other crypto-traders lost an estimated $2 billion in the process. And if that doesn't sum up Donald Trump's presidency to come, I'll be surprised.
In fact, I suspect that offered just a hint of the unnervingly dysdopian world we've entered. Let's face it: we couldn't find ourselves in a more dopily dangerous 3D moment today. After all, Donald Trump and his alter ego Elon Musk, the richest man on earth and growing richer by the hour, possibly even heading for the trillion-dollar mark, seem remarkably intent on stepping off-screen and grabbing us all by the throat, while dismantling the American government as we've known it. Their goal is evidently to leave both the courts and Congress, the other two parts of our tripartite form of government, in the dust (the mud?) of history.
After all, Vice President JD Vance has already made it clear that the courts -- even the Supreme Court -- can have no ultimate power to stop a second Trump administration from running rampant. Or, as he wrote recently in response to the first attempts of various courts to stop Donald Trump and Elon Musk from all-too-literally dismantling significant parts of the government, "Judges aren't allowed to control the executive branch's legitimate power." Do tell! (Of course, as Joe Biden's presidency ended, the Supreme Court granted Trump substantial immunity from prosecution for more or less anything he had done as president and now he may decide he doesn't even need them anymore.)
Oh, and despite those three Ds, I actually forgot the fourth and most important one of all: denier. Yes, Donald Trump, the elected president of the United States, is a climate-change denier first class and, once again, this country's denier-in-chief. In the past, he couldn't have been blunter on the subject. In the wake of Hurricane Helene's devastating path across the Southeastern U.S. in 2024, he called climate change "a scam." He's also dismissed it as a "hoax" invented by China. Worse yet, he ran successfully for president this time around on the phrase "drill, baby, drill" and the promise of a presidency fossil-fuelized to the hilt. It mattered not at all to him and his crew that the planet was experiencing its hottest months and hottest year ever; that his first month in office, this January, once again broke all heat records; and that climate scientists are predicting far worse to come.
Now back in the White House, President Trump has already taken steps to shut off moves made by the Biden administration to put money into green energy and withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement (again), while removing mentions of anything related to climate change from government websites. He's clearly preparing to advance coal, oil, and natural gas development in any way he can. Consider it a deep irony that the executives of the major oil and gas companies, while distinctly in his camp, aren't eager to over-drill, baby, over-drill, fearing that the price of their products could fall. Of course, to put all of this in even grimmer perspective, in the Biden years this country was already the historically top producer of oil and exporter of natural gas on this planet. In short, President Trump's goal, it seems, is simply to turn up the heat even further. (Phew, I'm getting hot just writing this!)
In other words, in more or less every way imaginable, as the oldest president ever to enter the Oval Office, his next four years, fossil-fuelized to the hilt, seem all too intent on taking the planet down with him.
President Decline
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