oh God!

When I check the news wire indices for what a particular outlet is offering by way of daily fare, each, it seems to me, provides at least five or six stories that feature the U.S. president's name ... Trump-this or Trump-that and then the reactions to Trump-this or Trump that. Left or right, a lot of it is pretty impassioned and depressing: If you're paying attention to one thing, how many things do you miss and what is the price that's paid? It all leaves the thinking mind -- left, right or center --  bereft and benumbed. There is no decency for the whole of the country. Nothing is getting done besides cheers and jeers.

From where I sit, those cheers and jeers and the outcome were frighteningly expressed in a Washington Post description of a Trump campaign rally (he has become president, so campaigning seems redundant at best) in Florida over the weekend.

Am I wrong or is it heart-breaking how correct the last couple of paragraphs of the story ring:

Can this nation ever be united?
“I hope so,” Mussler said with a shake of her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know. It would be nice, and I think if — I don’t know, I don’t know. I think the only thing that’s going to reunite us is maybe the Lord coming back.”

I am sorry, but when anyone falls back on religious touchstones, I think it is fair to say that the topic in question is well and truly fucked ... and people will go on dying and starving on behalf of those who neither are nor will be starving and dying. Carried to its obvious ends, belief (religious or otherwise) really is a horrific way of moving things forward.

Oh God.

But of course there is always relief when it comes to Sweden