Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls, Mr. President

Trump's mania to erect monuments to himself will soon, quickly (and gloriously) be undone

Donald Trump is a noodle adrift in the chicken soup of his own mind.

He has no idea where he is, what he is, what today is, what may happen next.

Which is a pity because I’d really like him to be able to know what is coming.

Today a story broke that Trump told Chuck Schumer that he would free up funds for a major transit project in New York City if Schumer would agree to renaming Dulles Airport and Penn Station in New York City after the president.

To his credit, Schumer, something of a noodle in his own right, immediately the rejected the offensive, laughable and insane idea.

Here’s what I want Trump to be able to see: His ideas to piss his initials into every snowbank in America will not make him immortal or validate him as he imagines. The sun will come. The snow will melt. The piss will blend with that of other animals that had the same idea and then, for the most part, evaporate.

Assuming that the next president of the United States is not Don, Jr. or J.D. Vance or some other Trump wannabe—and despite their worst efforts, it won’t be—the speed with which they will erase the manifold ways Trump has defaced our government buildings, our capital city, and bits of America will make our collective heads spin.

Off will come the name Trump from the Kennedy Center.

Down will come the golden urns and tchotchkes strewn around the Oval Office.

Down will come the golden labels and the politicized placards in the White House.

If he names the ballroom after himself, the gold lettering there will be scraped off before the new resident settles in as our 48th president.

Will the ballroom be torn down? Depending on its stage of construction, probably not. Will it be kept as he envisioned it, a gilded cage for billionaires, the aviary of the oligarchy?

Absofuckinglylutely to the nth power not.

There will be a massive effort to sandblast and deep clean the White House and our capital city until they are cleansed of remnants of all of his diseases, mental and otherwise.

I only hope he lives long enough to see it happen.

But he is old. And he is sick. Which is why I hope he can understand that not only will it happen but that there will be parties and spontaneous demonstrations with brass bands, fireworks and abundant refreshments to celebrate our national cleansing.

Do you see it, Donald?

Remember the statues of Saddam being torn down? The statues of Lenin? The statues of your racist traitorous Confederate Army “heroes?”

That is going to happen to you.

But, our great national effort to cut the heads off every snapshot of him in the collective shoebox of our memory will not stop with just the manifestations of his narcissism or bad taste.

His loony Trump-branding of government programs will go. Trump accounts, Trump Rx, Trump “gold cards” will all go the way of the Trump sneakers and watches and steaks and wine that have either already been trashed or soon will be because they represent marks of shame in our society.

No more red baseball caps. Not for many years.

No more MAGA.

What is more the other ways he has vandalized our national institutions will also be undone. The forts he renamed after the losers from our Civil War will be renamed back. The displays that depicted American history as it actually was will be restored. The books about black and female heroes will be returned to our libraries and studied again in our schools.

DEI will once again be seen for what it is: a positive effort to move us toward being a better society. We will be (as we should be now) proudly, openly, defiantly, compassionately, wisely woke. We’ll talk about it. We’ll teach it.

Better still, those who bent the knee to Trump and cooperated in his efforts to cut both science and conscience out of our schools and businesses and lives will be shown the door, condemned for their weakness and horrific judgement and for the damage they’ve done.

We will fund medical research again and make policies based on what scientists tell us. We will acknowledge the reality of climate change. We will once again join with the world in combatting these and other shared ills.

We will fund the vital international organizations that Trump and Vance and Rubio and company have pulled us out of. Including those that stand up to the enemies of our country that they embraced.

We will once again embrace the immigrants and the visitors and the students who want to come to America and who are the best part of our history, our growth, our innovation, our culture.

This will all happen, Don. All of it. And it will happen fast. Faster than you can lose your train of thought. Faster than you can embarrass yourself due to your complete lack of every kind of impulse control an adult person aspires to having.

But there will be more.

Somewhere the effort to hold you and your family and your cabinet and your enablers and your co-conspirators will begin.

You know that. You are already telling your dwindling flock of GOP sheep that. When Democrats overcome your efforts to rig this November’s elections and take control of one or both houses of Congress, they will start the investigations. And yes, the impeachments. Not just your impeachment. But that of Bondi and Noem and RFK, Jr. and more.

And around the country, a new wave of lawsuits will begin.

Do you really think you’ll be able to keep the billions you have stolen? Do you really think your immunity extends to corrupt acts? To your serial violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses? To the crimes against the citizens of our states and our cities?

It doesn’t, Don. (It actually doesn’t extend to the crimes you’ve commited in office because by definition if you do something unconstitutional it can’t be construed as an official act. You don’t understand that. Many don’t. But we all will soon.)

Your assets will be seized. Tied up in courts for years. Your family’s assets too. And those of families of others in your administration who have made this the most corrupt administration in history.

It won’t help that the next president will appoint new people to the Supreme Court or, as we all must hope, be part of the effort to increase the court to 13 seats. It won’t help that you will have destroyed the GOP and put in place an enduring blue majority in this country, led by the rising generation of Americans, that will ensure that not only will what you have done be erased, not only will you be held accountable, but that the social and political fields that you seeded and harvested for years will be burned, plowed under and salted.

If you aren’t around to see it, so be it.

See it now, Don. Imagine it, now.

It is coming for you as surely as that other figure, the one in the dark robes with the scythe. You will reap what you have sown and you will be reaped.

You will be erased. And the only place your name will appear is among those who are reviled and condemned by history, the names whose utterance is followed by a spit or heard as an insult.

Your vainglory won’t preserve your memory it will just be one more way it is stained by your wretched character.

And, let’s be honest, friends, we will be loving and cheering every minute of it.