I woke up November
9, 2016 to see my visibly upset wife. I never shed a tear for
Clinton's loss and its consequence. I was informed that many did. The
nation was not doomed to failure, to a dark age. It was no doubt in
peril, but I maintained a cautious optimism, always seeing the glass
as half full. The Democrats would rise again, and they did.
A glib hot head of
a man, trash-talking his opponents with school-yard appellations, an
ego the size of Rushmore, no problem there. Was that presidential
material? Okay, so this old grifter, this proven fraud with countless
lawsuits pending, earned the right to be on a debate stage by the
numbers, if nothing else. This, most inexperienced, incurious,
incompetent, Manchurian candidate earned the right to flank some
dangerous but competent senators (and an embarrassingly out-of-place
doctor) on a debate stage.
Evidently,
amazingly to his staff and the candidate himself, he won state after
state to secure the Republican nomination. I think this was a man, a
Manchurian real-estate mogul and celebrity, who was steam-rolled to
the White House. Since the early 1980s, Putin groomed him as a
“useful idiot.” He was filleted, played, tagged to be a willing
pawn, manipulable cat-nip in Russia's aim to ruin the world for
Democracy that is unfolding as I write.
The Manchurian
idiot circles his presidential opponent like a vulture, or a dog who
has caught his tail and has no idea what to do. He babbles
incoherently as a polished debater serves him facts to which he has
only glib answers. The Russians interfering in our election: “It
could have been China, it could have been a 400-pound man in a bed.”
And let's not forget the puppet debate, tossed like a volleyball. He
is smart because he found a way to legally stiff the IRS; this is
presidential timber? At times I got the feeling even the Manchurian
candidate sensed he was in over his head, stuck, strapped to a
run-away train speeding from Red Square to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
He won and became
the most bastardized POTUS in history. Democracy, the middle-class,
the true American spirit, are fighting (and frugally winning) for
life. After watching dignity, civil liberties, parks, the
environment, humanity, compassion, race tolerance, the constitution's
basic precepts erode for the past two years, an idea for a book came
to me one night. What culminated in the title To The Front of the Bus was an exercise, a knee-jerk response, a compromise, in a movement
toward a fair Democracy.
The book recounts
what is and has been the tapestry of America and its tempestuous
relationship with basic civil liberties. The man who currently claims
to be a legitimate POTUS emboldens some predecessors' illegal acts.
From Nixon to Reagan to Bush II, the door for Democracy to be
overruled was with each opened a little wider. The latter day LBJ,
with Vietnam, began a trend that exponentially normalized the
accessibility for the government to engage in deceitful and
duplicitous behavior. This book comes as a reminder, a reflection, a
contemptuous song for the ages, of what America was, has struggled to
be, and might one day reach.
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