TRACKING TRUMP
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Day 366

1/20/2018

 


A YEAR LATER, WOMEN'S MARCH II IS BOTH PROTEST & CELEBRATION

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   "CAT! CAT! CAT!" I called out as soon as we had returned from the Rhode Island Women’s March.
   “What is it, Phoebe?” he said with a note of worry, as he practically leaped off the living room couch, and came on a wobbly run to greet us in the front hall.
   “It was GREAT,” I said.
   The cat look mystified, perhaps still half asleep, maybe exhausted from his sprint from the couch to the hall, a physical undertaking that occurs only once every two months or so.
   “The Women’s March,” I said. “Don’t you remember? I told you that the Nice One, the Grouchy One and I were going to the Rhode Island edition of the Women’s March at the State House in Providence – held exactly one year from the Trump inauguration last Jan 20.”
   “Oh,” Cat said. “How did it go?”
   “Fantastic,” I said. “There were thousands of people. A lot of them carried signs. People had kept their pink pussy hats from last year – or maybe they picked up a new edition.  A real cross section: There were old people….”
   “Obviously, there were old people,” Cat interrupted. "The Nice One and Grouchy aren’t exactly spring chickens, and they were there. By the way, are spring chickens good to eat?”
   You never know whether Cat, who is piling on the years himself, is trying to be funny or is displaying Wandering Mind Syndrome, something we worry that he’s picked up from the 45th.


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   “KIDS. WOMEN. MEN. Teenagers. College students, dark skinned, short. Entire families. And dogs.”
   “Any cats?” Cat wanted to know.
“We didn't see any. But we weren’t there for the whole thing.” I said, not wanting to spoil the mood by pointing out that the best thing you can do with a cat on such occasions is to leave him or her home.
   “Anyway, the point is that it was a really big turnout, probably not as big as last year’s. But it’s going to be pretty hard to duplicate last year’s, because the Trump Horror was still  pretty new and the Women’s Marches in Washington and around the country were our first chance to show how we felt.”
   “It sounds like you are making excuses,” he said.
   “Just the opposite, Cat,” I explained. “This afternoon’s crowd came pretty close to last year’s. The demonstrators covered all of the South Lawn and the massive marble stairs leading up to the State House back doors, just like before; so, whatever the count turns out to be, it’s going to be respectable: Many thousands.”
   “Speaking for myself, I expected a much smaller turnout. For one thing, today's wasn’t publicized to the degree of last year’s. And, not to state the obvious, it’s been a long year. An awful, discouraging, frightening, dispiriting, exhausting, shocking, strenuous year as the reality of the Trump incumbency has revealed itself.”
   “I would think that a protest would draw MORE people out,” Cat said, “now that we all know Trump is even worse than we'd dreamed.”
   “Cat, the people are tired. Every morning, we wake up to terrible Tweet storms. Suppers are disrupted, because by that time, Trump has done something, said something that’s taken the country to a new low. He’s covered the front pages of newspapers with words like ‘SHITHOLE,’ or ‘SHITHOUSE.’
   Remember that debate? Where the Republicans were saying the President of the United States of America hadn't actually used one of those words to describe countries likely to have lots of brown and black people, because he'd used the other word; so the papers and TV had it all wrong that the Commander-In-Chief is a prejudiced potty-mouth."
   “It takes a toll, Cat,” I said. “People are hurting; friendships, marriages split apart. We're cranky, wary, hyperalert. All perfectly reasonable excuses for people to stay home on a weekend. But I was completely, totally wrong.” 


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   IT WAS A WONDERFUL surprise. People know now for sure what it means to have a mean, lying, bigot in the White House. And on Saturday afternoon, they got together to not just protest, but to show that they want to do something about it.
   One of the things I told Cat was how nice everyone was.
   Lots of people came up to Grouchy and the Nice One and asked whether their kids could pat me. And they did.
  Many compliments about my soft ears and snowy, almost white coat. But not much about my wonderful eyelashes. I mean, I do have nice eyelashes.
   Anyway, it was like everyone was in a good mood, and strangers talked to each other. One guy was handing out free signs and gave a poster to the Nice One.  


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   Another lady was handing out plastic bags, the kind used to pick up dog poop, with a drawing on one side of Donald Trump. She was telling people to fill ‘em and give them to the president. “Sure, it’s rude, but so is he,” she said. Not my kind of humor, if you want to know, but you have to appreciate the thought.
    By the way, I was hardly the only dog. Lots of people brought dogs. And dogs were mentioned: One sign said: “My Dog Is Better Than The President of the United States.”  Kind of a no-brainer, I thought. But again, we weren’t there to criticize, but to celebrate.


   THE SPEECHES were fine. Register people to vote in this year’s elections. Remember people in Puerto Rico and Syria. Reproductive rights, science, the homeless, the environment, all got a mention.
   One of the organizers said that today was a teenager’s birthday, and the only present she wanted was for her mom to bring her to the demonstration. So thousands of people sang her “Happy Birthday.”
   “Bottom line, Cat,” I said, “A year later, lots of people are upset about Trump. A year later, lots of people want to do something. And they did and they will.”
“Hope you’re right,” Cat said, heading back to the couch and jumped back on it. I still don’t know how, with all that weight and flab, he manages to do that.
   But today is a day not to criticize, but to celebrate.
 
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Day 351

1/5/2018

 

2018 Memo

Democracy Depends on the Democrats?
Now, that's scary

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   CAT WAS really out of sorts.
   “It’s going on nearly six days into the New Year, and so far you have nothing  – nada, nyet, nein, zed – to say about Donald Trump in 2018,” he growled.
   “Maybe because you don’t have to go outside in the winter, Cat,” I said. “You may not have noticed that we’ve just been through a BLIZZARD here in the Northeast. It slows down a girl. The wind, the cold – have you ever heard about wind chill – and then there’s the snow drifts, four-feet high in places, and I’m only 2.5 feet!”
   “But you are part husky, so, no excuse: it’s your kind of weather,” Cat said.
   He was right, of course. Winter is my season, and I’ve got the fur coat to prove it, among my many beauty points, which happen also to be very practical. And I like to frolic. Roll around in the snow. Stick my head in a snowbank. But what I was trying to avoid  talking to Cat about was also the challenge presented by high snow drifts and girl’s ability, let’s put it delicately, to tend to her personal care functions.

   “OK, SO what’s to say about Trump in 2018 that’s different since the calendar turned over new leaf?” I said. “Trump certainly hasn’t changed just because the calendar has.”
   “I thought we had discussed this ad nauseam, Phoebe,” he said. “Our approach in the new year.”
   I really, really hate it when Cat goes full Latin on me. But he was right. We have had a lot of conversations about what we should be doing when and after we reach the dreaded Day 365 of the Trump presidency.
   Frankly, I’ve been in some shock for weeks, now that it surely seems like Trump is going to pass that one-year mark since we started our countdown last Jan. 20.
   A lot of people had predicted that Trump was so ill-equipped, so disdainful of American tradition, so repulsive, so transparently hypocritical, so traitorous, that he wouldn’t last three months, to say nothing of a full year.
   And while Cat and I surely knew better, we sort of bought into that.
   But, as with the Republican primaries and then the election, Trump has proved us and everyone else (including himself, according to the new sensational book out today by Michael Wolff – and with a last name, like that, a dog’s got to give Senor
Wolff some credibility here) wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
   Proving again, that whatever Wolff writes so convincingly about the supposed dysfunction of the Trump White House, the one thing that Trump gets right is that the rest of us are always underestimating him.


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   WHICH BRINGS us to one of our year-end, new-year conclusions: Trump is, so far, indestructible, something out of a scary movie, where the monster, the visitor from outer space, serial killer, what have you, seems invulnerable to the usual things that bring down the rest of us, villain and hero alike.
   He’s not going to self-destruct. His own kind isn’t going to turn on him (as a group, his Republican enablers are more frightening than Trump himself). And Robby Mueller isn’t going to lead him away in handcuffs.
   The only antidote is what the rest of us do, meaning whether we will make sure that the Democrats take over Congress this fall and the White House in 2020.
   So, take it from a dog and a cat: Job One in 2018 is to worry not about Donald Trump, but the Democrats.
   And that’s no small task. As a group, the Democrats are frighteningly uninspired, insipid, unimaginative, dispassionate, a  group that seems to come to life only when fighting among themselves.
   That’s how perilous our democracy is today, folks: salvation depends on the Democrats.
   In the coming weeks, Cat and I will try to ignore Trump’s Tweets, his antics, cruelty, barbarism and boorishness, and focus on what we’d like to see from the Democrats.
   “What’s that, Cat? Louder, I can’t hear you.”
   Cat is yelling from his winter (spring, summer and fall) perch on the downstairs couch to remind me, belatedly, that we want to wish you and everyone in your orbit a happy, healthful, successful and rewarding New Year.
 

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    A "sweet dog" confronts the catastrophe of the Trump presidency

    The Tracker

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    PHOEBE might have remained a “sweet” and apolitical dog but for the Trump crisis. Now, like millions of Americans, she wrestles daily with the challenge of what to do about it. With no illusions about the impact, she founded and is the principal writer of the Tracking Trump  blog.

    In Memoriam

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    CAT, a cat and Libertarian was Phoebe's co-author. He died Nov. 14, 2019. His self-described role was to leaven Phoebe’s naiveté and idealism with “common sense." He is remembered and missed.

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