To Sleep, Perchance to Dream. Not in the Time of Trump
Feb 16, 2017
A FRIEND of ours – at least mine; I’m not sure about Cat, who sleeps so much that I wonder when he gets a chance to make friends – remarked the other day about the problem of “waking up.”
“When I wake up, the first thing I think about is: What has Trump done while I was asleep?”
My worry is that our friend also may have trouble falling asleep for the same reason. I didn’t ask. Which happens a lot when you’re a dog: you don’t think of the right questions when you have the chance.
Our friend went on to say that Trump is unlike any president in my lifetime.
It should be noted here that humans get to live a really long time, so this guy probably has gone through a goodly number of presidents, You remember the old Rule of Dewclaw – multiply a dog’s years by seven to get the equivalent in human years; or divide a human’s age by seven to get the estimate in dog years –although, either way, it's an exercise that seems to me a waste of time.
Our friend also said: When was it that you had to think about a president every day?
It’s a good point. There are a lot of things you should think about every day. Food, of course. Smelling other dogs' behinds. Food. Hoping to find something dead and decaying in a pile of leafs and then rolling in it. And, of course, food.
How often should somebody think about a President? Once a week? Three times a month? Every four years? It could be a promising subject for a PhD dissertation.
AS I WAS SAYING to Cat, there’s a lot to keep track of these day. Just this week, our fellow Rhode Islander, Mike Flynn, got the heave-ho as national security adviser: Hello, God, It’s me, Phoebe. Are you listening? Please don’t let General Flynn come back home to Middletown, which is only one town away from us. God?
Trump and Bibi Netanyahu decided to heck with it; one state; two states; either way. Trump said that his Administration is running like a finely tuned machine.
The guy nominated for labor secretary took a hike; Trump nominated a new guy; berated the press; belittled the intelligence services. (You'd think by now Trump would have figured out that you don't want to get on the official Spooks’ Bad-presidents' List). Berated the media. And late this afternoon, he told his one-thousand-and-forty-fifth lie.
A FRIEND of ours – at least mine; I’m not sure about Cat, who sleeps so much that I wonder when he gets a chance to make friends – remarked the other day about the problem of “waking up.”
“When I wake up, the first thing I think about is: What has Trump done while I was asleep?”
My worry is that our friend also may have trouble falling asleep for the same reason. I didn’t ask. Which happens a lot when you’re a dog: you don’t think of the right questions when you have the chance.
Our friend went on to say that Trump is unlike any president in my lifetime.
It should be noted here that humans get to live a really long time, so this guy probably has gone through a goodly number of presidents, You remember the old Rule of Dewclaw – multiply a dog’s years by seven to get the equivalent in human years; or divide a human’s age by seven to get the estimate in dog years –although, either way, it's an exercise that seems to me a waste of time.
Our friend also said: When was it that you had to think about a president every day?
It’s a good point. There are a lot of things you should think about every day. Food, of course. Smelling other dogs' behinds. Food. Hoping to find something dead and decaying in a pile of leafs and then rolling in it. And, of course, food.
How often should somebody think about a President? Once a week? Three times a month? Every four years? It could be a promising subject for a PhD dissertation.
AS I WAS SAYING to Cat, there’s a lot to keep track of these day. Just this week, our fellow Rhode Islander, Mike Flynn, got the heave-ho as national security adviser: Hello, God, It’s me, Phoebe. Are you listening? Please don’t let General Flynn come back home to Middletown, which is only one town away from us. God?
Trump and Bibi Netanyahu decided to heck with it; one state; two states; either way. Trump said that his Administration is running like a finely tuned machine.
The guy nominated for labor secretary took a hike; Trump nominated a new guy; berated the press; belittled the intelligence services. (You'd think by now Trump would have figured out that you don't want to get on the official Spooks’ Bad-presidents' List). Berated the media. And late this afternoon, he told his one-thousand-and-forty-fifth lie.
Cat, who is nothing if not a Trump apologist, noted admiringly that Trump seems to have a lot of stamina, because, speaking for himself, Cat'd be completely worn out if he did half of the things the president does, not including the wee-crazy-hours tweeting.
While I agree with Cat’s observation, I don’t think Cat is who you’d want on the witness stand to make that point. Cat gets exhausted just walking upstairs. Or downstairs.
ALREADY, THERE'S been a lot written about Trump Overload.
The mental health community reports an uptick in stress, with a lot of therapy sessions given up to discussions of Trump Stress, with the shrinks themselves taking up half the 50 minutes to say how stressed they are.
Advice from some psychiatrists is for patients to shrink their intake of Trump news. I even read that one explained that there’s little to be gained in finding out about Trump’s latest outrage at 11 p.m., as opposed to sensibly waiting until 4:13 the next morning, when they would normally wake up screaming about having to go through it all over again today.
This sounds right in theory. But not practical.
What if all the people -- the lawyers, the advocates, the relatives and the friends -- who raced to the airports when Trump announced his immigrant ban, had followed that wait-until-morning advice? Think of all the refugees who would have been detained, deported to the countries that want to kill them or otherwise "inconvenienced."
In the Time of Trump, sleep may be necessary medically; but it’s not without its real-world health risks.
Maybe we'll have to start taking turns staying awake while others sleep, like they do in World War II movies: I’ll take the first shift, Private, while you get some shuteye. Roger that, Sarge.
Except that I’m not sure I can trust PFC Cat to make it through his whole shift.
He’s the kind of cat who can fall asleep even if someone drops a nuclear bomb right on top of him.
Which is something that’s not as far-fetched as it would have seemed just four weeks ago.
While I agree with Cat’s observation, I don’t think Cat is who you’d want on the witness stand to make that point. Cat gets exhausted just walking upstairs. Or downstairs.
ALREADY, THERE'S been a lot written about Trump Overload.
The mental health community reports an uptick in stress, with a lot of therapy sessions given up to discussions of Trump Stress, with the shrinks themselves taking up half the 50 minutes to say how stressed they are.
Advice from some psychiatrists is for patients to shrink their intake of Trump news. I even read that one explained that there’s little to be gained in finding out about Trump’s latest outrage at 11 p.m., as opposed to sensibly waiting until 4:13 the next morning, when they would normally wake up screaming about having to go through it all over again today.
This sounds right in theory. But not practical.
What if all the people -- the lawyers, the advocates, the relatives and the friends -- who raced to the airports when Trump announced his immigrant ban, had followed that wait-until-morning advice? Think of all the refugees who would have been detained, deported to the countries that want to kill them or otherwise "inconvenienced."
In the Time of Trump, sleep may be necessary medically; but it’s not without its real-world health risks.
Maybe we'll have to start taking turns staying awake while others sleep, like they do in World War II movies: I’ll take the first shift, Private, while you get some shuteye. Roger that, Sarge.
Except that I’m not sure I can trust PFC Cat to make it through his whole shift.
He’s the kind of cat who can fall asleep even if someone drops a nuclear bomb right on top of him.
Which is something that’s not as far-fetched as it would have seemed just four weeks ago.
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