After solving my computer problem over the telephone, my hardware guru and I paused for a chat. Not a fan of Donald Trump, he said he couldn’t wait until the 2026 election. Though I shared his impatience, I admitted I wasn’t sure there would be another election. His reply shot across the landline like a bullet when he heard me. “Oh, there’ll be an election, all right. You better believe it!”
After he hung up, I shook my head, not convinced by his bravado. Life seldom surrenders to the loudest voice in my world. Mostly, confidence like his comes in one of two ways. We know what we know based on experience. If eggs are more expensive than they were the previous week, we are certain they’ve grown more expensive.
My computer guy was basing his confidence on a second kind of certainty—expectation born of habit. For example, my letter carrier normally arrives at my residence around 3 p.m. If I find my box empty at 3:30, I begin to speculate. Perhaps the letter carrier is late. Or, ill. Or, the junk mail has yet to be sorted at the post office.
Certainty of this second kind fosters belief systems. As Harvard professor Steven Pinker explains, belief is what we get when we attempt to answer life’s big questions. Why do humans exist? What is the nature of consciousness? Is the universe an accident or created by design?
Attempts to grasp the unknown are common among humans, says Pinker. (“Academic Freedom: An Interview with Steven Pinker,” by Amardeo Sarma, Skeptical Inquirer, March/April, 2025, pg. 62.) In the main, however, we believe what we believe because we wish it.
Truth derived from the second kind of certainty is unreliable. Even so, that truth has some foundation. The unconscious, after all, is the master of pattern recognition, the basis of our intuitions. Error comes in our reading of it. A man walks into a bar with a parrot on his shoulder. We laugh because we remember countless jokes that begin with a man and a parrot. This time, however, the parrot is a makeshift bomb.
Sharing the world with Donald Trump is like sitting at a bar beside a man and a parrot. Does the President intend to be humorous when he makes offensive remarks? Or, is he deranged? Many of us are beginning to suspect the latter. To enter his world is to enter a Twilight Zone where nothing is certain.
Of greatest concern is that his political terrain is like a Dali landscape, both menacing and unfamiliar. The three branches of government we expect, he has reduced to two: the White House and the Courts. The former controls the budget, the military, our nuclear weapons, our foreign policy, and all law enforcement agencies. The Courts make rulings, but have no enforcement power. Unfettered, this President behaves like a king, licensed to ignore, threaten, or arrest judges.
Mesmerized by the audacity of his rule, the public seems oblivious to the federal enclaves Trump has established within the states, regions from which he can launch offensives against the population if he chooses. In his first term, the idea was merely a dream. In his second term, he stands ready to fulfill that dream. Feeling he has no obligation to uphold the Constitution, he threatens to eliminate habeas corpus. Should he manage to remove that judicial cornerstone, neither foreigners nor citizens will be safe.
Will there be a 2026 election? I don’t know. But I do worry. When Donald Trump pardoned the convicted felons of the 2020 insurrection, he gained a private militia–the violent men of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, who number in the thousands. Where will they be on election day in 2026? Positioned outside polling places to intimidate minorities? Or, rioting in the streets, creating the theater that will allow Trump to declare martial law and suspend the vote?
Unlike my computer guru, I believe our country is facing a threat like no other in its history. We have endured the enemy within before, but never have we seen such an unholy alliance: oligarchs, white supremacists, Christian evangelicals, and the extreme political right. Their goal is to bring down our democracy, though their motivations are different. Equally worrisome is that members of the Republican party behave as if the die is cast. In normal times, no politician seeking reelection would dare treat their constituents with the indifference they do now.
If hummingbirds stopped hovering at bird feeders, we’d be wise to question the reason. When public servants ignore political polls, they, too, bear watching.
Each Saturday, I spend an hour standing on a street corner, filling a swell of retirement residents who oppose Trump’s regime. No doubt, we seem a motley crew as we wave our signs at the passing cars, some of us on walkers or in wheelchairs. My sign reads “Stop Trump.”
One Saturday, a woman walking her dog stopped to ask if I imagined the demonstration was convincing anyone. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I’m leaning against this fire hydrant for another reason. In these troubled times, the least I can do is defend my values.”
BOYCOTT TESLA
