The Trump Presidency, One Year Later

OKAY. SORRY. It only feels like it’s been a year, an exhausting 12 months of angry tweets, corrosive diplomacy, and cowering federal workers. And that was just in December! You remember, don’t you? That time before the inauguration when we were supposed to have only one president at a time, and it wasn’t Obama?

That was when Donald Trump announced his cabinet nominees, mostly billionaire business people suspected of being woefully unqualified for government service. Then they spoke at their congressional hearings and removed all doubt.

Sadly, we still have nine months to go before we can steel ourselves for Donald Trump’s second and final year as president, when many political experts predict that financial entanglements will make his impeachment inevitable. It will be an ugly televised spectacle, probably dragging on into sweeps week, but let’s be honest: Trump would want it that way. And he’ll take pride that his impeachment hearings will get bigger audiences than even his inauguration, where millions of his imaginary friends showed up, although they were too shy to be photographed.

And then he’ll be fired. A welcome possibility until you remember who’s next in line, an Old Testament Christian whose perfect hair and smooth monotone evoke a preening televangelist right before his inevitable downfall. And if he falls, we get Paul Ryan, a man who would privatize his own mother. (Okay, that doesn’t make sense. Sorry. Sometimes the writing gets away from me.)

In the meantime, we’ll just have to accept our doctor’s diagnosis of Adult Onset Heebee Jeebees—for which there is no known cure—and get on with our lives.

OUR NEW OFFICE on Capitol Hill has already given us a unique perspective on the Trump presidency, although mainly from inside the deli on the corner. It’s across the street from the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank whose preeminence has grown despite the absence of the words “freedom,” “liberty,” and “family” in its name. Those words are used in the names of many other right-wing organizations, but mainly because “keep your commie hands off my assault rifle” has too many letters.

The deli is the common ground for the staffs of both Sojourners and Heritage, a place where we take a break from our opposite philosophical trenches, not unlike the German and British soldiers in World War I who stopped fighting at Christmas and came together to celebrate their common humanity. Then they went back to their trenches and resumed fighting over Obamacare, or whatever.

I like to think of Sojourners as the British in this analogy, because they had cooler helmets. And at the deli we’re coming together mainly for our common love of sandwiches. Any fighting involves the more personal battle against adding bacon, an unhealthy choice that nonetheless makes any sandwich great again.

Actually, it’s hard to pick out the Heritage Foundation people, since they are disappointingly normal looking and nonspecific in their demeanor. Employees of an institution that systematically undermines economic justice and voter rights should at least have unsightly nose hairs or cloven hooves sticking out from their pant cuffs.

Unfortunately, this deli no-person’s-land may soon lose its feeling of neutrality as the Heritage Foundation becomes a strong lobby for Trump’s programs. It will be difficult for us on the other side to ignore the presence of people who deny climate change, actively lobby against fair taxation, and blithely order turkey and Swiss on white from a woman whose minimum wage they want to lower.

It’s hard enough to hold our tongues and suggest they try the seven-grain bread—a more nutritious option—and lose the cheese (you’ve got your protein already!), much less resist the urge to commit a public act of protest against them, such as pouring ketchup on their shoes. Although, opening up those little packets takes time, especially when your hands are shaking with righteous indignation and they’re walking quickly out the door, their nose hairs blowing in the wind, and the distinct aroma of bacon wafting up from their sandwiches.

These moments will call for powerful nonviolent action. But my sandwich is ready, so next time, for sure.