Is anybody else losing sleep yet?

The sap is running.

The sun’s rays seem warmer, even after a frigid overnight.

The robins have been swooping around on the banks of the St. Lawrence, weeks before their usual ‘time’.

The streams are overflowing with ice-edges and there seems to be a burgeoning of the impulses of new life….

OR is all this just projection from a mind and a spirit weighted down with the Trump BS, and the implicit war that he has unofficially declared on the environment, Islam, women, the poor, and all those struggling to join the middle class.

It really does not matter whether the diagnosis blames the corporate state, the ratings-driven media, the nano-second attention span, the blurring of the lines between fact and fiction, (or more appropriately the line between the truth and anything else), the rise of nationalism, or populism, the failure of globalization, the refusal of both qualified and honourable men and women to offer their names for public office …..the results are the same:

Unless and until someone, somewhere, somehow finds a legal albatross to hang around Donald Trump’s neck, and ships him off to the same seas wandered over by Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, the world is stuck with an albatross of its own, the man himself.

Only after his throat is parched to bleeding, and his massive ego wilts under the blazing sun, and his alt-right legions drink themselves into a stupor on the power he has handed them and all of the megaphones within his wingspan are stripped of power, and the other leaders of the world have come to their senses and demonstrate they cannot and will not even talk to him, let alone negotiate with him….and the International Criminal Court finally welcomes the signature of the United States official representative so that charges might be finally brought against this administration….

And even then, there is still no guarantee that this madness will be brought to an end.

And for any termination scenario to begin to take shape, the media will have to refrain, resist, desist and absolutely refuse to give the man air-time. Let him start his own network, as he has threatened to do. Let him fill the anchor and host chairs with his flunkies from Fox, Breitbart and other fringe sources. Let him literally burn up his public “welcome” from over-exposure.

Shipping some 24 million off health care, ballooning the pentagon budget, deconstructing the EPA, the public school system, Medicaid, NATO, the European Union, NAFTA, TPP, and any vestige of respect for the United States still extant among world capitals, while asking out loud, “What do we have nuclear weapons for if we are not going to use them?” and bragging “I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any support!”….. these are not the signals the world, not to mention the American people, want to hear, or will tolerate witnessing. And more recently, citing a voice on Fox news as the source for his repeating the false charge that the Brits were the agent Obama used to ‘wiretap’ the current president, and then telling a reporter he should be talking to Fox news hardly garners confidence in anyone let alone the leaders of the so-called free world.

Chris Hedges, tragically, is right: It is time to take to the streets to bring Trump and his minions down, not for just another news cycle, not for just another tweet-rant, not for just another ‘campaign’ rally, but permanently.

I have ever been a fan of Arnold Swarzenegger but recently his retort to Trump: “let’s trade jobs, so the American people can get a good night’s sleep” and his focus on and support for a national debate to end jerrymandering both make eminent good sense.

 A comment heard just prior to the November election keeps ringing in my head. The comment, “I really do hope Trump wins; we are so complacent, perhaps if he wins, we will wake up!” And then there is this horrible and dangerous truth that things have to be proven to be so catastrophic before action, any action, is really taken, in the political world.

The United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, allegedly told Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today, “I don’t know” when he asked if her words, and they have been strong words in opposition to Russia at the UN, reflected the thinking of the president of the United States. That is such a remarkable admission that the whole world has to take notice. As some reporters have reminded us about the former credibility of the United States president, John F. Kennedy, when he faced the prospect of informing General de Gaulle, then President of France, about the impending threat of Soviet missiles on Cuba, through the deployment of photos, de Gaulle commented, “I don’t need those; I trust the President of the United States!” or words to that effect.

Imagine a similar situation today, for example, following on the words of the United States Secretary of State today in Sough Korea, that the North Koreans might so threaten military action that the United States would have to respond militarily. That option, along with all others, is on the table, according to the Secretary.

Would the world believe Trump, if he called on the world to unite in a war against the North Koreans, based on the evidence he has gathered and presented?

Obviously, the answer is “No” without a shred of doubt.

The word of the current occupant of the Oval Office is worth no more than it was when he was touting the “birther” claim that Barrack Obama was born in Kenya.

If the United States were a ship, the world could legitimately now say, not that the rats have left the ship, but rather ‘the rats are running the ship’.

Is anybody out there willing to end this madness?