JUST ANOTHER DAY IN TRUMPMERICA… IS IT JUST ME?

by Robin Stevens Payes

Art by Adam Bissonnette at Michael Moore Substack

Tired, headachy, lethargic. Is it just me? Perhaps it’s the weather—80 degrees and sunny one day; 50 and foggy the next. The air is close, closing in. Maybe it’s not the weather. The world is closing in. Tariffs, abductions, mass firings. Check your feed. War, threats of war, trading wars. I’m stunned it’s only taken 73 days to destroy US, America the Beautiful. 250 years to build a never-perfect, ever-striving union. Less than a quarter of one to tear it down. Is it just me? Everything looks the same; people keep saying so. I must see for myself. I’m sitting in Panera over a chai tea latte. Frivolous purchase, I know. We are a beautiful hodgepodge of America here: women, men white, black, immigrant, young, old. People smiling and holding open doors for each other. Pleases and thank yous. Chess game in the corner. Regular kaffeeklatsch arguing over who knows what. Friends schmoozing. Babies cooing. Liberation Day. Is it just me? Liberating US from prosperity. Trade wars with friends. Who needs friends? Or lumber, paper, car parts. Semiconductors stranded. Champagne uncorked. Hurray, it’s Liberation Day, who’s rallying? Is it just me?  Domestic pain. Prices rise. Kentucky bourbon for US alone. Chickens no longer laying. Check your feed! Factory cows bellowing in pain for wont of milking. Grain rotting across the fruited plain. What’s a rally in reverse? Markets tumbling. Panicked 401k holders. Is it just me? Temporary, they say. The trumpists trumpet prosperity. Our full faith and credit: In Who We Trust? We have met the gangster and it is US. Oops, roped up the wrong bad guy. Tattoos—you know; they all look alike. All deportations final: no returns. Sorry, not sorry. This is the plan, they keep saying. Breaking news. Breaking US. Check our feed. A blizzard of factless, faceless counterfactuals blowing, billowing, burying US in unreason. Ah, but yes, there are faces. Starring Trump, Musk. Musk, Trump. Bit parts for SecDef, HHS, ICE. IRS, Treasury, because, billionaires. State, misstated. Walk-offs for WWE, monkeys in the GOP. Have you memorized your lines? Get your cues down! NEVER disagree.  Enemies gain. Deus ex machina Putin putting in appearances. Begin bombing. Erdogan saving Syria for Russia. China selling TikTok; keeping the algorithms. Keeping US in its cheap Big Data net. Digitize US. Creators creating AI fear it’s surpassed us. Why would Nero fiddle when AI’s mastered music from every composer ever? Better, cheaper, quicker. They’ve lost control. Just another day in Trumpmerica. We are a beautiful hodgepodge of America here: women, men white, black, immigrant, young, old. US. We the People must not loose our reign. Tired, headachy, lethargic. Rally on! I won’t lose control. Is it just me?

 

Robin Stevens Payes is a time traveler who reasons that time and space are just inconvenient rules that other people decided the world must follow. After decades of trying to fit some notion of “normal” she chose to dive deeper into the offbeat, allowing verse to fill a poetic void. She is author of the YA-time travel adventure book series, Edge of Yesterday. Her poetry has appeared in The New Verse News, Dawn Horizons, East Sea Bards, Maryland Bards Poetry Reviews, and Reflections. She is time traveling to retrieve fragments of her grandmother Sophie’s story in [re]member the world, weaving together poetry, memoir, history and science. She writes about the process of weaving memory into a tapestry on her Substack https://remembertheworld.substack.com/

HOW TO SPOT A FASCIST, or WHAT I LEARNED FROM MADELEINE ALBRIGHT

by Kathy Conway

You could look for colors—black shirts for Mussolini, brown
ones for Hitler, red t-shirts and baseball caps for Chavez,
yellow stars on Polish children separated from mothers at railroad stations.

Listen for righteous us/them propaganda, use of simple words,
untruths to incite aggrieved followers, as Hitler did, repeating lies
until they were accepted as truth.

Listen for insults, bullying, ultimatums, rants—"huge, very dangerous"
to silence those who disagree—the press, media, cohorts, partners -
a la Mussolini.

Be suspicious of unbridled nationalism, separating families at borders.
False charges of being "Red" helped McCarthy to intimidate, create fear in
innocent people and muzzle Congress.

Be alert for a huge ego demanding loyalty, not to country
or constitution, but to him personally, who, with warped reality,
listens only to his own gut, ignoring experts and advisors.

Watch for leaders who declare a state of emergency
like Erdogan, try to build a border wall like Orban or promise to
"drenare la palude"—drain the swamp—like Mussolini.

Heed if they goad violence against perceived enemies with
pumped-up machismo, incite prejudice or seek to destroy faith
in an independent press, electoral process, courts, military.

Notice how he gets away with it. The public doubts he'd
do more—until he does, incrementally. His followers believe
he's working for them, against "others".

Be leery of copy cats who, like Peron, aspire to be Hitler.
Do they admire and cozy up to Kim Jong-un,
Mohammed bin Salman or Putin?
                                                 

Kathy Conway splits her time between a cottage on the coast of Maine and her home outside Boston.  She has taught memoir poetry in Maine and Florida. Her chapbook Bacon Street is about growing up in a large family.

OUTSIDE THE TURKISH AMBASSADOR'S HOUSE

by Bruce Dale Wise

Source: The New York Times

Outside the Turk ambassador's house, Erdogan looked on,
while a man came to Ceren Borazan with open arms.
He was drawn to her chanting voice. He grabbed her from behind,
and gripped her neck so tightly, she was scared out of her mind.
The people suffering in Turkey, far way from them,
when he was yelling—kill you, bitch—they could not have heard him.

The men in suits, the bodyguards of Tayyip Erdogan,
had come to roust protesters out—Kurds and Armenians.
Attackers kicked one woman as she lay curled on a walk;
Abbas Aziz, a teacher, got a lesson in free talk.
He was knocked to the ground by men, and kicked in chest and head.
This is America, this is not Ankara, he said.

Bruce Dale Wise is a poet, essayist, and the creator of new poetic forms. His publication credits include magazines and ezines under his own name and various pseudonyms.