Trump is Trying to Kill My Friend
The worst person in the world wants to rid us of one of the best.
I have a dear friend of forty-five years who is confined to a wheelchair. He is unable to speak. He is unable to feed himself. He relies entirely on the attention of twenty-four hour care takers. He communicates by typing with one finger at a pace that I figure to be about ten words per minute. My friend is funny, acerbic, ironic, witty and, on occasion, brilliantly cruel (I taunt him by drinking the whiskey — his whiskey; expensive, single-malt whiskey — he can no longer enjoy; he forces me to watch Tyrone Power movies — have you ever seen THE MASK OF ZORRO. I highly advise you don’t). He reads history, poetry and science fiction. Not in that order; his collection of Philip K. Dick is complete, as is mine; we saw BLADE RUNNER together when it was released in 1982, and were the only two people in the theater to recognize a masterpiece. He writes scathing pieces to me and another friend about politics and world events, that must take an hour per page. We debate via email because texting is too fast and furious.
My friend is dying. Slowly. And unpleasantly. Ok, we are all dying, I suppose, and I suppose it is never pleasant — unless one counts Timothy Leary’s self-guided departure from this mortal coil under the self-administered influence of nicotine, morphine, psilocybin and other drugs — but especially at his age and not by this means.
It is really, really not fun.
My friend is not the victim of some devastating accident. He has never ridden a motorcycle, or even driven a car. No surfing accident has laid him low. Nope. What my friend has, is a crummy hand dealt in the poker game of life: advanced Motor Neuron Disease, a broad category of neurological disorders that encompasses, inter alia, ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease); of my friend’s condition, think Stephen Hawking, but not as good at math. It may take him tomorrow or ten years from now.
Stoical and courageous, my friend is not complaining.
But I am. Not about his condition: he faces it with a courage and sense of humor I doubt I could muster.
No, I am complaining because Donald J. Trump — the narcissistic sociopath who is so busy destroying the American economy and the world order one would think he’d have no time to ruin anything else — is trying to kill my friend, whom he has never met. How and why, you ask, is Trump doing this to a complete stranger (and if you don’t ask, you should)?
The how? is easy: by ending critical research into ALS cures at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, a small liberal arts college with a powerful research team funded in part by US Government grants. The research team at Wesleyan — founded in 1831 by Methodists and currently headed up by Michael Roth, a Jew (this will come ‘round at the middle or end of this rant) — is doing some cutting-edge work into finding treatments for the diseases.
Why? Well, it is a part of a nation-wide effort by Trump and his foul, self-loathing homunculi minions — we’re talking about you, Stephen Miller, you abortion-disguised-as-a-human-being — to curtail DEI, racial preferences, liberal diversity efforts and other educational attitudes that support open and embracing enrollment and treatment of students, ostensibly, in part, to combat anti-semitism, but really, we all must recognize, to impose a Hitlerian/Trumpian stamp of foul approval. The President of Wesleyan — Michael Roth — is a Jew and he rejects Trump’s thesis and actions. Roth recognizes of course that anti-semitism is on the rise, but he knows that Trump has no goal other than power in this move, and that the purported effort to combat bigotry is a ruse.
It is, of course, just part of the Trumpian power-play. Trump tried it with big law firms, threatening them with loss of work and the necessary security clearances required to handle certain cases; and some of the biggest succumbed — Skadden, we’re looking at you — in minutes; others are fighting. We shall see whom history will call cowards and whom fools. Trump tried it with big Universities (Wesleyan has about 3,500 students) with monstrous endowments; Columbia, to its eternal shame, capitulated; Harvard, with a MULTI-MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR fund, has not.
Trump’s is a tactic taken from Hitler’s playbook — and for an analysis of that playbook, I highly HIGHLY recommend historian Peter Fritzsche’s HITLER’S FIRST HUNDRED DAYS, which Trump’s advisors have clearly studied. Trump’s methodical madness is designed to instill fear and uncertainty, to create anxiety and terror. It is a detestable attempt by a narcissistic buffoon to impose his inane and perhaps insane views on others. It is a variation of nacht und nebel, night and fog, meant to confuse at every level of society. It is succeeding in part, and that is awful.
But it may kill my friend, and that is disgusting.
I loathe trump for his foul policies. I detest him for what he is, albeit indirectly, trying to do to my dear friend.
And to those who choose to support Trump, even now, I remind you that the blood of my friend may be on his hands, and by extension and accessorial liability, on yours.