This Week and Next

The Septic Shock of Trump’s America

Sitting in bed, fire crackling, I feel like Chicken Little. But here’s the crucial difference: in the storybook, Chicken Little was wrong. This Chicken Little is right. The sky is falling.

Our world, like any system, can only absorb so much chaos before it tips into instability. I’m not talking about the theatrical gasps of the stock market when Trump tweets. I’m talking about genuine shock – not the pearl-clutching kind when you drop an F-bomb at Thanksgiving, but the medical kind. Sepsis. System failure.

And yet Americans, ever self-absorbed and self-assured, keep chanting: “This too shall pass,” as if they are in an AA meeting. God, what children we are. Tell that to Iran, Russia, Cuba, Afghanistan, China, Gaza. Governments fall all the time. Wake up, kids. Sometimes bad things happen and stay happened.

This week felt different. I wrote less than usual – other projects beckoning – but I watched. And something has shifted. I can feel it, like a bone-ache before a winter storm.

Start wit…