This Week and Next: Swimming in Trump’s Swamp

Or: There Is No Dry Land

I had a plan this morning. A good plan. A sensible plan.

After months of diving deep into the fetid waters of Trump’s second term—cataloging the grift, the cruelty, the constitutional vandalism—I woke up exhausted and told myself: “Do less. Stay out of the deep end. Preserve yourself.”

Smart, right? Self-care. Boundaries. All those things your therapist keeps talking about.

So I made coffee. Picked up my iPad. Read the paper like a normal person recharging their batteries.

And then I realized: I’m already wet.

You see, I wasn’t planning to leap into the swamp today. The problem is there’s no dry land anymore. That’s the whole point of Trump times—there’s no respite. You wake up, and the emails are there. The posts are there. The realities of death, war, and poverty engineered by people who think suffering is a policy choice rather than a moral failure.

So here I am, goggles down, diving back in.

What a week it’s been.

Let me tell you what I found in the murky, sulfur-smelling water this week…