Cycles of Immunity

My father had the Spanish Flu in 1918, at age three, and survived. That flu, for reasons having to do with exposures, resistance and cycles of immunity, took the healthy middle and left higher percentages of older people and infants. I had hoped that America's bout of political insanity was somehow similar and that resistance would assert itself but I no longer think that because it's no longer a natural process. 

There's too much interference and pressure from forces I want to call Republicanism and the political right but it's gone beyond even that, having been around long enough to work its way into the system and to be chronic and structural. The last election proves it and brings it to a point of concentration. I'll admit that Trump might inadvertently do some good but Trumpism is toxic to our principles and it will end poorly. 

No level of insult and abuse is inappropriately directed at Trump. He's dished it out himself so he's asked for it but he's as thin-skinned as he is offensive and the electorate is accustomed to standards on an inverted sliding scale--less is expected of those with the most, a victory-lap alternative to normal social attitudes resulting in deference and obeisance. But the criticism must not stop and it needn't be pretty.

And it may be petty as long as it's reasonably justified and everything is justified by the existential horror of Trump. In any case there is abundant ammunition left to us by Trump's track record of gratuitous aggression and sketchy practices. Ridicule and satire are the most appropriate tools, in the vein of Stewart and Colbert. The situation is too far progressed in its absurdity and potential for harm for anything else.