My brother-in-law, Jay, has heard enough and doesn’t want to hear another word, one in particular. No more conversations dominated by the “T-word.” Ever!
Blather on about the weather, the Olympics, the price tea in China, my recent colonoscopy, Jay pleads with me —anything but the T-word.
Do I really have to spell it out for you?

In 1925, during another era of pronounced income inequality and less than five years before the Great Depression, President Calvin Coolidge addressed this existential question: What is America about? When taken out of context of its accompanying remarks, the bastardized version of his famous quote—“The business of America is business”— does not do our 30th president, or us, justice.

The various “words of the year” as proclaimed by august wordsmiths, such as the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster, are woefully inadequate for the 2017 we just suffered through. Youthquake? Please! There’s a fake word, signifying nothing, if I ever saw one. No, the only word of the year for me is Trumpus. It is the first cousin of rumpus. Old timey wise guys used to greet one another with the phrase, “What’s the rumpus?” They wanted to know what the latest uproar was in the underworld, who shot whom, that sort of gangsta gossip.

I was surprised when our president pardoned those two turkeys, Wishbone and Drumstick, right before Thanksgiving. For starters, where were Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn? And why didn’t he wring their necks (the turkeys)? That would have been the exact opposite of what former president Barack Obama did a year ago — and everybody knows that “Must Undo Obama” is the zombie-like mantra of the present administration. Predicting the next Trump-roar is difficult, much less his shenanigans for an entire new year, but predict we must:

The Republican Party is trying madly to lower taxes for its base. For coal miners and factory workers and for you and me, you’re guessing.

“Don’t be silly,” as my grandmother used to say. No, they are scrambling to slash taxes on the already too richly redundantly rich for words.

Sure, you and I might get a pittance — that is, if they don’t snatch away federal tax deductions for our mortgage interest, sky-high medical bills, student loan interest, state and local taxes, our personal exemption; or if they don’t lower our 401K contribution limits and eviscerate the Affordable Care Act.

The state agency in charge of environmental protection here in Connecticut is proposing changes that will restrict its citizens’ ability to contribute to a cleaner energy future. This may sound crazy, but it makes perfect sense to our local utility companies, which are lobbying hard in Hartford for such restrictions, as are power companies in other state capitals.

Yes, he’s a moron, but one word, or even 140 characters, hardly do him justice. What else describes him? Let us count the epithets.

What do the Great Depression and climate change have in common? The former transformed individual lives and geopolitics for generations. Its effects are still felt today. The decade-long catastrophe was arguably the most consequential episode of the 20th Century. Our warming planet will have a similar, likely larger impact on us and on our descendants. It already has started transforming how we live. In 2099, Global Warming (let’s call a spade a spade) will be viewed as the single most significant occurrence of this century—if not of all time.

Our president is presently ensconced in his natural habitat, an exclusive golf course resort in New Jersey. This is truly sad, not merely Twitter-sad.
With this whole glorious country spread before him —from the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans white with foam— our leader has chosen to embrace a fake landscape that only the well-to-do can frequent. He won’t be bumping into many wild things, or coal miners, on this trip.

With apologies to Bozo and Pagliacci, it is now clear that we have a clown for a president—a great big orange buffoon with tiny fingers and a big red necktie long enough to trip over. Barnum & Bailey may be history, but we still have POTUS & Pence. “Indubitably!” as the Three Stooges would say.

We may not agree on everything, you and I, but we don’t disagree on everything, either. We should expect nothing less from our esteemed representatives: they should meet in the middle and get stuff done or take their hard-earned government pensions and scurry back to the private sector.