Silver Column

When Don Day and I agreed to put up a blog called “HOCU POTUS: Travels With Trump,” I never thought I would write 50 Civic Duty columns about this creep.

The first thing we did was get Steve Dock on board as our Blogmaster and partner – very smart move – and then we started. At first, it was cartoon strips showcasing Don’s extraordinary talents. We collaborated on the red box headline and the dialog. Then, to fill in the time and space between strips, I started to write Civic Duty columns, named for Don’s observation that this resistance Blog was a civic duty.

I’d like to say that writing a regular column was hard work, but the Trump “presidency” has been like shooting fish in a barrel as far as material. Like millions of Americans, I turn on my computer every morning to see what crazed tweets or anti-American rhetoric this asshole has spewed. I am rarely disappointed.

Ironically, what’s good for A Civic Duty is rarely good for this country and its people. The columns have come easily, the ideas flowing, the words often seeming to deliver themselves, unbidden, almost automatic writing, which over the years prior to Civic Duty I have learned to trust and mostly let have its way.

The two writers who have become my idols in the anti-Trump genre on Facebook and Salon are the great Lucian Truscott IV and the pleasantly crazed Stephan Salisbury. When Truscott goes after Trump, I can hear his anger sizzling, and he backs it up with the facts that a truly professional writer can muster. I have to admit I was jealous of his stuff at first, but now I just kick back and enjoy it like fine wine.

Stephan Salisbury is a long-time Philly Inquirer writer, but you would never find one chapter of his “CSI: American Carnage” in the Inkie because it is too wild and profane. And so highly imaginative that he has created a separate, impossible Trump reality that is at once surreal and frightening. And not totally impossible, upon reflection. There is a fractured genius at work here.

Hmmm … so where did that leave a minor leaguer like me when these two big leaguers were knocking out home runs on a regular basis? Was there a niche for me?

Looking back, I see now that I sort of wrote my way into whatever anti-Trump niche I’m occupying. I see an aspect of Trump that’s a little off the beaten Trump path and enlarge on it and examine it from a smart-ass, foul-mouthed, semi-street point of view. I did a column on Trump as a creep, for instance, another on him as a mutt, and even two featuring a mob boss and Trump.

And mostly I’ve had fun with A Civic Duty, which I feel slightly guilty about because there’s nothing about Donald Trump and what he’s doing to America that could be construed in any way as fun.

And, truth to tell, HOCUS POTUS and my column don’t have a very big  following, but our people are loyal and deserve the best we can give them. Thomas Wolfe said he wrote for glory. So when I get some decent numbers on FB for a column, my ego is massaged, which is cool, but it also gives me the juice to keep hammering on Donald Trump.

Until he is in the dustbin of history.