When Is End Time?

There are people I know who see the so-called Trump Era as a signifier that the fabled end time is upon us, when history is no more and doom is the only future.

These nay-sayers – reluctant as they might be – have absorbed one too many gut punches from the oval office and now from the Supreme Court and are reeling and punch-drunk from the endless dark news that flows like a river of carnage into the American psyche.

Call me a romantic, but I have hope. I hope that the adage that “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” is coming to pass before our very eyes, despite what sexist overtones that adage might conjure to some.

In the urban reaches of the Bronx, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez handily unseated Democratic boss Joe Crowley in the recent primary there, despite the fact that she had never even considered politics a year ago. Alexandria – she has become a one-name phenom already – went to the streets with a fury, picking up a hard core legion of volunteers who knocked on enough doors and passed out enough flyers and made enough phone calls to kick boss Crowley to the curb like an old tomato can – which he sounds like.

There was no end time in the Bronx on primary day, that’s for sure, despite Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s recent cowardly announcement of his retirement and opening the door wide for a Trump appointment of another hard-edged white conservative who will help legally dismantle all the social strides that this country has made.

But, yes, Yogi, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over, and it ain’t over yet. Sure as the Lord made sour green apples, Trump is looking to replace Kennedy with a conservative sycophant. But if either or both of two women Republican senators – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine – go against the party and vote their pro-choice consciences, the confirmation of a Trump SCOTUS nominee can be stymied until after the November election, which could very well make it a new ballgame, Yogi.

And this new ballgame is going to include a record number of women running for office, and running hard and smart and strong. And their calls for a change are going to be heard by an increasing number of the critical segment of white middle class women who voted for Trump in 2016. Many of these women have children and the current kidnapping by our government of over 2,000 immigrant children is not something they will overlook when they step into the voting booth. No end time for them.

There is talk of the “Nazification” of America under Trump. Not really. The conditions in Germany when Hitler arose like a specter of evil are different in so many ways from those here, no matter how dire they may look to some. 

There is still enough of a free press to matter and social media is ready made for guerilla warfare against censorship. Also, the money guys who run so much of the show are getting edgy at Trump’s crazed tariff policies. 

When Rachel Maddow and her cohorts at MSNBC are silenced, then we will know that the end times are indeed upon us. I don’t think the women of America and every right-thinking man in America are going to let that happen.

But then again I’m a romantic.