Inauguration Day

I intentionally did not watch the inauguration of Donald Trump this morning, as I knew it would drive me crazy. I did, however, tune in to watch the ABC World News Tonight. All I saw was Trump’s speech, which, after 15 minutes, I could not stand a moment longer. Rather than throw a large, heavy object at my television, I turned the TV off.

Earlier in the day—before the inauguration—I posted the graphic below on Facebook, Twitter, and Blue Sky. I was afraid my message in that graphic might have been unnecessarily harsh. After listening to 15 minutes of the horrible human being we have mistakenly elected to a second term, I concluded that my prediction was an extreme understatement.

For the benefit of readers not familiar with the name “Nakba,” here is an explanation copied from Wikipedia:

The Nakba (Arabic: النَّكْبَة, romanized: an-Nakba, lit. ‘the catastrophe’) is the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs through their violent displacement and dispossession of land, property, and belongings, along with the destruction of their society and the suppression of their culture, identity, political rights, and national aspirations. The term is used to describe the events of the 1948 Palestine war in Mandatory Palestine as well as the ongoing persecution and displacement of Palestinians by Israel.

For people in this country illegally, the catastrophe suffered by Palestinians may be exactly what they will likely experience. For the rest of us, Trump plans to destroy the America we have come to know, taking us back to the time of the Robber Barons. Most of Trump’s plans are destructive, such as again taking the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords. Others are stupid and mean-spirited, such as renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. (I don’t think Trump has the authority to do this, and, in any case, other nations will ignore his change.)

Clearly, Americans are in for a wild ride. By the time Trump is through destroying what took nearly a quarter millennium to build and improve, the immigration of people into the U.S. may have ended and been replaced by the emigration of citizens to free countries elsewhere.