American Shithole #36 | The Waiting Game
By Eric Wilson
These last few weeks have felt more like a crowded doctor’s office visit than the slow-motion train wreck of the two years prior. I have found myself patiently waiting (three weeks running now) certain on Monday that the shit-berg was about to hit the fan-boat — and every Wednesday it’s the Trump-timeline version of a cool breeze on calm waters.
Unless you’re a toddler in diapers fleeing life-threatening conditions, and you’ve just walked thousands of miles across hostile territory barefoot, only to be hit in the face with an American teargas canister.
Welcome to the Estados Unidos, criaturas!
Ándale niñas, there is no room at the inn in the Land of the Free.
Part Trump desensitization, part election afterglow, I imagine.
So here I am again, on a Wednesday afternoon, with few words to offer regarding the state of our nation.
Not that it isn’t fucking crazy out there — there’s a frothing, hallucinatory, future-squatter rage-tweeting from the depths of the West Wing shitter, as our beleaguered military damns our American souls by terrifying exhausted migrant children at the border — but lately, the images of this presidency’s horrific policy actions bounce off me like… well… like tiny, little teargas canisters.
It would also seem as of yesterday, that if America is ever going to bury racism, we’re going to have to bury Mississippi along with it. I don’t think this comes as a surprise to anyone.
Mueller may hold his findings until we have a Congress in session that promises to get to the truth, or we may hear the slow-leaking balloon of his investigation for the next month, or he may drop the whole, dirty payload tomorrow. Like almost everyone else it seems, I have no fucking clue what Mueller is going to do, or even an inkling as to what his investigation has uncovered.
This is really bad news for Trump, on so many levels. In a world where secrecy no longer has meaning, Mueller has had the scoop of the century air-tight for months. This is a man I can’t imagine anyone in the world would be happy to have looking into their dirty laundry.
As we prepare to shelve 2018, I find myself wanting many things for humanity, many things for my fellow Americans, but for me — whichever way this shit-cookie crumbles here in the States — I just want the truth.
I just want to know the truth.
“I’ve been sitting in the waiting room forever, doc, give it to me straight — how bad is my country?”
“I’m afraid you have late-stage four Klepto-Capitalism; it’s malignant, and left untreated, it’s terminal.”
“Any good news, doc?”
“Not really.”
So as I shuffle wearily toward the year’s final holiday, with a month left before we ring in the New Year, I can still hear the tiny, little teargas canisters launched by the Trump administration landing “plink,” “plank,” “plunk.”
And somewhere in the darkness, high up from the heavens, I can hear the Mueller report approaching at terminal velocity — descending to earth with the political weight of a thousand suns.
“THUMP.”