[A note to our readers: Mike Davidow sent this letter to his editor this past week. We offer it in lieu of his column.]

Dear Nancy:

Am writing just to let you know that I don’t have a new column for you this week.  Still chewing my cud from the horror of the election. One of the saddest things about having Trump in the White House is how obvious he has made everything. There is nothing new to say. There is nothing interesting to say. There is nothing subtle to say. There is nothing to say that hasn’t been said before, a hundred times, in a hundred ways. And none of it has mattered.

I don’t know what purpose my column serves at this point, so I don’t know where to go with it. Sometimes I have tried to entertain people. Sometimes I have tried to share interesting thoughts with people. Sometimes I have even tried to persuade people to see things differently. Meanwhile the house has been on fire.

How was your Thanksgiving, Nancy? We “zoomed” with my sister. This is to say that we ate alone and we watched some strange television, talking back to the screen. We have seen the future and it consists of the ceiling of our dining room, which is what my sister sees when the i-pad falls down and I forget to prop it back up against the mashed potatoes.

At least nobody is sick. I bought some new masks the other day and they are suffocating. Other people seem to wear pleasant masks that even look nice on them, as far as mask-fashion goes. I haven’t managed that yet. I dislike masks and I dislike wearing masks and whenever I am in a store, wearing a mask, my goal is to get out of the store quickly so I can take my mask off. Contrary to what you might think, this does not make me a Republican, nor does it make me sympathize with anyone, anywhere, who thinks they shouldn’t have to wear a mask. You hate masks? Me too. Stop complaining and wear one anyway.

See, Nance — I have nothing new to say. Donald Trump remains in the White House, telling the world that he won the election. Polls indicate that most Republicans agree with him. Polls indicate that most Republicans believe that Biden did not actually prevail. Polls indicate that Americans have lost their minds. Chloe Schlagobers is not helping today. The sherbet-salesman routine is going nowhere. People who have no shame, can not be shamed. And people love him, Nancy.

I wrote about that the last time, so I can’t write about it again.

Nance, I know a little history and I know a little political theory. I could talk with some facility about why the poor and uneducated line up to get fleeced; why we are reaping what we have sown for the past five decades; why the left has become just as unmoored as the right; why good friends of mine actually voted for that selfish oaf, four years back. But I am not even interested in what I see anymore, because it’s all still Trump. One of our country’s great political parties has collapsed, from being rotten to the core, and it has now become a personality cult. We have become that small.

There is actually some good satire out there now. People are snapping up Trump 2024 domain names, and putting funny things on the internet. I just don’t have it in me, to even write about him tonight. I just want to see him gone, and he isn’t leaving. He is staying, he has convinced many people that he is right about things, and he is still doing as much damage as he can to the very foundations of our democracy. Our planet will suffer for a very long time because the United States of America has lost its way and I don’t want to write about that tonight.

Nance, I’ll try to do better in a few weeks. Maybe once December starts and it’s cold out again. Cold is good. Cold slows things down. We’ll see if that helps.

Yours,

MED

Michael Davidow is a lawyer in Nashua.  He is the author of Gate City, Split Thirty, and The Rocketdyne Commission, three novels about politics and advertising which, taken together, form The Henry Bell Project.  His most recent one is The Book of Order. They are available on Amazon.

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