The Last Resort: What If Trump Wins?

I KNOW he will not win. He will crash and burn and take his moribund Republican party enablers with him. Of course! But what if I am wrong and he wins? Polls change like quicksand: Dukakis disappeared somewhere in a tank and his numbers tanked, and Reagan popped out of cheap animal movies in Hollywood to summon forth “Morning in America” for eight years. God forbid, what if . . .? Well, first off, I’m lucky.I am 92 years old, with a bad heart and A-fib and running on the fumes of a pacemaker, so, I will be spared the worst. As for self-deportation, New Zealand looks tempting but that long shlep would do me in. Mexico is a country Shirley and I have always loved and often visited but the current president is such a nebbish that he volunteered to let Mexico be used as a prop for Donald”s fake immigration rebirth scene. Canada is a delight and I have many old buddies, in various stages of decrepitude, who preferred Canada to the Vietnam war, but Canada is out for me because they do not broadcast Mets games. We adore Israel, but the prospect of that endless flight on El AL with a hundred haredi men demanding to know if I am Jewish — and, once there, having to endure the rising star, Avigdor Lieberman, who is a noxious Trump-Lite on Bibi”s heels — with Bibi being no bargain, either . . . So I think I would stick it out here in the good old USA and get ready for the impeachment trial, which should begin within the first hundred days. The charges will be formidable: non-payment of taxes, violation of the Constitution, inciting violence, abrogating treaties, alienating allies, undermining the U.N., conspiring with our enemies, losing the nuclear codes on the eighth hole of his Scottish golf club, and driving Ryan and McConnell rabidly insane -- not to mention the unprecedented executive orders to add 10 million American-born citizens to the roster of immigrant deportees, to change the name of the White House to the White Poorly Educated Male House, to remove Alexander Hamilton from among the Founding Fathers because he came here illegally from Jamaica (where you change your LIRR train to Hempstead) because of bad vetting, and got rich but never stirred himself enough to own even one slave, not one! Oh, and for conferring a Medal of Honor on the black pastor in Detroit who presented Trump with a Jewish prayer shawl, thus gaining a perfect trifecta -- the black, Jewish and evangelical vote in one full swoop, and even gaining the astonishment of God, if not her actual vote. I REALLY do not want to think about what furies President Trump would unleash on smarty-pants, wiseguy, pointy-domed, Hillary-loving characters like me. Since I was born in this country, I guess the best he could do is deport me from New York to Minnesota where I was born, so I could commiserate with Tim Kaine, who is also a native son of God s frozen people. In conclusion, and in all fairness, I must admit that it is Donald Trump and Donald Trump alone who has revived my moribund writing career. When I retired, I shut down my writing career, which had been highlighted by the authorship of such American classics as My Rabbi Doesn’t Make House Calls, I Am Okay -- You Are a Pain, and Start Worrying -- Details to Follow — not to mention my immortal comic magazine classic entitled I Was a Philanderer for the FBI. After years of writer’s block, the emergence of Donald Trump galvanized me, and I have emerged from the depths , phoenix-like, howling and sweating adrenalin, with hot flashes and nightmares night and day! I have been Trump-obsessed. Fortunately, my memoir class at Woodland Pond has provided an outlet for my perfect storm of frenzy and passion and pure mishegos. Thanks to the Donald, I am a writer reborn. In fact, I have developed an audience of similar nervous wrecks, including my wife, four kids, eight grandkids, and two great grandkids (3 and 1), all of whom are similarly obsessed — plus, four fellow residents, only one of whom suffers from dementia.