After the initial shock of Trump being elected president, after the balloons and the speeches, the nervous reality sets in. He’s the president all right.
Our stomach tightens thinking of the next four years of The Donald. How will we get through it? How will we cope?
There will be three different approaches to President Trump, according to types of people, four if you include those who actually wanted Trump to win.
About 99 percent of those who voted for Trump didn’t actually want him to be president, they just didn’t want Hillary. They are as shocked as the rest of us, only they feel guilty that their big plan actually worked.
Now they’re stuck with him.
So most people must scramble for a way to cheer up from being “Down in the Trumps.” They must find a cure for the deep depression that will clinically be known as “The Trumps.”
The first group dealing with it I call the Flamers. The old hippies and young wide-eyed radicals from Berkeley and Oakland who will take to the streets and march up and down screaming that he’s not their president. What?! He’s the only one around, so who is their president? Are they president-less?
Who is their great leader inspiring them to smash windows and turn over burning cars? When they realize that they are doing exactly what made them mad about Trump, that is, not accepting the outcome, the Flamers will flame out and go home and suffer with the rest of us.
The truth is, he is our president, get over it. We’re all in this together, remember, “one nation, under God.” Those aren’t just words, bruddah.
The next group I call The Cussers. These are the ones who will turn on the news every night and cuss at Trump. For the next four years they will make everyone in the living room miserable cussing at the TV, screaming things like, “I told you so!” and “He’s such a pig!” and “Look at him suck up to Putin.”
You’ll hear them in the bars, in the restaurants and in the doctor’s office when someone turns the channel on the TV hanging up on the wall, they will be cussing and muttering every time Trump comes on the tube. They will never once offer a solution, they will only spew cuss words in a knee-jerk reaction to seeing President Trump. If Hillary had won there would have been Hillary Cussers.
The last group I call the Ostriches. The ones who will turn off the TV and the radio, and turn away from the newsstands. The ones who will stick their head in the sand for the next four years refusing to admit Trump exists.
I am in this group, although being a writer I will still get the paper, but I’ll have someone cut out any article on Trump before I read it.
Most everyone in Hawaii will be Ostriches. We’ve been ignoring the mainland for years. We just jump in the ocean or sit under a waterfall and bingo, no more Trump, no more mainland. Problem solved.
I think Trump is the biggest, empty-headed buffoon who ever lived. I will skip the 6 o’clock news in hopes I never hear of him again. But he is my president and I’d have to close my eyes, but I’d march off anywhere to defend him, this country, and all of you.
The truth is, we’re going to need a lot of aloha to get through the next four years.
Start making those leis.
Dennis Gregory mixes truth, humor and aloha in his biweekly opinion column for West Hawaii Today. He can be reached at makewavess@yahoo.com