Insomniacs for Trump

Driving long distances used to be such fun, but now I drive hoping the time passes as quickly as possible; in this case, driving from San Francisco to Cody, Wyoming with a sweet 4-day layover in Salt Lake City for the birth of my new gradndaughter, Marley Ann Roddan. Too much of my time on the road now is spent pondering Donald Trump and his perverted grip on the American body politic. No matter how hard I whip the Volvo I can't quite get away from images of the Presidential tanning booth, the American flag lapel pin, the blond quasi-ducktail, the scowl, the little white shark teeth, no matter how hard I hammer the accleerator.

The Volvo finally hits its stride right around Lovelock, Nevada, resting place of the potty-trained OJ Simpson, out of the slammer in October, unless he screws up again and robs a 7-11. And then, before we know it, we're spending the night in Elko at The Stockman's Casino and Lodge downtown, favored casino of the sleepless--mostly young extraction-industry slaves and old people with wizened tattoos and Marlboro Lights hanging tiredly out of the corners of their mouths just like the old days. It's here, sleepless myself, wakened by the paroxsym of neon seeping up through the bottom hem of the curtains in my room, having come down to the casino at 2 am with the book I'm reading ("Rising Tide" by John Barry, a history of the great 1927 flood of the Mississippi) and the little notebook that I scribble in should I hear or see anything interesting, that I first get a whiff of Donald Trump's America.

The Trump gang is down here all right, seranded by bad music and stupid laughter, jumping up and down to the sound of slot machines and video poker.

I find the bar and order a bottle of Sierra Nevada, then retire to a chair in the lobby so that I may read and observe the behavior of my fellow insomniacs, being thoughtfully unobstrusive so that my observations not alter their natural thoughtlessness. But first I must turn on the light, a floor lamp stationed beside the chair I have chosen. 

I flip the switch; no light. I check to make sure the lamp has a bulb; it does but perhaps it's burnt out. The lamp's a perfect metaphor for Donald Trump's America: slowly, slowly enough not to notice, things don't seem to work or don't work as well as they once worked. I ask the girl at the front desk. "I don't know," she says, shrugging her shoulders. "Housekeeping doesn't come on until 6. There's plenty of light in the casino. Why don't you just read in there?"Great idea, I think, and why don't you get a real job instead of working the graveyard shift at this seedy palace of losers, but then again it's hard to get a good job with an 8th grade education.

And so I re-visit the lamp, being a sovereign American, a man of true entrepreneurial instincts, and see that it's not plugged in, plug it in, turn the light on, plump myself down in the chair, read my book for fifteen minutes or so, drinking the beer slowly so as to have time to consider and re-consider Donald Trump in the midst of his  milieu.

Of course people like these people like Trump! What's not to admire? They're just like him, only he's their master, the one who made a fortune building unhealthy environments like this one, toxic from the ground up, where they can smoke and drink to their heart's content and drive home drunk and happy, before passing out completly in front of a tv tuned to one of the 24-hour news channels. 

I take another sip of the Sierra Nevada. Tony Orlando and Dawn are playing on the casino loudspeakers, music of the 1980's. A group of silver miners trundle through the front door, looking at me like I'm crazy for reading a book. And I am crazy, having survived Nixon, Reagan, Bush; and now surviving Trump! I'm so crazy I think it's quite possible that in two or three hundred years democracy will be seen as great a scourge as Christianity is seen now.

And I'm having unhealthy thoughts in this unhealthy environment! Like this one: yes we were 'given' Donald Trump, but Donald Trump was 'given' us as well. I'm not sure who got the most out of the bargain.