Donald Trump and a cardboard stove

Looking back, it was a time of raw innocence. I chose cardboard for my example of making something out of nothing....”making do”....Northern New England, poor, values to be taught. So we made a cardboard stove, my daughter and I. Magic marker burners, tinker toy knobs and a oven door with see-through Saran Wrap that never did work right. Cardboard was our go-to resource, cheap and plentiful. The means to have most anything even when the bank account had nothing.

I can still see her sitting in her cardboard house, wearing an old straw hat, covered with her favorite pink blanket and reading a book. Her house had windows, a lamp and sometimes yesterday’s cereal bowl. A discarded tan surround transformed into a peace palace. Comfort, security, and special possessions carefully chosen.

Today when I saw the DU photo of that row of Kurdish children squatting, smiling, filled with innocence and hope, I started to cry. Immediately I could see my own daughter at that age. That straw hat, that pink bow under her chin, leaning back on a pillow reading....oh, maybe Charlotte’s Web.

I thought of what might happen to those precious Kurdish children as Donald Trump bully-grinned over his latest screw you. Such danger when you mix reckless disregard with no conscience. Such disaster when you mix well-rehearsed cruelty with Junior High payback. Such suffering when you mix thuggish apathy with a midnight-black heart.

I’ve run out of patience. I’ve used up my good will. I won’t listen to any more excuses. I won’t pretend this is some extra-ordinary chess game some White Knight is going to win for us.

Watching Donald Trump destroy things I honestly believed could never be destroyed is heartbreaking. And worst of all, people are actually assisting him, encouraging him, sticking up for him. Nearly 4 out of 10 Americans still support him.

I’m stunned at the difference between what my daughter faced back in the days of her cardboard house and what Kurdish children and children in cages are facing tonight. We must put an end to Donald Trump’s evil. We have to get louder and for longer. Institutions are crumbling. People are dying. Trump needs to go.