Time to say goodbye, for now

For almost four years, I have been a guest columnist here. It has been a wonderful ego trip, a new career in my nineties. I began the morning of Joe Biden’s swearing in. I predicted that Donald Trump would likely be guilty of seditious acts that day and that there would be a riot at the Capitol. From that day to today, I owe editor Todd Dorman and The Gazette thanks for a platform.

But I am weary, and my health insurance won’t cover enough happy pills to help me go on. Writing weekly. Thinking about Donald Trump as our president is bad for my digestion. Writing about him is worse. I will spare you the symptoms. I am going to take a break, maybe a permanent one, although I hope for the energy to speak out from time to time about our Iowa politics, hoping and looking for our senators and governor to break ranks and to speak the truth about Trump.

I think the country is heading in the wrong direction, to a society of indifference to people in need. Better health care, the needs of public education and public health should command bipartisan concern. I am such a Pollyanna that I think it will.

Trump’s first appointments make it harder to quit. I should stay and scream. A Fox News host as Secretary of Defense has even drawn some Republican questions. Billionaires checking spending on programs and departments they disdain is not a balanced evaluation. It scares the Trump out of me.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have a talent for making money. They know nothing about how most people live. Slashing programs for education or Social Security is not a solution, but a sin. I won’t even start on Matt Gaetz who is a nominee so bad that some Republicans spoke out. He had to withdraw is nomination for attorney general.

I was prepared to simply dislike the people President Donald Trump gathered around him. That doesn’t give them their due. They are a frightening lot. With weeks yet to go before inauguration, tremors of fear are building across the country.

I expect the LGBT community would be a target, books banned, jobs lost under some pretense, life made miserable for no reason, but ignorance. I did not expect the fear to take hold so quickly as it has. Kids seeking relief from anxiety has already soared.

I didn’t expect Trump would declare war on our own generals and admirals. He says he is going to get rid of those who have objected to his policies. That doesn’t make our country safer.

The thought of Robert Kennedy, Jr. in the Cabinet as Secretary of Health and Human Services is its own kind of nuclear destruction in waiting. His siblings who carry not just the family name, but its commitment to liberal governance, disdain him as “unstable.”

The only immediate hope for my country lies with Republicans in confirmation hearings. Some are beginning to speak up and speak out.

I intend to be back, if not weekly, at least from time to time. Bit goodbye for now. In a year, I will have a message for those few who have read this column and voted for Donald Trump. I told you so.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary.