As I write this column, I literally have no idea who our next president will be, but assuming this time the polls are correct and Trump loses, we Americans are about to face a monumental crisis of sorts—I call it “Trump withdrawal.” Please allow me to explain.
For the past four years Trump has sucked all the oxygen out of the air. It has been virtually impossible to watch the news or to read a newspaper and not learn what Trump tweeted at 3 in the morning. He has so taken over every news cycle that it would be easy to forget that there are issues confronting the world other than what Trump is blabbering about.
This new Trump withdrawal syndrome will impact all of us. Friends and family will no longer have anything to argue about, and family gatherings will become as silent as a Quaker meeting for worship. Marriages will be especially hit hard as husbands and wives simply stare at one another across the dinner table. I predict a massive wave of marriage counseling sessions during which couples will relearn how to converse with one another now that Trump has gone.
Late night comedians will also struggle to survive. Without their favorite subject, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Trevor Noah, John Oliver, Seth Meyers and others will be devoid of new material. Perhaps they will play reruns for the next four years. (God forbid!)
We have witnessed the theater of the absurd for the past four years, and now everything is going to appear exceedingly dull and boring. It’s going to feel strange when we don’t read that eighty-five percent of the people who wear masks get the virus, or that Trump has done more for African Americans than any other American president with the possible exception of old Abe Lincoln, or that the Navy Seals really didn’t kill Bin Laden, or on November 4 we will stop talking about Covid.
In other words, truth and straight talk will appear alien, abnormal. How long it will take us to adjust to the new normal is anybody’s guess, but we will get through it-we have no choice.
If Trump once again defied the pollsters and won reelection, then, of course, disregard every single word you have just read. I won’t be embarrassed one little bit because I will have committed hari-kari.