Hubris is one of those concepts that 10th graders are taught and immediately forget. It doesn't fit easily into the mundane everyday lives we lead in America. We have so much stuff we have to manage, who can keep track of the huge weight of history and the clock that counts down our last few seconds when we have shows on Netflix to catch up on or if you haven't been to Facebook in over an hour? In the name of freedom, (mostly our freedom, that of suburban white Americans anyway) we have rode rough shod over much of the world, and the bill is going to come due. We have congratulated ourselves endlessly over our free institutions and elections, never realizing that they were so fragile and dependent on good people with at least superficial altruistic motives to operate them. We now have a president that is so deeply damaged as a person, so indulged and incompetent, so shameless and uncomprehending of his potential for inflicting pain on the world that he is threatening nuclear annihilation at the UN. Scary but can't happen, right? There is very recent precedent for things that "can't possibly happen" with this guy- "He was so awful" we said- "he's a joke" and will never be nominated by the Republicans. He was. He will never be elected, he can't be. He was. He will never be indicted or impeached, he will be... but he won't, and here is my sad prediction; the angry toddler, bruised by low polls and targeted for his crimes by Mueller, will goad North Korea into a conflict as soon as the special counsel gets close to implicating the him or his family in punishable or impeachable crimes. He will sacrifice millions of lives without a second thought so as not to be embarrassed by removal from office. He will literally start WWIII so the Russian pee tape will not be released. It couldn't possibly happen, right? I have the same feeling about this as I did the election, that it couldn't possibly happen but it did. We will become the bad guys of history to protect the precious impossibly delicate ego of billionaire douchebag. This is where hubris comes in. It's not the hubris of the sorry buffoon in the white house - it's ours, all of us, America's. We had it so good and we could have made this world so much better, all of it. We could have taken our lofty ideas and helped more but we got fat and lazy. We were too interested in our toys and our bellies. Did we really think that somehow we would escape the pain of the world? That we wouldn't be victims of history some day? When he launches the nukes at North Korea (he will want a good show- the ratings will be terrific) killing millions, both innocent and guilty, there- then will be retaliation on the US, maybe only one or two from NK but that could kill millions here, possibly even Seattle (which would be great for the orange man- we voted 8 to 1 for Clinton and Jeff Bezos who owns the Washington Post lives here) creating chaos and the ultimate distraction from the special counsel and his glorious Reichstag fire to ensure his presidency for life and the succession of his monarchy. And that's if China and Russia do not jump in. Does Iran decide that with the US fully involved in Asia that it's time to start something in the mideast? Science fiction? Nope. It's the road we are on. All the online petitions and calling your congressmen and angry Facebook posts will not stop him. We have done it to ourselves, we created this TV Frankenstein, we fed him and now his reality TV installed brain is looking for the ultimate season finale. I have a bad feeling.
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