As We Wait for ‘It’ to Begin, Anxiety Builds

With the inauguration less than a month away, it feels like we are looking at the horizon, waiting for the waves to wash over us.

On Boxing Day, December 26th, 2004, six tsunami waves ended 240,000 lives. About 15 minutes before the unthinkable commenced, the ocean receded far from the shore, almost as if some great unseen hand had rolled up a carpet. The strolling vacationers marveled at the vast uncovered sea bottom, usually submerged. It resembled a seashell yard sale dotted with all kinds of treasures — collecting those treasures cost many their lives.

As the world commemorated the 20th anniversary of that tragedy yesterday, I couldn’t get over the sense that hundreds of millions throughout the world are again standing awkwardly on a similar seabed, gazing toward the horizon as a massive wave races toward us. The wave this time, however, is not a natural phenomenon but rather a manmade one: the election of Donald Trump. In the way that people know what kind of devastation can be caused by tsunamis, so too we know what kind of devastation Donald Trump can — and will — cause. By some estimates, Trump’s first presidency was more deadly than the 2004 tsunami.