On Trump and Politics – From Dusk To Shawn
I need to talk about Donald Trump.
Not in the way the news does. Not as a simple hero or a simple villain. I need to talk about him from the perspective of a guy who spent a few years feeling like the man was living rent-free in my head, pissing in the corners.
There was a time, back when I was really going through it—deep in the fight with my own mental health, just starting to understand the AuDHD, trying to rebuild myself from the ground up—when it felt like everything he did was aimed directly at me. Every tweet, every rally, every attack on the institutions I had spent my life defending… it felt personal. It felt like a deliberate attempt to pour fuel on the fire that was already burning me down.
And yeah, I was angry. If you listened to my old podcasts from back then, you heard it. Raw, unfiltered, often incoherent rage. That angry man has since moved on, but the recordings are still there, a testament to a difficult time.
The Tragedy of Squandered Potential
Here’s the strange and difficult truth, though. I think he could have been great. Truly great. A man with that kind of connection to a huge portion of the country, that kind of charisma, that kind of willingness to break the established rules… he had the potential to be a force of nature for good.
Imagine if he had taken that power, that loyalty, and aimed it at the real problems.
He could have written off student debt and medical debt for millions of Americans. He could have dropped the deficit by actually taxing the wealthy instead of giving them more breaks. He could have put people to work rebuilding infrastructure, making this country something to be proud of again.
He could have built homes for the homeless, not just walls. He could have demanded universal healthcare, not just bragged about his own. He could have been the champion for the very people he claimed to represent, the ones who felt left behind.
And here’s the thing: if he had done that, those people would have given him everything. They would have forgiven him for anything. They would have worshipped him not out of fear or tribal loyalty, but out of genuine gratitude. He would have had wealth beyond measure—not through grifting and extraction, but through the voluntary generosity of people whose lives he’d actually improved.
He could have been Lincoln, freeing a different kind of slave—the ones enslaved by poverty, by despair, by a system rigged against them. He could have been the king he clearly desires to be, remembered for a thousand years as the man who actually made America great.
But he didn’t. He chose a different path. He chose the path of the self. Of division. Of grievance. He chose to be the salesman, not the architect.
He squandered it all like it was The Taj Mahal—his own failed casino, a monument to extracting value until there’s nothing left but debt and decay.
The Shift
And so, here we are. Stuck in this exhausting, stupid fight. Both sides screaming accusations at each other, right over the fence line, bumping the noses of those of us just trying to live in the middle.
I used to get pulled into that fight. The anger felt righteous. Necessary, even.
But something has shifted. Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s the hard work of looking in my own dirty mirror. Maybe it’s just exhaustion. But the anger isn’t the first thing I feel anymore. Occasionally, I feel its presence, a faint echo in the back of my mind. But it no longer defines me. And he, the man who used to be the focus of so much of that rage, no longer has the power to draw it out of me.
My presence now, my state of being… I think of it like a Vesper martini. Shaken? Absolutely. Life has thrown me around quite a bit. But not stirred. The core of who I am, the principles I stand for, the mission I am on—that remains clear, steady, and undiluted by the chaos outside.
What Remains
I don’t pity him. I don’t fear him. He just is. He is in a position he has abused for personal gain.
And that’s the saddest part. He could have been so much more. He could have made so many people so much more than they are, and they would have given him more than he could ever take by force.
Instead, he chose corruption. He chose the quick con over the long legacy.
The fight isn’t over. But my part in it has changed. It’s no longer about winning the argument. It’s about being the calm, resilient center in the middle of the storm. It’s about building something better, not just tearing the old thing down.
That’s the work now.