Welcome to The Dystopia Report

1. When I was 7 years old my mom enrolled me in Bucky’s Boys Club, run by a very loud and energetic old man named Bucky Harris. As I acclimated my first day, there seemed to me to be a countless number of kids, many older and more assertive than me. The highlight of the afternoon was swimming in their pool, which had a diving board, something I had, believe it or not, never experienced up to that point in my young life.

Now understand that we lived only a couple of blocks from Lake Michigan, and I had already spent countless hours in the water, and assumed that I knew how to swim.  So when Bucky barked out for a division of campers into swimmers and non-swimmers, I just figured I was a swimmer even though I had never actually been in the deep end of a swimming pool. Well, we all lined up at that diving board and one by one kids, some more tentatively than others, walked the plank and jumped into the pool. As my turn approached it suddenly dawned on me that in fact I never had jumped into water over my head and I was actually clueless about the proper technique to survive what now seemed a reckless action. This realization, coupled with the anxiety being thrust into the public eye, rendered me both thoughtless and speechless as I proceeded to simply march off the board and commence drowning in front of the entire camp.

It was Bucky, himself, who actually dove in and saved my sorry ass, and as he got me out of the pool, he seemed to my pathetic eye the most pissed off human being I had ever met.  I suppose I was coughing/gagging a bit, and surely looked to be one of the lamest kids he had come across, but when he actually addressed me, it was calmly but direct. He asked me my name and I told him. Billy, he said, see what happens when you don’t tell the truth? I started to stammer that I really did know how to swim, but even to my searching 7 year old brain, the absurdity of my entreaty was evident. I vowed to myself then and there two things: 1) Learn to really frickin swim, not just in the shallows of a lake, but in water over my head; and 2) never BS when the consequences are both dire and imminently verifiable.  Anyway, I think that’s what I promised myself.

This childhood memory serves as an analogous point of departure for our current national predicament. Our POTUS knew from the minute he came down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy ala ugly racist diatribe that he couldn’t even dog paddle his way through a policy discussion on any issue he would face. And  it was equally clear from the beginning that he didn’t give this little bump in his road to sowing chaos on the electoral process a second thought because he never dreamed he would have to jump off the diving board. Even as the other campers dove out of the race, transforming Priebus’ February declaration before the Iowa Straw Poll that there had never been such a collection of political talent into a signature example of Fox/AM delusion, Trump stayed in line for the diving board,  figuring the general election voters would surely keep him dry and safe.

From Labor Day to Election Day he ran as exactly the wretch he was, devoted only to creating the narrative to explain his landslide defeat, laying most on a “rigged system”, and a co-conspiring GOP.  He had much to look forward to after his trouncing; he would surely profit handsomely on the adulation of his wretched core base, in combination with a beautiful partnership with nihilist media, fully facilitated by Steve Bannon.

But then….. he had to jump in the pool!! And this is where we have been since last January. In the deep end, floundering and desperately awaiting our Bucky to save us. Trump thrashes about every hour, now resigned to his fate, but fully unwilling to learn any stroke that may get him to the side without causing further damage. His is a singular quest to preserve himself from the sinking ship he never wanted to captain, even as his passengers flounder helplessly, many actually abiding, even cheering his stewardship.

It is our intent to shed light on our predicament while holding vigil for Bucky to arrive, all the while conceding he may have left the building. Regardless, there is a story that matters happening right now, and we’re not going to let it play out unobserved, without at least throwing in our two cents. From Mar-A-Lago to Youngstown…. This is The Dystopia Report! BC