A sense of foreboding

I should be looking forward to the next year. My loved ones are all healthy. I cherish my teaching job at the university, particularly because I love my students. I have several movie scripts I wrote set for filming in the next year.

Yet I look at 2017 with foreboding, with something approaching dread. I truly think this man we’ve elected president could do some horrid things in coming months and years. I am hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. And generally I’m a pretty sunny guy, a happy optimist. I wonder how pessimists are feeling about our future.

I have money invested, and those funds are doing particularly well since Donald Trump was elected several weeks ago to be our next president. Major investors and other big-business types believe he will live up to his word to cut regulations that protect workers and the environment and slash taxes dramatically for corporations and the wealth.

All of that is wonderful for the market and corporate America. But I am not a particularly selfish person. I don’t want to make money at the expense of our Earth’s health or some less-protected factory worker’s amputated arm.

Those are just a couple of things that worry me about Donald Trump being elected president.

Frankly, I don’t worry about Trump, his children and other Trump cronies using Trump’s presidency to further enrich themselves. That appears to have started already. People connected to past presidencies have done the same. The Trump group is just more obvious, and tackier, in doing so. Yes, it is despicable, but I think no one who watched Trump run for the presidency expected anything less.

I do worry that Donald Trump is going to let his man-crush, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, run rampant in Europe. Don’t be surprised if Putin, in coming months, again invades Ukraine or invades one, if not all, of the Baltic republics.

If and when he does, I would bet Trump will say it is none of the business of the United States, not because he truly believes that but because Trump is a blowhard and a bully. Like most bullies, when he is confronted by a true tough guy … and Putin is a true tough guy … Trump will run and hide. He’ll fold like a cheap lawn chair.

I would guess within months Trump also will use the power of the federal government to try to silence and even arrest those who oppose him in the media, including those who question the “facts” he creates out of thin air. We all have seen how well Trump takes criticism. Now he will have the power of the U.S. Department of Justice to extract revenge. I would not be surprised to see his opponents, even his doubters, be charged with treason.

I can’t speak for others in the media, but I’m going to keep doing what I have been doing in this column for more than 25 years. I will praise our president when he does things I consider right and righteous, but I will point out our president’s mistakes, exaggerations, lies and ego trips, literally and figuratively. I often will try to do so through humor, as making people laugh at absurdities can more effective than angrily preaching to folks about perceived wrongs.

I know I am a relatively small fish in this gigantic sea of the United States of America, but I am compelled by my First Amendment right, even First Amendment duty, to point out abuses by our leaders.

And I will do so over the next year, or the next four years … as long as I am allowed to continue.

Bret Kofford teaches writing at San Diego State University-Imperial Valley campus. His opinions don’t necessarily reflect those of SDSU or its employees. Kofford can be reached atKofford@roadrunner.com