And here is the good news

News is almost always bad news. By definition. You don’t need it to be a “if it bleeds it leads” kind of TV station to know that in your bones. If you report that in the last twenty-fours, there have been no big traffic accidents, murders, wildfires, earthquakes, or political scandals, your ratings will hover around zero. Dog bites mail carrier is not news. Carrier mauls dog is. It raises all the classical questions of who, when, where, how and how come.

Don’t trust media like Fox News that, like many others around the world, only report positive news about the Big Orange, the Dear Leader, the shirtless man on horseback, and the Supreme Leader. Yes, real news is usually bad news, especially lately. That is for many reasons, including unusually frequent and deadly natural disasters. The other disaster is human; the man who sucks out much of the air out of the global news is nothing but bad news.

This administration pumps out awful news like Detroit use to make cars, on a fast and furious industrial scale. Today it cuts food assistance to hungry people. Tomorrow it wants to lower the quality of food public schools feed kids. The next day it announces plans to loosen the rules against racial discrimination, or lethal pollution, or water quality. Suddenly there is an assassination in violation of international law and rationalized by a bogus reason. It’s a horn of plenty of news of the worst kind.

But the news, even now, is not all bad. There is good news. We need it. Resistance requires realistic hope. Some of the positive news affects only one or a few people. Others have a wider ripple effect. A few others have world-historical significance. Donald Trump notwithstanding, the human potential for caring, for courage, and for decency is still high. Many people reflexively recognize the right thing and do it.

On a scorching day in Manhattan, Julio De Leon was riding his road bike, commuting from his home in Rockland, N.Y., to his job as a doorman on the upper West Side. De Leon, 61, does the challenging ride every Thursday and never stops on the way. From an immigrant Dominican family of 10, De Leon made an exception this time when he spotted a young man on the ledge getting ready to leap off the bridge to his death 200 feet below. He dismounted and coaxed the man away from the ledge and held him until a bystander called the police and dragged hm to safety. Questions about immigration status don’t factor into the story. Spontaneous solidarity and the value of life did.

Shitholes exist in the minds of shit people and reflect their character, not geographical location. Other people soar above the material misery of their circumstances. Mary Keitmily was a young woman from an extremely poor family in Kenya who loved running but couldn’t afford shoes. She quit running and took a job as a maid to help support her family. Through hard work, a steely determination, natural talent, and a bit of good luck, she was able to resume running. By 2019 the 5 foot 2, 93-pound athlete, had won seven major marathons, including New York City and Boston.

No shoes, but no bone spurs here either, only courage, determination, ability, and aspiration. These traits are determined by something deeper than place of birth or parental wealth. Like character. Those are the kind of people you want to call fellow citizens. The American Dream is moribund, perhaps, under the weight of plutocracy and irrationality, but the human dream is still alive even among the most disadvantaged people from the poorest countries.

Then, sometimes, the worst news turns out in the end to be good news. The massive wildfire in Australia, along with many other natural catastrophes around the world, are human and ecological tragedies that may turn out to be the wake-up call needed for the post-Trump United States to finally get serious about climate change.

And the best news of all is that Donald Trump has been impeached and disgraced for all time. Minimal just desserts for a racist who put kids in cages, sold his country out to smear a political opponent, insulted our best allies, sucked-up to tyrants, and then denied it all on the way to setting a world record for lying.

Sure, he will be acquitted by a Senate dominated by Republicans who lack a scintilla of integrity, or respect for the rule of law or the Constitution. Nor courage. Trump’s confederates will share his shame and be forever remembered as profiles in cowardice. In 2016, Hillary called half of Trump supporters “deplorable” and was slammed for it. Trump’s Senate toadies  are worse. They are despicable sycophants. I would not be surprised if some of them would be inclined to support Trump even if he raped their mother.

The Democrats must move heaven and earth to show the American people, live on television, the kangaroo court the Senate trial will be. The Republicans will like to hold a virtually secret trial, quick and very dirty, with some of the most important proceedings in American history taking place long after the average citizen has gone to sleep.

Sunshine, they say, is the best disinfectant. Lots of it is needed to sanitize this most fetid of administrations. The Democrats need to shine a bright spotlight on the trial that will force all but the most benighted to see through the fog that stands in for substance under the Trump regime. Will they? I am not so sure.

Trump should be removed from office not because X number of people loathe him, including me. He should be convicted for his multiple offenses against the Constitution and his serial lawbreaking. Period.

On a personal note, however, I have known, either personally or through the mass media, more than my share of nasty, obnoxious, asinine, arrogant characters. People with negative numbers on any simpatico scale. But no one compares with Donald J. Trump.

I try not to traffic in insult. I try not to abuse profanity. But I also write to communicate my true beliefs and feelings as directly as possible. If the best word there is to describe how I see Donald Trump is a profane insult, so be it.

Donald Trump is the biggest asshole that I, along with millions of other Americans who suffer watching him make a joke of our country on the national and world stage each and every day, have had to endure.

Asshole. Even the immensely rich English language has no more apt word.