The Inauguration   I know what has happened is horrible. We will get through it. Last summer, we were all looking forward to January. A woman we have known for years in charge of the ship. Things seemed so light and wonderful. New hope. Who could not have a skip in their step? Now, it is a bitter pill. Some of us are wondering how we are going get through it. The world is now bleak and desolate.  Too many people are wondering how they are going to get through the next few months.   I am here to comfort America. We are a strong people, a good people. We have faced adversity in the past and overcome it. We will survive... even if we now have to wait until the fall for the new Star Trek television series, Star Trek Discovery. Oh, you thought I was talking about Donald Trump becoming president? No, we are all totally screwed on that. Best case scenario, it all ends in a 3 a.m. tweet, a bright light, and a ball of flames. Worst case, it is an eight-year marathon of The World According To Jim, without the laugh track.    There is not a hint of irony that on January 20 we swore in Donald J. Trump as our 45 th  and last President of the United States and, on Saturday, the nation observed National Hugging Day, or, as it has been renamed, Let It Out, Let It All Out, It Is Okay To Cry, Let It All Out, We’ll Get Through This Day.   Still, you need to focus on the bright side. At Trump’s inauguration, somebody got to punch a Nazi in the face during the protests. My first reaction was to ask if it was a Make A Wish kid, because I have wanted to punch a Nazi since I was six? I am pretty sure that, if you called up the Make A Wish foundation, they would tell you that request is right up there with meeting Tom Brady or Aaron Rogers.   I know, violence is always wrong. But punching a real life Nazi? God sees everything, but even Jesus would be like, “Sorry, what just happened? Somebody punched a Nazi? I must have dozed off. With all these liberals praying since the election, I haven’t been getting my sleep. I hope it was not one of Trump’s cabinet members?”  (I want to make this perfectly clear. I am not comparing Donald Trump to Adolph Hitler. It was a joke. Hitler did not have a Twitter account.)   Sadly, there were other acts of violence during the protests. Someone threw a brick or rock through a Starbuck’s Coffee Shop window. Thank God the police were on hand to protect the Starbuck’s right next door.  Even though the vast majority of protestors were peaceful, conservatives were quick to point out that this was an example of a generation where everyone got a trophy, God was taken out of school, and spankings outlawed.   Never mind the individuals responsible were anarchists. The big anarchist flag behind them should have been a clue as to whom they were.  Anarchists have been around and causing problems since children labored in factories from dawn to dusk, schools could beat a kid’s backside until it resembled a Jackson Pollack painting, and it was horrible to be a woman, homosexual, or minority, or, as Donald Trump calls it, back when America was great.   (On a side note, I know dozens of people who were involved in the various VEISHEA riots, where a bunch of middle class white kids in Iowa rioted because they are idiots. Most of them are now Trump supporters. Violence is never acceptable, except if you are punching a Nazi. It defeats the very cause you are fighting for. Being a dumbass comes in all shapes, sizes, and political persuasions.)    The other bright moment of the inauguration was watching President George W. Bush end up on the wrong end of a wrestling match with a plastic rain poncho. When it started to rain during the inauguration or, as most people called it, God’s tears, W. tried to put on the clear plastic poncho provided for him.  You know how you tell your child not to put a plastic bag over their head? It was that kind of teaching moment. It is also why you never take a six-year-old to anything important. He twisted, he turned, he struggled, and I thought we were watching a president die on national television. At least it looked like an old Saturday Night Live Chevy Chase pratfall skit.  I was thinking, poor Pappy Bush is in the hospital.  We don’t need another Carrie Fisher/Debbie Reynolds moment so soon. And just like that, W. freed himself from his plastic coffin. I am not judging. I am just saying, if a man cannot figure out how to put on a clear plastic rain poncho, Americans need to be a little sheepish about admitting we put him in charge of our nuclear missiles for eight years. Maybe he figured out what we are going to go through the next four to eight years and is smarter than the rest of us.   I was happy to see Trump got some big names, okay, not big names, more like warm bodies, to perform at his inauguration; Tim Rushlow, Toby Keith, the Lord of the Dance Michael Flatley, Jon Voight (and not the John Voight that had previously owned George Costanza’s car, he had a prior engagement), 3 Doors Down, and Lee Greenwood.They are collectively known as the performers on The Free Stage at the Iowa State Fair this summer. Branson, Missouri must have been like a ghost town.  Even a Dawn-less Tony Orlando showed up. He hasn’t had a hit song in over 41 years. Which means that, if comedian Shecky Greene plays his cards right, he will headlining the White House Correspondences’ Dinner this year.   The highlight of the inauguration was, of course, the inaugural address, the moment that Donald Trump finally shows the American people that he can be presidential. No more Twitter wars with actors, dancers, and singers. No more attacking women, grieving parents, or disabled reporters. He was on the same stage as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and John Kennedy. The perfect moment for uplifting rhetoric that would bring the American people together. Surrounded by several of the former presidents, his oldest two boys, the First Sons most likely to feed a woman through a wood chipper, his wife, his son-in-law who will do all the reading for him the next four years, Senators, Congressmen, (well, the white ones), Washington dignitaries, Sauron, Simon Legree, and dozens of well wishers. It was to be a new era, an entrance to Trump’s Camelot.    We did not get that. It appears that we are one bad burrito away from a cross between Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Lord of the Flies. I figured that unemployment is at 4.7 percent, gas at $2.33, 82 months of private sector job growth, the highest high school graduation rate in the history of the country, 20 million American having health care that never had it before, the first drop in the federal prison population, ISIS is on the run, Bin Laden is dead, we are growing closer to normalizing relations with Cuba, we aren’t torturing prisoners anymore, the U.S. auto industry was saved, the deficit has shrunk, gays are allowed to get married, and the don’t ask/don’t tell military ban was overturned. This sounds good to me. Boy was I wrong. America is basically an outhouse strapped into a rollercoaster car.    Thank goodness we have Trump, a Secretary of Energy that did not know he would be in charge of our nukes, a Secretary of Education who thinks schools should have guns to defend the children from grizzly bears, a Secretary of Labor who doesn’t believe in a minimum wage or overtime pay, and a Secretary of the Treasury who foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman who owed 27 cents due to a payment error with her insurance. They are there to save us.    There is something wrong when the fifteen members of Trump’s potential cabinet are worth more than the combined wealth of one- third of Americans. I don’t have a joke for that one. Sorry. You can say a lot of things about that but I don’t think caring about average people is one of them. I guess America is great again in a Great Gatsby sort of way.   Trump quickly left Washington for a weekend vacation at Mar-a-lago. I am sure the White House security will be toughened. Nobody wants to see Melania make an escape. It is going to be an interesting four years.