Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

Count on one thing: in some almost unimaginable future, no American president (if we even have them anymore) is going to rename a mountain for Donald Trump as he’s recently tried to do with North America’s tallest peak. He wants Alaska’s Mount Denali (to hell with Native American names!) to be called Mount McKinley in honor of President William McKinley, the man who, in the 1890s, launched this country as an imperial power of the first order.

Of course, it’s just possible that someday someone running (or do I mean: walking, hobbling, limping?) this country might rename the Bertha Rogers Borehole, the deepest hole (now plugged and abandoned) in North America, for President Trump. After all, it should be clear enough that, with a helping hand from the world’s richest man, he’s already taking this country down in a remarkable fashion. It seems that we now inhabit an ever more strikingly 3D world and call me D (as in depressed) about it.

Once upon a time, 3D was a form of movie-making in which — I remember this from my youth in the 1950s — something could seemingly fly off the screen and grab you by the throat (or an arrow, spear, or missile could whiz right at you).

Today, 3D (at least to me) has quite a different meaning. The 3Ds of the world of my old age (and believe me they, too, can in some fashion reach right off the screen and grab you by the throat) are The Donald, Dysdopia, and Decline. And yes, I’ve admittedly done a little 3D fiddling of my own with that classic word “dystopia” meant for a deeply negative, apocalyptically horrific future world (think 1984, or do I mean 2025?) — the very opposite, in other words, of utopia. I’ve replaced its “t” with that extra “d” in “honor” (and indeed, that word does have to go in quotation marks) of Donald Trump who is already ushering us into what looks to be the most devastatingly disastrous presidency in this country’s long history.

Denier-in-Chief

In case you don’t think he’s taking us all for one hell of a ride, think again. After all, he and his family started cashing in on his second presidency even before it began. As the New York Times reported, three days ahead of his inauguration, he announced on his social media account that his family had issued a cryptocurrency called $Trump. And if that stumps (or do I mean $trumps?) you, I’m hardly shocked. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn, in fact, that each of its memecoins quickly surged in value from eight cents to $75 before — of course! — dropping off a cliff. It’s now estimated that it made the Trump Organization and its partners an instant $100 million or more, while other crypto-traders lost an estimated $2 billion in the process. And if that doesn’t sum........

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