It's been three years of theft of the baseline safety and economic survival customary to our great nation.  Three years of weeknights watching the news in horror while mustering the energy to prepare for the next workday ahead.  And three years of a soap opera that includes treason, active drug addiction, and class condescension.  Yet it was seeing President Trump so enraged after court on Wednesday that brought out a sadness in me beyond years of previous broadcasts.

If I could somehow make myself be the Mick to President Trump's inner Rocky Balboa, I would say, "Kid, it hurts that they're tearing up your hard earned buildings, your businesses, and your family for no good reason.  But look at who's doing the tearing.  Do you see, kid, that they never built anything?  Not one Mar-a-Lago toast, not one Trump Tower ribbon-cutting, not one victory celebration — certainly not one convention with your accomplished adult children cheering you in front of the worldwide audience.  Can these people relate?  Not one part of your love for our county, our way of life, do they share or even understand enough to then know what they are truly opposing."

And then I'd pause and assess the still irked expression and clenched fist and continue: "Kid, you are winning because you have all the goods, still.  You follow that?  See, kid, that's something they can't take from you, just like your name — it's yours, and you own the rights to it.  You can protect your left eye as a southpaw and still use your name to make the best movie since Citizen Kane.  Better than Citizen Kane.  You have heart like Orson Welles, you move like him — fast and fast in thought.  So that's your next shot after all this saving the country and making the world safer is finally set.  Next is your movie.  You'll make back every penny they took.  You follow that, kid?"

The movie, Citizen Trump, would be entertaining and informative.  The film would be ideal for a history class, a business class, and a psychology class.  The start would be the announcement for 2016.  The ending of Trump's speech from the night before he was diagnosed with COVID-China Virus would be the first intermission.  Next would be COVID recovery through 2024.  The final act is what we are living now: the last part of the script, the last round of the fight.  Like all prize fighters, Trump has a love for something that consumes his every breath, an unyielding focus that makes each adversarial stunt a mere ringing of the bell.

And to all patriots barely getting by from what is being done to our streets, our businesses, our appliances choice, vehicles, our very privacy, schools, health care, and access to honest media, there is a fight within us, too.  We are part of a peaceful, real-life example of freedom-loving Americans.  We work, we care for our loved ones, pay bills, clean our homes.  We love our liberty and the country that makes this possible.  We believe in courtrooms where the judge makes a ruling after the legal process and sans camera mugging.  We believe in our right to honest, non-partisan media.  We believe that America is the land of opportunity.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.