It’s two days before the midterms, and I’m looking out my office window at the wind blowing the trees in the cold November rain. I should be making one final pitch about voting Democrat down the ticket, ’cause nothin’ lasts forever, and we both know hearts can change. (Sorry about that earworm.)

Instead, I’m going to write about something else. It’s a small thing in the scope of two long years of atrocities committed by an administration full of garbage human beings, but I can’t stop thinking about that umbrella Trump dropped before he got on Air Force One.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been working with literary devices for so long, as a reader, student, teacher, and writer, but as soon as I saw the video, I knew that umbrella was a symbol.







Or, to put it another way, for all of you Snowflakes out there with useless English degrees:

so much depends

upon

the corrupt

president’s umbrella

glazed with

rainwater

beside air force

one

Okay, MAGA cult, let’s talk metaphor for a minute. What did you think when you saw Trump drop that umbrella? Nothing at all, right? That’s probably because you were homeschooled by unqualified religious weirdo parents or you attended a school in a Red State (or a Red town in a Blue State) where education isn’t a priority and where your teachers spent more time railing against banned books and teaching you to stupidly re-state the thesis in the conclusion than teaching you how to analyze and interpret.

You know, the kind of teachers who would wear border wall and Mexican costumes to school at Halloween without a second thought about the kind of message their actions might send.

Luckily for you, I’m the product of an excellent New York State public school and university education, so let me NYsplain it for you, East Coast Elite style. (For the record, my Dad, a lifelong New Yorker, Irish American, Democrat, Air Force veteran, and blue-collar worker would have laughed himself silly if anyone had ever called our family East Coast Elites.)

On a purely literal level, Trump dropped the umbrella on his way onto Air Force One because he doesn’t know how to close one because he’s never had to do it for himself, and he knows there will always be a lackey around to pick up whatever he drops.

In simple terms, this means you guys voted for and still support a man who has never had to feel rain on his face because he’s always had a doorman there to hold an umbrella over his head as he walks from cushy penthouse to cushy limo.

You can tell rain is an annoyance he’s never had to deal with because he joked about cancelling his rally (on the day of the worst deadly attack of Jews on American soil) because he was “having a bad hair day.” Some of you guys probably thought that was funny, because fuck the Jews, right?

But you know what’s really funny? If there’s such a thing as an East Coast Elite, Trump is the Platonic form. (Oh, right. You guys don’t study the Greeks because they were homos.) You worship a pathetically helpless guy who can’t do anything for himself, who doesn’t even know how to close an umbrella. Someone who has never had to stand in the rain or feel the cold, get his hands dirty, take care of his possessions, or clean up after himself.

Your hardworking ancestors would have despised Trump and would be ashamed of you for supporting him now. He’s a flabby, soft-palmed dandy who is more worried about his shellacked hair and shitty spray tan running down his face than raising the minimum wage to make your dollar go further, or keeping college costs low so your kids can pay for school (even a B.A. in Conservative Indoctrination at Hillsdale is $27,000+ a year), or maintaining good trade relations with other countries so your farms and factories remain viable.

Joke’s on you, though, because you are that umbrella.

Starting to get the symbolism yet?

Just like the umbrella, Trump used you and tossed you aside. You were there for him, but what have you gotten in return? A wall? Nope. Tax cuts? Nope. Affordable healthcare? Nope. Higher wages? Nope. Stronger immigration laws? Nope. Because, as Sarah Sanders and every other member of Trump’s lying administration is quick to tell you, he’s only doing what Obama already had on the books.

Is your Social Security and Medicare safe, like Trump promised it would be? Nope. They’re coming for that next. But what about Crazy Bernie and the goddamn socialists, amirite?

You. Are. Disposable.

Trump never has to care about the messes he leaves behind because there’s always someone there to pick them up. In the case of the umbrella, it was a Secret Service agent. Imagine being that guy. You train to be a security expert, all cool and tough-looking with the dark glasses and suit, and then the whole world gets to watch you pick up the dumbass President’s umbrella because he doesn’t know how to close it.

In the case of the country, it will be the Democrats. How many times have Democrats had to pick up the pieces after Republicans ran up the national debt, gave corporations free reign to exploit consumers, and the bottom fell out of the economy? But I guess you guys don’t care about the debt anymore, huh? Party of fiscal responsibility, my ass.

The truth is, Trump and his enablers don’t care about you or the rest of us in the middle class. Like that umbrella, we’re all expendable. He used you guys to get to the top of the stairs, and now he’s going to toss you aside like the rest of us who never supported him in the first place. You’re not getting on Air Force One with him (you’re not even in his thoughts, suckers), but you sure as hell are going to pay for all that gas to fly it.

I know. I know. It doesn’t matter what I say. Most of you are going to keep supporting the lazy, fatass father of anchor babies, who employs foreign workers in his foreign factories and domestic properties, who cheated on all three of his wives, who never pays taxes, who never goes to church even though he was “chosen by God,” who has cheated thousands of blue-collar workers out of their pay, and who has swindled thousands of people out of hard-earned money they thought they were using to further their education at Trump U.

If that’s the guy you think your parents, grandparents, and everyone before them would have respected, by all means get out there and vote for his supporters, enablers, and clones in the midterms. Because immigrants are invading the country, right? Mmhmm. Just like your hard-working, uneducated, unskilled ancestors who were exploited by people like Trump.

The rest of us? We need to vote like a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.