Burke: When paranoia seems like a reasonable response

By Tom Burke

Do you remember that 1960s Buffalo Springfield song, “For What it’s Worth,” and the lyric “Paranoia strikes deep, into your life it will creep?” I do. And paranoia isn’t creeping into my life…it’s flying at me like a fast ball through a plate glass window.

Every time I turn read or watch the news, I do so with fear and a near-paralytic dread.

Will I discover Donald J. Trump has just fired more people, thrown a bunch of cruise missiles at North Korea, stonewalled Congress, blurted out yet another state secret, took health care away from 20 million people, ignored Russian hacking, defunded the restoration of Puget Sound, or that he lied (again)?

Does anyone seriously believe he’s not capable of all that, and more?

So, I’ve been grappling with what I’d do when he does something colossally dangerous, reacting to, say, a terrorist attack in the U.S., the Cascadia Fault’s Big One, military action by North Korea, or Russia downing one of our planes.

I ask myself what I’ll do if he declares a national emergency and imposes martial law. Think he wouldn’t try? Really?

So, first thing in the morning, before I get out of bed, I flick on my tablet and start my morning ritual scanning CNN, N.Y. Times, Washington Post, Seattle Times, The Herald and Fox News for the latest.

Then, after my ablutions, it’s make coffee and review the online news. Next, over my Cheerios, I read the Seattle Times and Herald print editions. Finally, I return to the real world of family, community, cleaning up the dishes and trying to live life, but checking back every hour or so … just in case. At the end of the day, it’s channel surfing cable news, the late local news, and then to bed.

I never used to live like that even when I was a spokesman for two Maryland governors or director of communications for a New York municipality with a population of 485,000. Perhaps I was simply too busy working and raising a family, or I just had faith in people and our governmental institutions.

A reader who regularly contacts me, emailed a short missive after my last column, simply stating I was a “paranoid mother-plus-six-more-letters.” That’s all. (He clearly worked hard to achieve such eloquence and I appreciate measured, thoughtful discourse from an ardent Trump supporter.)

But he got me thinking. Am I paranoid? Too paranoid? Or simply facing the reality that no one, not even his staff or family, has the slightest idea of what Donald Trump is capable of or how Congress or anyone else would react.

So I worry about what I’d do if Trump went too far.

Clearly I’d write a column. Oookay. Then? Writing my Congressional representatives is useless, all are Democrats and have no power against the Republican House and Senate.

Marching in the streets wouldn’t help as Tumpites have already written off Seattle and its environs as a liberal sinkhole and nothing we do here counts for them.

So what else? Recoil in horror? Trust Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell or Mike Pence to save the republic? (I take some consolation that Jim Mattis is Secretary of Defense.)

So I’m flummoxed. I always trusted our elected officials would do the right thing, or at least not the really wrong thing, the thing that threated lives and liberty.

But trusting Donald Trump? He’s done nothing to earn my trust. He lied and bullied when he was a business mogul/TV star (and bragged about it); he lied and bullied on the campaign trail (and famously bragged about it, saying he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue. and his people wouldn’t care); and he’s lied and bullied as president.

Donald Trump has no stated belief system. His words (by his own on-videotape, recorded statement) are meaningless and worthless the nano-second they escape his lips. He’ll turn on anyone, for anything, in a New York minute. And he has no experience dealing with crisis.

So I ask you, like that TV show theme song asked, “What ya gonna do when he comes for you … and your liberty, health insurance, clean air, clean water, tax money, college scholarships, protection against rapacious banks, the Job Corps, SBA loans, Big Bird and PBS, National Institutes of Health, teacher training? Or the long-term care for your elderly parents, women’s health services, nursing home assistance, food for the poor, Meals-on-Wheels, mortgage deductions, food safety inspections, and your very right to an open and transparent government?”

Trusting Trump isn’t the stuff of songs, I’m afraid; it’s whistling past the graveyard.

Tom Burke’s email address is t.burke.column@gmail.com.