I visited the Lincoln Memorial last weekend.
The colossal 19-foot statue of Abraham Lincoln loomed above me, looking towards the East. Thinking big thoughts. My friend used to leave cupcakes on the steps for him when she was a child.
It may be inspired by the Greek Parthenon, but it is built of Indiana limestone and Colorado Yule marble and stands for everything great about America.
Just outside, in the cold sunshine, is the spot where, in 1963, Martin Luther King spoke uncomfortable truths about his dream for the nation he fought and loved.
Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural Address are inscribed on the cavernous walls. Reading them in silence, shoulder to shoulder with tourists from around the world. No scrolling here. Just scrolls. And my eyes filled with tears.
They were not for the wife I lost a little over a year ago. Nor for her mom, who died last week of a broken heart.
They were not even for the two-year-old granddaughter who barely knows me now that I live 6,000 miles away.
The tears were for America.
Like so many others, I came to this country with my family as an immigrant, dreaming of a better life. It has been so much more.
But one year after Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office, I despair for our future.
In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln presented the Civil War as a test of the nation’s principles of equality and liberty. Whether the U.S. could “long endure.”
In the November 19, 1863, speech transcribed in stone on the south wall of the memorial, the 16th president was referring to slavery and the proposition that all are created equal. If the country could emerge from the 1861-65 war united with these fundamental beliefs intact, then he believed there was tangible hope of a thriving future.
On the north interior wall, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Speech, delivered on March 4, 1865, strikes a similar theme. If you look carefully halfway down the first panel, you can see where the engraver made a mistake with the word “FUTURE.” He mispelled it as “EUTURE.”
There has been an attempt at a correction, but I couldn’t move on. My eyes became fixed on the mistake, and I became teary as the realization hit me that the FUTURE is now. While we have “long endured,” our constitutional values of liberty and equality have not come so far.
Our current president can boast of his achievements. Some are hyperbole, but he has made a difference. In some cases, for some people, for the better.
But his presidency is blighted by intolerance and inequality. When a commander-in-chief publicly demeans the Somali community, when he suggests every illegal immigrant in the United States is a rapist, a murderer, or a gang member, it gives permission to his supporters to behave in a similar fashion and vent their prejudices. When the leader of a country talks down to a professional woman as Trump does to the journalists who cover him, it shakes the very structure the movement has put in place. And when he belittles and litigates attempts to bring diversity and equality to the workplace, he weakens the strides made for gay and transgender people in America even further.
Trump is undeniably correct about one thing: the American people gave him a mandate to lead.
Few would agree that the cartoonish former Apprentice TV host was a serious man, yet a little more than half the country voted for him anyway. Do they regret it? I hope so, but it’s not like they hadn’t been warned.
Trump 1.0 was chaotic, even comical at times. The 2.0 version is more sinister. His Yes Men and Women (yes, there are now only 2 sexes, according to Trump) have an agenda that is more Robert E. Lee than Abraham Lincoln.
I don’t even believe that Trump is wholly invested in the more repellent right-wing policies he espouses. He has shown he can turn on a dime. He calls Joe Scarborough for a chat. His own advisors admit he is swayed by the last person he talks to. If the Democrats had been more welcoming, he’d probably hate the Republicans right now.
The president is addicted to the cult of Trump, and he will do anything for the greater glory of himself. You only need to listen to him for five minutes to know that.
He’s the small-town mayor with the most powerful country on the planet to play with. Instead of cutting ribbons to open supermarkets, he names buildings and roads after himself.
And why would anyone expect a billionaire who has always been at least a millionaire to have a clue what the people of the United States really want, let alone what they need.
If the cracks in the nation were showing in November 2024, they are now a chasm.
I came to D.C. three days before the president began his second term on January 20, 2025. Back in the days when the Kennedy Center was named after just one president.
The Two-Face lunacy of Elon Musk’s DOGE, with his band of merry tech teens, didn’t last long, but their legacy will take years to recover from. USAID funding to poor countries around the globe was cut off without warning or explanation, and federal workers were fired the same way.
Most of Musk’s goons have returned to their cushy tech jobs. What do they care about the collateral damage? Lost federal jobs, missed mortgage payments, and impoverished villages without food or innoculations.
DOGE was a failed experiment with countless lives destroyed by careless cruelty. Musk went off to top up his billions, and Trump moved on without looking back, as he always does.
On the positive side, the markets are holding up and inflation is stable. The rich are getting richer. Facts are malleable.
If you believe Trump, his secret sauce is the tariffs he introduced so chaotically in April. They gave him leverage and enabled him to pursue his agenda, however accidentally. But is fear and intimidation the way the United States should do business? Bullies are never popular and they often come to a sticky end.
He claims the tariffs are bringing billions into the economy, but who will benefit?
All I know is that my daughter, who works for a sustainable children’s clothing company, wakes every morning hoping Trump will cut the 50 percent tariff he randomly placed on goods from India so she can afford to bring her products into the country. She is far from alone. While Trump crows, businesses are dying.
Epstein has been a recurrent theme throughout the year and one of the few issues the president has struggled to contain. Maybe he has something to hide, maybe not. But the wealthy stick together regardless of politics. Or the truth.
Washington is no safer now than it was when I arrived with Trump in the nation’s capital. National Guard troops stationed outside Metro stations and around the monuments have nothing to do. Restaurants are busy, but no busier than before. The price of eggs may be down somewhere, but they are sure as hell not in my neighborhood store.
The president is performative. He conducts his office like a reality show, steering his public towards the narratives that will keep them hooked. His Cabinet is actors playing parts.
But there are signs he is losing his audience. The ICE thuggery has resulted in the unnecessary death of one woman and injuries to countless others. MAGA’s America First supporters are tiring of Trump’s meddling abroad. His claim that the affordability issue is a hoax is insulting to people who can see the difference in their bank balances and pocketbooks.
Knowing what we do about Trump, 79, and his dwindling patience, his instincts will be to double down rather than take stock. As a result, America—and the world—will be less safe.
Trump is not looking ahead. Everything he does is framed in the now. At his age, this is almost his last spin of the dice. It’s why he doesn’t care about gas-guzzling cars or climate change. He won’t be around to suffer the consequences.
I walked away from the Lincoln Memorial with a deep sense of unease. So much history erased by one man. So much faith in our fellow man. From difficult beginnings, the United States has grown out of a bond and a belief that literally anything is possible if we stand together.
How can it be possible that we find ourselves so far apart?
Trump will know it’s unlikely anyone is going to erect a statue for him when he’s gone. He has three years to build one himself. But he won’t need to worry about getting the spelling of FUTURE right.
The way he is going, we may not have one.
