Dreams of the Apocalypse

Since Trump was elected president,* I've had several end-of-the world dreams. Last night, I dreamed that North Korea leveled an island in Hawaii, using a nuclear weapon to sink it into the ocean. In the dream, I was staying in Florida, and so trying to figure out if that meant I would be suffering from radiation. I've had other dreams where I'm scavenging for food because there has been a nuclear explosion, and another where I'm trying to figure out how to get a bunch of stray dogs into the basement because a bomb has been launched at us. I watched Home Fires last night, which is a PBS show about people in England during World War I, and all of the men are either leaving or returning damaged, and food is rationed, everyone has to make do, and I thought, Huh, I wonder how I'll manage when this happens again? Thirdly, I've been listening to the NPR podcast called S*Town, a true story about a small rural town in Alabama, featuring a central figure who is convinced that we're inevitably going to be laid to ruins as a country. I know that I'm seeing the connections because I'm afraid--so, I wear a lens of fear and it colors what I encounter--but I also think that it is normal to be afraid because we have a person at the helm who appears to be steering our country into major conflicts with North Korea, Syria, Russia, and possibly China--to name the top four for this month alone. Add to this that he has poor impulse control, a history of lashing out at real or perceived enemies, no experience in politics, little to no understanding of foreign diplomacy, and a massive ego combined with the need to be popular and I think it's not entirely strange to be worried that this particular combination doesn't bode well for an era of peace and progress.
I talked to someone recently who admitted that he likes war--or the idea of war--and it occurs to me too that we are just dying to blow some shit up and reassert dominance by way of massive destruction. I don't understand this. I feel like this is some kind of testosterone-based, devolved part of the primitive male mind and I don't relate. That's probably sexist. But it's hard to be fair-minded these days, especially when I see images of a bunch of white dudes (and sometimes, they're wives) celebrating the destruction of affordable health care. Each day, something new to lodge in the psyche and crawl out in the night. 
(*sort of, not really, his presidency is a sham)
 

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