In some ways, with at least two-plus more years of Trumpworld in order (or do I mean disorder?), it may not matter as much as so many of us might hope that the Democrats won the House and Senate recently! Honestly, can you even believe this world of… well, I was going to say “ours,” but I doubt that’s appropriate anymore?

These days — some days at least — nothing could convince this 82-year-old that he’s not living in a fantasy world from hell on a planet created from the worst nightmare of some mad god. I mean, Donald J. Trump as president of the United States? All these years later, I still don’t really believe it. (Well, believe it, Tom!)

Certain days, I pick up the New York Times, which I still read on paper a day late (compared to the online Times, of course), and find it hard to imagine that someone with a deeply bizarre imagination isn’t making up our present version of “the news.” I mean, at what might be considered the moment of greatest peril in human history (and don’t even mention climate change, given the following three names), Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Benjamin Netanyahu lead all too significant countries. Honestly, can you even believe it?

Whoops, let me take back that comment about climate change. I do want to mention our already overheating planet right now! After all, here’s “our” president on the subject: “I also declared a national emergency on energy and terminated the Green New Scam, one of the greatest hoaxes in the history of our country.”

The Green New Scam? How could a near-majority (49.8%) of us ever have voted such a climate-change denier (among so many other strange things) back into the White House in 2024 in a world on the brink of — well, I think, under the circumstances, this word is all too sadly apt — hell? And although his approval numbers continue to sink (to 30% in one key poll most recently), you (whoever you are) simply won’t give me (or so many other people on this planet) a break, will you?

Although that was indeed a question, sadly, the answer is all too obvious: Not a break in sight. Not for the next two years anyway, no matter the makeup of Congress. Not on this planet anymore. (Dream on!)

And I’m pissed! Why wouldn’t you, whoever you are, give me (and so many others who have done nothing wrong) even the tiniest break? Unfortunately, considering what still passes for our world these days, I knew the answer to that question before I even asked it!

Oh, yes, of course, the Democrats did just win control of the House and Senate in a “blue tsunami,” but, but, but…! After all, in Donald Trump’s world, which is also indeed “ours” — and yes, I do think I need to put that word in sarcastic quotation marks — and no one else’s, don’t assume that will mean too much. Congress? Honestly, when it comes to that body — to use an appropriate word in a country whose president seems to be focused not on assets but on “asses“ — who would care about anything but its butts?

Here, in any case, is my next question: How could we humans really be this dumb?

Based on the recent elections, it does seem as if American voters are, at least, starting to wake up from this strange Trumpian dream (as in nightmare of the first order, of course) that we’re all living (sleeping?) through. Still, give them (us) (dis)credit. Honestly, how could American voters have elected You Know Exactly Whom not once, but twice (and yes, that word does need to be italicized since, once, not twice, upon a time, it would have simply been unbelievable) as president of the once (sorry for the repeat there!) most powerful and prestigious country on this planet? And yes (again!), I correctly put a question mark there, but I feel as if it probably should have been another exclamation point, since who can believe anything much in this world of ours anymore?!! And speaking about exclamation points, don’t you sometimes feel that we might now be living in an upside-down exclamation point of a world? (Whoops, there’s a question mark again!)

Hey, billionaire Secretary of Education Linda MacMahon, who is cutting the funding for so much in her professional world and actually lobbying Congress to shut down the Department of Education (who needs an education after all?), has just spent $43,000 of our taxpayer dollars on office furniture for herself! I mean, honestly, who in the U.S. government wouldn’t want a top-notch new desk from which to shut down everything? Oh, sorry, that certainly deserves an exclamation point rather than a question mark! But what doesn’t on Donald J. Trump’s planet!!? (And don’t for a second think that that’s truly a question either!)

Who Wouldn’t Want to Vote for a Sausage-Fingered Republican Candidate With a Well-Muscled Ass?

Of course, that’s just to start down an ever-lengthening, ever more bizarre list of once unbelievable things that have become all too believable. In the age of Trump, you never need to make anything up, do you? Not when you have a president who didn’t think twice about commenting on former football star and Ohio Republican Senator Jon Husted’s “ass” on the campaign trail. As he later described it, “And I said, ‘His ass was like a big piece of muscle. His feet were massive. His hands, his fingers looked like sausages. My hands aren’t bad, but his fingers looked like sausages.’”

Hey, the perfect Trumpian question lurks right there: Who wouldn’t want to vote for a sausage-fingered Republican candidate with a well-muscled ass? What more do you need to know about any candidate in Donald’s world? I can’t imagine!

And mind you, when you consider how “our” somewhat raspy-voiced president responded to a reporter who recently asked whether he was “sick of traveling” — “Oh, you’re sick to ask that question… You’ve been following me for two weeks. I feel perfect. You are disgusting. Put yourself in shape. You look like hell” — you know that you’re in Donald Trump’s world (and no one else’s) in a big-time way, even if American voters didn’t seem to know it this time around.

Of course, I haven’t even truly gotten started on Trumpworld these days, have I? Honestly, who could? In case you haven’t had faintly enough of it in this post-election moment, here’s something else to look forward to: a return to “our” president’s war against Iran. Who wouldn’t have voted for that (although, in truth, who knows what Donald Trump will do anywhere on any issue at any time)?

And on that issue, of course, you can’t totally blame Donald Trump. After all, it is historically remarkable that in the 80 years since World War II ended in victory in August 1945, the greatest imperial power (possibly ever) hasn’t been able to win a single war of significance and nonetheless couldn’t (and still can’t) stop fighting them. Right now, “our” president, the one who got elected the first time around on a promise never to take this country back to war, may indeed be prepared to return to battle with Iran, a conflict that has already closed the Strait of Hormuz (among other disasters) and caused the global economy to tank, creating an “energy affordability crisis” in this country just before an American election.

Consider his war with Iran, in fact, the one way that Donald Trump has proven to be distinctly presidential (in the modern American sense of the term).

After all, here we are on a planet — if you’re paying the slightest attention — distinctly going down, down, down (in climate change terms, of course), where the leader of what still might be the mightiest country on Earth refuses to even believe that a climate crisis is occurring. I mean, that should be the definition of madness in this world of… well, perhaps not ours… in 2026. But count on this: a month or two from now, depending on what President Trump does next, I’m sure I’ll have to rework my definition of global madness.

Meanwhile, thanks in part to him (and, of course, to so much else), we all now live on a planet that is, sadly enough, becoming a question mark of the first order.

This piece first appeared on Tom’s Substack.