Flickr / Dale Chumbley

Seeing Robert Mueller hover over Donald J. Trump like a starving owl gliding in the winds above its soon-to-be swooped up prey – well that kind of makes my day.

And the way I’ve been feeling lately, with my daughter having passed away, I appreciate any little chuckle that comes my way.

Now, I don’t usually like to laugh at somebody else’s expense, at somebody else’s pain, as that goes against the grain of my nature.

But this man has touched emotions in me I didn’t even know I had. I mean, one day I’m listening to somebody on MSNBC or CNN describe one of his daily shenanigans and I find myself jumping up on my feet yelling out loud, “Why doesn’t somebody off that sick jive-ass mother____r!”

Then I’m asking myself “Was that me?” And I feel a little shame -– for about two seconds.

It’s just that nothing seems to me more hope-inspiring than the thought that this man could be gone before long. Makes me want to dance to a “Celebrate good times, come on!” kind of beat.

I’m more and more realizing how I’ve been mourning all along, before my daughter died, mourning over how this man has heaped abuse on us with a highly dysfunctional kind of behavior that can best be described, from A to Z, as: alarming, boorish, conning, diabolic, egregious, farcical, greedy, hateful, inflammatory, jacked up, kaleidoscopic, lieful, mystifying, narcissistic, over the top, racist, perverse, quarreling, stupefying, treasonous, unnerving, vexing, woeful, xenophobic, yucky, zany — just to name a few.

This man’s behavior, to say the least, has been so different when it comes to presidents. I think back to how when my daughter came into the world, in 1957, I was a freshman at the U of A and my mind was still developing when it came to, “Who do you want for president?”

But I had thoughts about the subject. I knew, from my childhood memories, that years earlier Franklin Delano Roosevelt had stood tall when we were at war against mighty enemies.

And Harry Truman was the main man to so many black folks because he mixed the races in the military.

Dwight Eisenhower was in the oval office when Debbie came into the world and I will always remember him for coming through with federal troops to help nine black students in Arkansas feel safe at their school.

Then along came JFK in 1959 when I was eligible to vote, and I cast mine for him. Debbie was but a 3-year-old then, and I was in my last year of college, getting my community activism around human dignity and equality up and running.

And here I am in the first quarter of the 21^st Century, my daughter gone at 60, witnessing a president trying to tear down everything I hold dear.

I’ve protested all the wars beginning with Vietnam and struggled to lessen the military’s presence in our schools, and this president plays “double dare you” with North Korea with whom we’ve warred before, and I’m shivering knowing that one of Debbie’s four grandkids, my great-grandchild, could be summoned to participate in this madness.

It bothers me deeply that our president sees people of Mexican descent as “murderers” and “rapists” when 66 years ago we black kids and Mexican kids on my side of town made integration work easily at John Spring Junior High, our neighborhood school.

This man represents so much déjà vu for me as I recall a boy I knew as a kid who was shot, unarmed, by the police, and today unarmed black youth still are being shot down as “beasts” in our streets by the police. And a few NFL players kneel on their knees, instead of standing when the National Anthem is played, and the president calls them ungrateful unpatriotic “sons of bitches” who should be fired.

And what’s with him and Russia? I was once scorned for being in a student group, Students for Equality, that had in its membership one person who was a “commie” which automatically made you, in society’s eyes back then, as one who sympathized with the Soviet Union.

And this president embraces today’s Russia warmly and openly when they’ve tried to destroy our very democracy. The man has absolutely no sense of history.

But he is squirming a bit right now and that to me is a sign of hope. Hope that he is about to get his due, so we can go about trying to keep hope, itself, alive without his freak show in our faces every day.

Just thinking of hope of any kind somewhat eases the pain I feel from losing Debbie, if only momentarily. And it reminds me that, as long as I breathe, I have our offspring, hers and mine, counting on me to continue doing all I can to create a more just world. So they can do the same down the line for humankind.

Meanwhile, I’m hoping that Mueller some day swoops down on Donald J.

That would really make my day.

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Ernie McCray

I was raised in a loving and alive home, in a black neighborhood filled with colorful characters in Tucson, Arizona. Such an environment gave me a hint that life has to be grabbed by the tail as tight as a pimple on a mosquito's butt. With no BS and a whole lot of love. So, from those days to now I get up every morning set on making the world a better place. On my good foot*, and I hope my writing reflects that. *an old black expression

Latest posts by Ernie McCray (see all)

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