Allow me my own alternative fact...

This cartoon by Liam Francis Walsh, which appeared in the February 22, 2016 issue of The New Yorker, is both brilliant and funny. Who doesn’t remember those terrors in the night, worrying that if you put your feet on the floor, something under your bed would grab you? I was lucky with both my dad and mom who were there to reassure me there was nothing lurking in my bedroom...nothing to grab me and eat me, anyway. My imagination was very powerful.

Copyright 2016 The New Yorker
Based on current events, seeing the cartoon again the other day gave me a completely different spin. Just 7 weeks into the Trump presidency, I see the monster as Trump, carrying off innocent citizens who have done nothing wrong, and the dad peering under the bed being representative of those Trump fans who refuse to see the monster in him.

After all, we had example after example in nearly two years of campaigning that a belligerent Trump has only a passing acquaintance with truth. He believes that when something, no matter how outrageous, comes out of his mouth and gets reported, that makes it true. Then when the fact checkers get through with him, he just blames the news media for being “fake.” (Dictionary makers take heed: there is now a whole new definition of the word “fake.”) Trump gets his information from people online or on cable TV that we think of as total screwballs. That may be unprecedented in modern history.

I have so many questions about Trump, most of them unanswered for what I think are legal reasons: people who know the worst things about Trump are probably silenced by having to sign non-disclosure agreements. I am sure his ex-wives have signed them, and I wouldn’t doubt that even his children and current spouse have signed them. We know nothing of Trump’s medical history. Sometimes I wonder if he is on drugs, or exhibiting signs of dementia. Is there some requirement that a president take a physical? A quick check shows that no, there is not.

There are so many things we are able to observe about Trump which make him seem the most unlikely and unqualified person in America to be its president. Yet he still has millions of fans who think he is doing just great.

With all of that weighing on my mind at the moment maybe you'll understand why I looked at the cartoon and saw an “alternative fact” for its meaning.