Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com 

When my three-year-old granddaughter and I took walks, she’d suddenly stop and stare at a long narrow stick, an uncoiled hose, or a piece of rope. Her hand would tighten in mine, as she crouched for a better look. After a minute or so she’d solemnly pronounce, “not a snake.”

She wasn’t sure what she was looking at, but after careful study, she knew what it wasn’t. We can learn a lesson from a tiny granddaughter looking at life on a walk. She didn’t try to make the new object fit into her understanding, but she needed assurance about what it wasn’t.

It’s difficult making sense of the political chaos engulfing America. It’s hard to name it. It’s easier to look and say, “not normal.”

Granted, the definition of “normal” might be different depending on your viewpoint. Here’s how the dictionary defines it: “Conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected.” But for a lot of people “normal” is best defined the way Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart described pornography: “You’ll know it when you see it.”

Things aren’t normal now. 

Most voting for Donald Trump didn’t have a burning desire to rename the Gulf of Mexico, turn Canada into the 51^st state, invade Greenland, or deport people to countries where they never lived without due process.

In January, a nationwide poll by AP/NORC showed only 20 percent of Americans supported pardons for the violent insurrectionists who attempted to kill police and lawmakers at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump did it anyway on his first day back in the Oval Office.  

I didn’t hear anyone mention Air Force One was puny and needed to be replaced with a “flying palace.” What was first floated as a personal gift to Trump switched to a temporary gift from Qatar to the U.S., with Trump’s presidential library keeping the luxury airplane after he leaves office. Taxpayers are on the hook for an estimated $1 billion to retrofit that gift.

All presidents have a love-hate relationship with the press. But before Trump, no president ever sued news networks because of their coverage and then bullied them into settling the cases.

World leaders are now fearful of visiting the U.S. because the Oval Office has become an ambush spot. They’ve seen what happened to the leaders of Ukraine, South Africa, and Canada. 

Since Trump returned to the White House, his family have become $3 billion wealthier, according to business professor Scott Galloway.

Kevin Stephens said it best in a recent Facebook post: “The last time the national guard was ordered to a state without the governor requesting it was in 1965, when LBJ did it to protect civil rights protesters in Alabama. Trump did it to intimidate civil rights protesters in Los Angeles.” Trump didn’t provide housing, food, or water for their deployment.  

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. just fired seventeen scientists and doctors on an important Centers for Disease Control advisory panel because they wouldn’t agree with his unproven anti vaccine theories. Another Trump appointee, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, may understand headlocks and pratfalls, but seems to understand little about education.

Trump was elected because he promised to cut the cost of living, end America’s involvement in forever wars, and protect people from the “others” he goaded his base to fear. In short, he campaigned like the bully at the bar shouting loud, easy answers after downing four cocktails.

Trump imposes blanket tariffs one day and then lowers them the next, only to raise them again. It doesn’t take a Nobel economist to see uncertainty causes business collapse and market chaos.

When we see the fire hose of chaos blasting from the White House, we need to resist drinking. It’s not business as usual. Let lawmakers know we’re drowning in Trump “not normal.”