SEPTEMBER 30, 2025 – Today I’d planned on more Zen, more nirvana; after all, I was still at the Red Cabin, our “Shangri-La,” still working on the “Pergola-on-a-Platform” project. But on some days, the Buddhist ideal remains high up in the clouds when you find yourself down in the lowland weeds.
Straight out of the gate, matters went sideways when against my better judgment, I listened in on Trump’s rambling “speech” in front of the nation’s top 800 military leaders. If his UN speech was “Exhibit A,” in the case for invoking the 25th Amendment, his presentation today was “Exhibit A-1.” Among all the usual jabberwocky, three things stuck out: 1. We’re apparently going to war against our own people, and, the military will play a major part; 2. Trump has told Hegseth to use American cities as “training grounds” for the military; and 3. The compulsory confab cost untold millions, and when asked afterward about it, Trump replied that he didn’t like to waste expense, adding, “We’d rather use it on bullets and rockets.”
“Bullets and rockets”? Hmmm. I would’ve thought “drones” and “cyberwarfare.” But the waste involved in bringing 800 people made a mockery of Trump’s gutting waste from government. As it turns out, ripping apart government spending on everything from cancer research to natural disaster relief to curtailing the spread of HIV and AIDS in Africa was never about reducing waste. Combine Trump’s “bullets and rockets” comments with Hegseth’s later monologue on the new killer-man ethos, and you’d think these two amateurs were living in 1942.
In any event, I was stunned by Trump’s full step over the authoritarian line. Moreover, I was flabbergasted by the irony: this step was taken in front of the nation’s top echelon of military leaders—who’ve sworn an oath not to a party, a person, or a political philosophy but to the U.S. Constitution. Can it be that after so many other institutions have folded in the face of Trump’s mobster tactics—big law firms, corporations, institutions of higher education—we must now rely on the generals and the admirals to save the Republic? My God, but that’s what happens in unstable countries with underdeveloped experience in self-government.
But imagine for a moment the scenario in which top American brass were to resist and if necessary, stage some sort of coup. What then? Few people can see into the fog of that prospect. Yet what are the probable alternative scenarios?
As I said, against my better judgment I’d watched this disturbing moment in American history—Trump’s express threat to “weaponize” the ultimate weapons—the military. Shell-shocked, I drove into town to run some errands—my first venture away from Shangri-La since early Friday afternoon. In the mundane I found a modicum of relief.
On the drive back to the lake, I received a call from my good college friend, Mark Levine, who’d also heard Trump’s speech. He was calling to berate me for “still supporting this guy”—as Mark does periodically, knowing full well, of course, that I disdain the Pyrite Prexy. Mark is one of the wittiest people I’ve ever known, and soon he had me laughing, as he delivered his usual comedic insights. We wound up talking for nearly an hour, and this comic relief was more enduring than the short-lived respite associated with buying gas, milk, and—before the high-end of Trump’s yo-yo tariff takes effect—four more sticks of lumber for the pergola.
By now it was nearly noon, and I had yet to take one stride toward the day’s project task—painting. When I finally did get down to business, I discovered unanticipated hurdles; problems of geometry that needed to be resolved before I could get to the paint. Somewhere along the line I’d miscalculated the measure of an angle. It was a dumb mistake, but to set things straight, I had to redo about 75% of the work I’d completed yesterday. Then, when I made the re-established cuts, my saw blade wasn’t cutting straight—this after I’d accidently knocked the saw off my temporary worktable; another half hour of downtime while I identified the problem and corrected it—so I could redo the “redo.”
The sun was flirting with the horizon by the time I was ready to paint.
After darkness fell and I’d collected all my tools from my every-expanding workspace in front of the Red Cabin, I cautiously checked the news. If Trump’s speech had shocked me this morning, Hegseth’s “Warrior Ethos” speech sent shivers up my spine. The nation is in trouble, I thought, and that’s before I got to stories about the looming government shutdown.
THEN, out of nowhere came reports that some mysterious alien object (most likely a comet) was hurtling toward earth. Some pseudo scientists and UFO geeks postulated that it’s an alien spaceship, and that contacts with intelligent life from a world away would be a “game-changer.” I should say so!
Having enjoyed Adam Frank’s book, The Little Book of Aliens, however, analyzing the probabilities of contact with life elsewhere, I know what’s now headed our way isn’t a group of aliens. This doesn’t mean that an ordinary comet with the wrong (for us) trajectory won’t do major damage—even wipe us out as it fundamentally alters the countenance of the earth and upends civilization as we know it. Some serious scientists are sounding concerned and posit that this “thing” from outer space is traveling fast, moving erratically, and likely to come within a hair’s breadth (relatively speaking) of earth.
I’m nearly amused by the story—“Worried about our nation going down the sewer pipes? So upset with Trump and Hegseth you could spit in the face of an ICE agent? (An allusion to Trump’s statement today that henceforth when a protester “spits, we hit.”) Chill out. The big one is headed our way, “big one” being a comet of the sort that ended the reign of the dinosaurs.
As I contemplated the big thing—whatever it is—aimed at our little “blue planet,” my worry changed to wonder. Despite all our strivings and struggles, what we take so seriously—our very existence and all that our lives entail—could be wiped out by a single hit. Bam! and it would be all over. As the sky everywhere filled with blinding light, followed by an orange glow, we’d realize how small and petty we’d become, and our construct of God or god or gods would be blown to bits by the sound waves alone as they encircled the globe multiple times.
Okay, okay. Enough already. Let’s call it all for what it is: one big distraction from the Jeffrey Epstein Files.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
