Well I was going to get up this morning, and not begin to read, but write. But long ingrained habits,  something I did know well, don’t suddenly disappear, especially when alongside my bed, was my iPhone making itself heard, the “Marimba” tone telling me there’s news awaiting my attention. There were things I had to read. Most of the notices I could disregard, but not three things, notes from wife and daughter, and the latest tweet from the president.

My wife had been obviously distressed yesterday by the sudden fall in favorability of Emmanuel Macron, some ten points, dix points de chute! “une baisse de popularité ressemblant à une sanction cinglante marquant la fin de l’état de grâce.”

This happened, people said, because of Macron’s put down of France’s highest ranking General,  Pierre de Villiers, in a sharp disagreement over budget cuts, Macron’s cuts of course, and the  General’s clear displeasure with them.

My wife’s note was, “une bonne nouvelle pour Macron! —since the drop in popularité of the president must have come from what could be seen as a “démonstration de sa résolution à vouloir agir, et non à plaire à son électorat?” In other words, from his strength. Yes, that would be good news.

My daughter’s note was to tell me to pick up Mateo at the Apple Store where he would be this morning for coding class.

But it was the third item on my iPhone screen that I’m still thinking about, this a brief note from Politico with the “news” of President Trump, yet once again with a Sunday tweet threatening again the Senate Republicans who are not doing what he wants!

How could this be, that the President of the United States could be publicly threatening the Republican members of the Senate if they didn’t give him what he wanted! He was saying, wasn’t he, that he’ll make sure they won’t get re-elected?

How did we get to this point? It didn’t just happen today. It’s  been going on for months now, that grown men in the Senate of the United States have been prostrating themselves, cowtowing before another man who just happens to be the President.  It has to be because the grown men in the Senate are not grown men, but young men still  afraid, for their jobs, for themselves. For why otherwise would they accept without a whimper being  blackmailed by the President of the United States?

OK, the President’s tweets are no longer news, even though they’re real, not fake news. But yet… What a way to start the day! It made me want to go back to bed.

But I did wonder if I wasn’t missing something important here? This may be just how things are done in Washington, and no different from anywhere else, where bullying works. And that I shouldn’t be surprised.

But wouldn’t we like to believe that our Senators would to a man stand up to a bully? Like maybe  this guy to my left, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky?

But no, over and over again he and the others have not done so, at least up until now.

There are those who have “left” the country and who won’t come back until Trump is no longer the president. I’m close to becoming one myself, although“leaving” in my case would only mean no longer reading about the president and his flatterers in the Senate and House.

Well, there’s always mathematics, poetry, and music and much else, real things, where I could spend more of my time.