“It starts when you’re always afraid.” – Stephen Stills, For What It’s Worth

At first, I thought it was just another sign of senility. You gotta expect that, I guess. Then, I thought I was having one of those LSD flashbacks I was promised a half-century ago. I briefly considered the possibility I slipped through a hole in the time-space continuum, but, damn, no such luck. I had to face the truth.

Donald J. Trump destroyed my sense of time.

And I am not alone. Not by any means. I might even be in the majority; that’s a unique experience for me. Certainly, you’ve noticed this yourself. If you watch any of the talking heads panel shows, you’ve heard others bitch about this. You’ll hear of something Trump did yesterday – yesterday! – and you’ll say to yourself “Oh, yeah. Damn. I thought that happened a couple weeks ago!”

It’s not disconcerting the first time, but after a while (obviously, sooner than you think) you begin to think of senility, flashbacks – if you’re a geriatric hippie – and that time warp thing. Once to accept the truth, you just shake your head, shrug your shoulders, and wonder if you can hold on until this particular Joker is gone. Even if you’re part of the 55% of Americans who disapprove of him, you’ve got to face this important fact:

Donald J. Trump broke time.

You might not like what Trump has been doing. Maybe it’s his commitment to terrorizing people who are darker than his orange body cream. Maybe it’s his using his office to try to make himself as rich as Scrooge McDuck. Maybe it’s his compulsive lying, or his persistent self-aggrandizement, or his bigotry or his xenophobia.

Or maybe you support Trump and you only read Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind because your hair shirt is at the dry cleaners.

So you’ll forgive me if, for your own safety, I remind you that Trump has been president for less than 35 months. That’s well short of “forever.” He likes to point out, several times a day, that he is the greatest at every conceivable thing in the world, that, and I quote from Monday, his is the “great and unmatched wisdom.” If you’re having a hard time believing he said that, well, damn, good morning! Hope you slept well. Check out his tweet – the graphic should be here somewhere on this page.

Funny thing. For perhaps the first time in his presidency, the leaders of his own party, the one that used to be the Republican Party, stood fast against his command that we pull our troops out of northern Syria, leaving our allies there alone without sufficient means to defend themselves against ISIS. Fun Fact: Trump did not inform the Pentagon of this decision prior to his announcement. If you think you’re uncertain what day it is, imagine how the Joint Chiefs of Staff must feel.

Do five-star generals and fleet admirals have résumés? Do they know how to work a photocopier? Yes, I know those two ranks are only used during wartime. Plan ahead, I say. Plan ahead!

There’s another time-Trump thing I don’t understand. Why does the entirety of the past 35 months seem like a mere ten days, yet the next 14 months feels like an eternity?

If Trump were to put on an Apple Watch and start it up, I’ll bet the damn thing uncurls itself from his wrist and calls for an Uber.