“We Like the Crazy”

A year ago—spring of 2024— my partner Lyle came home startled by a speech.

He’d just heard a well-educated, well-turned-out woman make a pitch for Donald Trump. Her tone was calm, her focus on policy. She came across as responsible, if mistaken.

But what got to Lyle was a comment she made afterwards, in conversation. Someone asked how she felt about Trump as a person. She made a sweet smile and said, speaking of herself and her husband: “We like the crazy.”

So now it’s spring 2025. What did she get voting for the crazy?

If her retirement portfolio is like mine, invested in mainstream American stocks and bonds, she saw her nest egg shrivel. I lost more in 96 hours than it had taken me 10 years to save. These financial losses came right from the crazy, because literally no-one except Trump and his paid spokespeople said massive tariffs on almost every country in the world economy was safe or even made a damn bit of sense.

And all of us lost more than the money. We lost the sense that we can have some control over our lives. Turns out the whims of one person can ruin all of us. We lost the hope that government could be a force for fairness or at least enough to give us a shot at the American dream.

I’m no psychiatrist, but I can recognize megalomania: a truly insane disregard for others—extreme recklessness when your choices endanger others.

Taking no responsibility for the grave harm he had just done, two mornings after the market crash, Trump tweeted, non-ironically, [ALL CAPS in the original] THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.

The person who best captured a mindset like Trump’s was the great American composer Irving Berlin. In the most sarcastic lyrics of his career, he penned these as he greeted the Great Depression In the 1932 Broadway musical Face the Music:

“Trouble’s just a bubble

And the clouds will soon roll by.

So let’s have another cup of coffee,

And let’s have another piece of pie.

Mister Herbert Hoover

Says now’s the time to buy.

So let’s have another cup of coffee,

And let’s have another piece of pie.”

Let’s remember the Great Depression since we are about to relive it

Very few of us alive now, of course, were there to see how Great the original Depression turned out to be. I’m 70, born in 1955.

But my parents did. They grew up in the Depression. In the 1930’s, three generations of my Dad’s family lived crowded into one house in the Bronx. Every Friday, anyone in the family lucky enough to have a job came home and turned over all their pay to my Dad’s grandmother Mary. Mary was the one everyone in the family trusted. After dinner, she met with everyone individually. Taking all the money everyone had handed over to her, she gave each the portion of the money they needed. She made sure nobody was totally broke. I never met my great-grandmother, but I know she was loving but tough. My Dad was one of her favorites, but when she got angry with him one time she spit in his eye—literally.

My mom’s family had it even harder. When her dad, my grandpa Henry, lost his job and couldn’t find another, they ran out of money. They had to leave New York City; they moved in with relatives in Washington, DC. The four of them—my mom, her sister, their parents—lived in one small room. They barely got by. My grandpa was on “relief,” the term used then for welfare. When he finally found work, it was in a jobs program that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt set up to give unemployed people money and dignity. When I was a boy, whenever grandpa talked about FDR, he teared up. He was so clear: Roosevelt saved him and his family.

If anyone had told my grandpa to vote for “the crazy,” he would have thundered that meshuga was too kind a word for anyone or any political party that would dump one-third of the nation almost instantaneously into poverty.

By the time my Mom met my Dad in 1948, the Depression was past the worst. But poverty still hurt too many; even gaining a first bit of financial security was daunting for many—including my parents. By 1957, my Mom and Dad were living in Chillicothe, Ohio with two young kids, me age 3, my sister Amy age 1. Mom was pregnant with my soon-to-be-be brother Marty. Just barely, they bought a house. It cost $27,500 and they could only get it on “land contract.” That meant they didn’t qualify for a mortgage; on land contract, if, over the 30-year term, they ever missed a payment they would lose the house and every payment they had made.

Photo: My Mom and Dad when they got married; and my Mom and Dad when I was a teenager. We shared these photos at Dad’s Memorial Service many years later.

I was a teenager when my Dad told me he had just had his first year where he earned $36,500. He was so proud he earned $100/day. We were solidly middle-class on the road to upper-middle-class.

My parents didn’t dwell on the Depression. They wanted us to grow up feeling safe, and we did. In the late 1960’s, Mom started voting Republican and was proud of it. I think it made her feel like she wasn’t poor. My Dad was a ticket-splitter, but mostly voted Democratic.

Fast forward to 2006 and the George W. Bush Presidency. By this point, my Mom really was a Republican. In a mostly friendly way, she and I had tussled about every political issue since Watergate. So I was surprised when, one day, she sat me down and said “David” — in her rarely-used, very serious voice—I thought she was about to tell me that someone had died—“David, we must now vote the straight Democratic ticket.” I was stunned, then almost laughed. I felt like saying, hey, who’s the one at this table who voted for Reagan?!?!”

Instead, I just said, “Tell me more.” On her mind was Bush’s ignorance about women and the intolerance of his right-wing evangelical base. She was so serious when she said to me, “David, this isn’t the Republican Party I joined.”

So she was no longer voting for Republicans for any office.

Why this is so much on my mind today

I offer this family history for three reasons.

First: I encourage us all to take my mother’s advice. You’re not cruel and crazy, so don’t vote that way. If you are a Republican, you can stay a Republican; but stop voting for any Republicans until the party gets rid of Trump and his clones and cronies.

Second: remember the Depression. Never forget how wrong this country can go. Pay attention: watch not just the markets, but how Trump treats people. No-one in their right mind treats anyone the way Donald Trump treats everyone.

Instead, demand of every elected official of both parties that we remember and protect the good things government does, including but not limited to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps—the safety net that so many of us rely on today, or will tomorrow.

Third: change requires effort. Herbert Hoover didn’t retire out of shame when he presided over the ruin of the economy. He ran for re-election. FDR beat him in a landslide because people stood up. This is a moment where we all need to stand up.

What does that mean? It’s very practical. Go to your Congressperson’s District office; it’s near where you live, google “my Congressman’s district office.” Grab a friend, go together, and meet with anyone there and tell them how important it is that Trump’s lousy budget cuts to the social safety net are stopped. It’s not OK to take health care away from mothers and babies to give billionaires a tax break. It’s not who we are.

What Trump is selling, now is not the time to buy.

Then, if you have a Republican Member of Congress, when you get home find out who’s running against them in 2026 and get involved and help the Democrat win. We have to defeat all Republicans, because astonishingly—with no more thought than lemmings—they are marching backwards towards feudalism in lock-step with Trump. The only 2 Republican members of the House who just voted against his budget cuts are so extreme they want Trump to be even crueler and cut more of the safety net.

Just as important: if you have a Democratic member of Congress, don’t let them off the hook. Let them know you’re with them, but demand much better answers about what they will fight for. FDR wasn’t just a Democrat; he was the Democrat who helped all Americans realize that we are all connected—that we are a society—or as the poet Gwendolyn Brooks so eloquently put it:

“We are each other’s harvest:

We are each other’s business:

We are each other’s magnitude and bond.”

At a bare minimum, that means: Trump and everyone propping him up has got to go.

Because Trouble is not a bubble. Trouble is contagious.

That is why we have to act right now.