Tomorrow at noon our second national four-year run of performative assholery officially begins. I say officially because, as anyone who has been awake for the last two months knows, the spiteful assholes have been out in full force since the election. Amurka is great again, let your hate flags fly.

I am of two minds about this second Trump administration. One part of my brain thinks (hopes?) that it will just be a noisier repeat of the last time. I actually retired from the government salt mines during that first fiasco, a few years earlier than I had intended, because I couldn’t stand the frustration any longer. My job required extensive travel, the destination and length of that travel was known as much as a year in advance. But the trumpkins ran everything so poorly that I often would not know until the morning of my travel, literally on my way to the airport, if the money for the trip was actually available. More than once I spent two weeks prepping for a trip that didn’t happen. I’m confident they will be every bit as incompetent, ineffective and just plain stupid as they were the first time. Which isn’t to say they won’t do some real, but fixable damage.

But the darker side of my brain wonders if this time around they will do permanent damage. Our national media just loves them some Trump. It makes their jobs so easy. All they have to do is translate the latest foolishness that falls out of his mouth into something vaguely resembling English, sit back and wait for the outrage clicks. But by merely transcribing the nuttery instead of calling it out, they give it an air of legitimacy that feeds the fever dreams of his angry followers. There are millions of them out there, and they are loud. It’s hard to guess — and scary to contemplate — how many are just braying jackasses like their leader, and how many are true believers ready to commit atrocities for a man who doesn’t really give two shits about anyone other than himself.

I’m a cishet white male. Other than my atheism, I’m among the most favored demographic of the radical right, but I’m still worried about what could happen in the next four years. If I were LGBTQ+ or Muslim or dark-skinned or even vaguely Messican looking, I would be keeping an INCH bag close to hand at all times.