It was a popular expression during the 2016 Presidential Election for Candidate Trump’s supporters to shout out the command, “Drain the Swamp.”   Whether you are Republican, Democrat, or Independent, I doubt any of us have not had a day when we scratched our head, cursed under our breath, and wondered what the heck the men and women we elected turned into once they got to Washington, DC.

Be honest now.   We have all regarded that place as the swamp, because it doesn’t seem to matter who is President, or which party is in control of the Congress, we have all of us sensed there is something incompetent at best, and diabolical at worst, going on in “the Swamp.”

I mean, think of it.   How did the place even get its name?   Yes, the area was once a swamp I believe.   That’s not it.  It’s the other definition which Washington has earned in the decade-in and decade-out world that some perpetual players live in.   Webster’s kindly defines swamp as “a difficult or troublesome situation or subject.”  The verb means “to inundate or submerge.”

So, the voters who clamored to “drain the swamp” know that there is something insidious, even sinister, that lives in that swamp known as Washington, DC.   And they further know that no matter who they send to Washington as President or Vice-President, the swamp somehow inundates them.

Draining the swamp became a strategy then to drain off the excess water and expose the creatures who are living there.   It sounded like a good strategy. It even got a candidate elected. The problem with draining a swamp, however, is that it gives the “swamp creatures” time to slither away, hide under a rock at the bottom, take up residence in a new, deeper area–and remain camouflaged, still ready to strike.

Well, unwittingly, the American people didn’t send a man to drain the swamp.   They might have thought they were.  Instead they lobbed a grenade into the swamp.   Donald J. Trump is a grenade  He’s not a drainage valve technician!

When that grenade exploded totally unexpectedly, and instantaneously, the swamp creatures who were lurking in the murky subterranean world of manipulation, power, and likely corruption, were tossed up onto the surface–visible in broad daylight.   This was something that had never happened, and they never expected.   There they were: Democrats, Republicans, Bureaucrats, Intelligence snakes, K-Street firms–all of them writhing, trying to get out of the light and back down into the darkness they have been operating from during my whole life.  We even know their names now.  We can see them flailing.

Unfortunately for them,, Donald J Trump appears to be a time-release grenade.  He just keeps exploding sections of the swamp.   To me it is hilarious to watch these creatures spit, hiss, bite, and dive for cover.

Well, I have a tip for them–from me.  It’s not the grenade that is your problem.   It’s the people who tossed that grenade into the swamp, who wanted to see the real identities of hidden incompetence or subversive actions.

You have operated in dark, dank, murky corridors too long.   You have hurt Republicans and Democrats alike.  And the time has come for you to wither in the light of day.   Your power is ending.

Here’s to “grenades!”  (Now I have to put a disclaimer here.   You know I am not talking about military, weapons grenades. I do not, and never have, advocated violence.  I am talking about a disruptive, combative, fearless, asymmetrical warrior.  That was our grenade of choice.)