Cold winds are rising, readers, and in far too many ways. While we are dealing with a dreary start to October, folks in Montana have been buried beneath the snow, waking up to days well below freezing. It seems that winter is coming, and while Game of Thrones had a rather lackluster cold front in its final season (yes, I am still bitter about that), we are on the verge of something truly dark and full of terror.

I am sure some of you may recall the polar vortex of last winter. It was an ugly time for us here on the Plains, and while most have done their best to put it out of their minds, it seems that Mother Nature has other plans, with meteorologists predicting for more than just one to hit us in this upcoming winter. Just the thought of such a grueling season has me taking stock of my supplies with a nervous eye. Perhaps I can get my one true friend, Rum Brain Moe, to make a few runs for me, after all, what else is a Rhode Island witch doctor good for?

Indeed, readers, we are on the doorstep of troubling times, a preface to some Shakespearian tragedy. The republic is crumbling, war is on the horizon, and we cling to whatever sanity we can find while we suffer under the rule of a madman— a tyrant within the White House, surrounded by his sycophants in the Senate.

Perhaps there is some solace with the impeachment process now underway, but it is still far too early to tell, especially in this day and age. Nothing within our political industry makes sense anymore as statesmen have been replaced by shysters, and our presidents now can be bought by foreign powers. We surely are not in the United States anymore, Toto, but instead the England of King Lear, or perhaps entering the early years of the island’s brutal War of the Roses.

Yes, that must be it. After all, it seems that it is now the winter of our discontent with our mad king of a president claiming that his removal will throw the country into a second civil war. Alas, ours is but a shadow of the villains of Shakespeare’s world. Dimwitted and childish, lacking creativity, hiding behind nothing more than a bad spray tan.

Some may say that all of this is nonsense, and maybe they are right, but look out your windows, readers, away from all of the mind-numbing distractions. Are things really getting better, are we really winning? Or are we just being given one poorly constructed lie after another, heaping the blame on those who have had no part in it? The United States of yesterday is gone, and in the present we find that we are heading toward something far, far different. So, let’s call Trump’s bluff. Let us away, not to Bosworth to fight in some gruesome struggle, but to our polling places, and show him that tyrants can be brought down by more than strength of arms.