Every Good Morning

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Let us give thanks for Donald J. Trump for he has reminded us that we have the language to describe what we are seeing, that the words ‘lie’, ‘cruel’, ‘corrupt’, ‘cynical’, vile’, retain their meaning.

Let us give thanks that Donald J. Trump and his Republican accomplices make statements or take actions every day that tie themselves to these words.

For example, the loathsome Joe Arpaio running for Senate from Arizona, pardoned by Trump, again proclaiming the lie of President Obama’s illegitimacy as his primary campaign cry. And the Republican Tax Bill, which will further enrich the Trump family and Republican Donors. And the deportation peril for DACA young men and women, brought to America as children and threatened with return to countries no more their home than the moon. And President Trump calling on the Republican Congress to “take control of the Russia investigation”, in other words to destroy it, to protect he and his family from the consequences of their conspiracy with Russia to contaminate the 2016 election. And on Thursday, his description of a country, Haiti, and a continent, Africa, as filled with “shithole” peoples who should be denied entrance to America, a remark bereft of historical understanding and current knowledge and indicative of racially venomous beliefs.

Let us give thanks that Donald J. Trump has reminded us that these ideas about power have been a part of the American identity for years, and the racial attitudes have been with us since 1619. He is only pulling these beliefs into the unrelenting light of a 24 hour global news cycle, and in doing so, giving them the vital force of life and turning to us and shouting “I am only speaking the truth of what many of you believe.”

Let us give thanks that Donald J. Trump has revealed the stench and rot of an entire political party. The Republican Senators attending the meeting where these comments were made have said they do not recall them or have spoken only in vague terms of them — seated in a closed space the size of a large dining room and they did not hear, they did not see, they cannot remember.

Let us give thanks that Donald J. Trump has, once again, drawn the most unequivocal, unambiguous possible line between right and wrong. Let us give thanks that we must choose one side or the other of that line.