I have been writing about Trump and his death cult Republicans since December of 2015, thousands and thousands of words, 38 Posts total. I have been trying to figure him out, this mess we are in, what comes next. He is so deep in my head that when I wake up, I check the Times just to see if _the_ catastrophe has arrived.
This past week opened new pathways in this, the prelude, to the catastrophe. On the day Melanie rolls out her Be Best agenda to help kids, Trump reveals that he wants Congress to cut funding for children’s health care and a few days before that Sessions decides that children will be separated from parents who try to cross the border with their families and given into the care of ICE.
Jesus must weep.
The day after Trump violates the Iran nuclear weapons deal, Bolton says Iran is pushing us towards war. The day after that, Saudi Arabia says they will develop nuclear weapons if Iran retastarts its program.
Finally, this, the capstone to the week: John McCain, dying of brain cancer, is mocked on Fox and in the White House, and Dick Cheney, rising from his dungeon somewhere, offers once again his defense of torture. I disagree with Senator McCain on most ideas of political philosophy and public policy, but he kept faith with his brother POW’s in the worst of times and he has consistently rejected the idea of torture.
We are drowning in cruelty and madness.
The political process is poisoned by money. Corruption is endemic everywhere in this administration from Pruitt’s EPA to the Russian and corporate connections swirling around Manafort and Cohen and Trump.
This is an administration and Party that will kill birds, poison water, terrorize children, and collaborate with Putin to subvert democracy. Their degradation of all things honorable and good continues apace by the hour and day, and I am done with him for a time to come. I have run out of insights. I have exhausted variations on the word vile. However, from this ugly time one can continue to draw conclusions.
First, that this Presidency is a dividing line. Normalcy will not return once he leaves office in 2020 or 2024 or after he wins the Nobel Peace Prize or after he is anointed the new Sun King. As long as he is alive, his voice will be present, his Twitter Feed a relentless poison. He will never give up the blighted stardom he has sought and won.
He has permanently changed the moral and political landscape of American politics. The devastation to the environment, to the ideals of truth and law, and to our ability to constructively influence world events will take years to recover, if ever.
We now live in Trump’s world where 40% or more of the electorate will ignore or accept any lie, any scandal, any debased version of reality as long as its fears and resentments align with the leader.
Maybe Robert Mueller, the best honorable man left with some leverage, will emerge with even more evidence and indictments that will shift the axis of the country and cause us to step back from the precipice. On really bad mornings, I just think that when Trump fires him, the resulting storm will pass and the muck and mire left behind will only have grown bottomless.
Trump will eventually vanish, but these legacies will endure for who knows how long.
After Trump, “le deluge”.
Second, if anyone out there thinks he or she has the answer as to how to put this country back together again, I have not seen it. The only consensus on the left is that Trump is awful. Good work is being done at the grass roots to oppose the policies of this administration but not one public figure of note has presented himself or herself as a consistent opposition voice of moral authority or alternate ideas. The Democrats are on their way to becoming as splintered as the Republicans, and almost as devoid of solutions, and I suspect are beginning to learn from their opposites how to hate. Their leadership is a feckless bunch.
I have no idea how any of this gets fixed except this — if the country does not begin to choose children and humility, justice and life over the endless pursuit of unfettered power and money, then we will all be collectively broken.
Somedays, I think a prophet might emerge, some fantastic, disheveled figure, perhaps a kind of contemporary Jeremiah, a voice who will cut through the ceaseless lies and the moral sewage. Right now, this all feels Biblical somehow as if Revelations will open up and beasts and locusts, monstrous horsemen and dragons will surge forth. Or Shakespearean in the end of Kingdoms versions of Macbeth and Lear and Hamlet.
Be honest. Tell me that you too cannot feel the tremors, the distant thunder, the flashes of terrible light out there just below the horizon.
