Prioritizing
America, life
Something
supercedes the wisdom of fools. Something is more heroic and
contemptible than the common politician. There's a ruinous path, a
cataclysmic crash course, that looms over the two-party system.
There's something more in life than TV ratings, than getting rich off
not paying contractors, or paying porn stars to keep silent. And, as
Damascus suffers, as children wonder why a mile away, life's
comparatively insignificant battles flourish.
A blue wave is
coming, surfing toward us like Maria. So maybe, sooner or later,
after Manifort, Cohen and Van Der Zwaan are in jail, the water will
be right. It will be blue enough to impeach and convict Trump. Let's
assume it happens, the thinkable (for the last two years) happens.
What then? Well, according to the constitution—which hasn't been
followed from day one—the vice president is on deck, speaker in the
hole. Would Pence be any better? He would bring some experience as a
homophobic governor to the table, for its worth. Aside from having a
normal adult maturity level, a less inflated ego and being more
religious, I would say no. As we know religious does not necessarily
mean compassion. (At the RNC Michael Cohen used compassion in a list
of contradictory words he said the media should use in describing
Trump! No kidding, I saw it on tape).
Defying
the odds
As I bet in 2016,
when no one, apparently not even the Trump campaign, thought this
braggart reality star would win, either way the end would watch a
slow meltdown that took the pillars of democracy with it. If he
lost—as in the last debate he confirmed—he'd have thrown a
tantrum claiming that the race was rigged. I can just imagine how
that would have gone. It'd have made Bush/Gore in 2000 look like a
high school debate. Now that one of the most dangerous tactical
errors in history has been allowed to prosper, to malign every
concept America ever fought for, when it is brought down, when
Mueller and/or the Southern New York District Court get their collar,
all the litigation currently in the news will seem like a slow day.
Why is the decades
old nefariousness of the Clinton's even a concern? Neither is in the
White House, fighting internally, embarrassing America on the world
stage, causing fear and suffering of innocents born here, flouting
every tenet of the constitution. The sudden acceptance of allegations
of harassment, and self-imposed resignation, of Al Franken I think is
evidence that the Democrats don't play favorites. Bill Clinton had
an affair with Monica, he was investigated, exposed, and impeached.
He did not kick and scream, pay off women not to talk. I think, post
Watergate, 2017 was the first time I heard the word witchunt. John
Conyers resigned willfully amid allegations of sexual harassment. In
my lifetime—post Kennedy—the greatest reluctance to face up to
errors in conduct, ethical violations, misappropriations of funds,
even sexual abuse, has seemed to come disproportionately from the
right. The party that preaches ethics and marital fidelity, honesty
and a moral way of living (Roy Moore displayed a monument of the Ten
Commandments) often fails to keep any of those ideals. Make no doubt
about it, Republicans are the last ones who should be condemning
anyone for their breeches of ethics.
Fallen
deck hands
Mueller's noose is
tightening, his slow tow rope of investigation sweeping across water
leaving angry panicked heads bobbing like fallen water skiers. The
people who want to disassociate themselves from Trump grow in number
by the day. The old can retire to a life of shame, but the younger,
like Paul Ryan, have the stink of Trump on them forever. What was it
all worth? To reek havoc on America and the world, to irrevocably and
negatively alter our global image for at least the foreseeable future
(I'm sure after the Third Reich Germany's standing in the world was
low). I get it. I understand what the Tea-party was trying to
accomplish. I even empathize with them. Their voice were not being
heard. Whose is in any tangible sense of the word, in any
logistically appreciative manifestation? One should ask, how does a
Republican play their cards? How does a party steeped in a
fantastical antiquated pride get the government to collectively hear
them? For decades Democrats have protested, marched, sat and died-in,
they exercised their First Amendment right to assemble, lawfully,
unless met with resistance. It seems to me Republicans, the founders
of the Tea-party, the forgotten “minority,” were too proud, too
uninclined, too cowardly, to follow up any weak protest movement with
a constructive, legitimate effort to have their needs addressed by a
responsible experienced presidential candidate. Kind of like the
Democrats—or a faction of them—had a need in 1968 that was not
being heard by Lyndon Johnson and then legitimately campaigned for
their hand picked candidate for their party's nomination—Minnesota
Senator Eugene McCarthy. No, the Republicans, or the Tea-party—I
guess maybe, in a bizzaro world, that faction of Democrats—sought
to destroy, intentionally, the American political system, hoping that
somehow there would be no collateral damage. What is happening every
day that Trump is in office? The line is fraying, the toxic spliced
rope that holds the bushel of needs and want, the promises made, none
of which have worked out anywhere near the form in which they were
originally voiced. He is affecting the morale and strength of the
Democrats, brilliantly displaying Nietzsche's maxim “that which
does not kill us makes us stronger,” while slowly unraveling the
foundation of his own party. Except for the die-hard evangelicals,
the “Christian” far right echelons that comprise his base, the
basic rusted wired GOP has been in lock-down mode for at least the
last three months. Who could have seen this coming? This huckster
con-man, this man who failed as a spoiled
rich-kid-turned-real-estate-mogul. What other angry man in history
was a failure at everything he did and decided to take it out on the
world? I saw Trump and his scheme to defraud America, enrich himself,
and possibly create a tax-free world in which only people whose daddy
gave them a million can get ahead. I saw it at the March 2016 primary
as he bought his foreign object onto the debate stage, in no jest
talking the walk of a professional wrestler. He did not no it was a
damn show, staged so he could reduce little Marco to the gutless
water boy he has proved himself to be. No one wanted to believe it
though. I truly thought a quarter of the country had a lapse of
common sense, of naivete, of being bamboozled like those rubes in
River City.
When
the chips are down
The once proud, if
not fashionably hypocritical, integritied party lies in ruins,
desperately trying to regroup before a blue wave washes them out in
November. Ryan is one of some 27 House Republicans to step down, to
retire, “term out,” resign amid scandal or in light of illness.
Call it what it is the fact remains that it is the biggest mass
legislative exodus in modern history at a midterm election. I do not
think it is a coincidence. The ship has been sinking for the last
year and now most of its navigators, its obsequious handlers, a
getting off with a shred of dignity.
