American Idol

My next column in The Everett Herald:

A while back, optimistic and brave people left a country in which they’d been abused by monarchical power. Later, after years of exploitation from afar, having sacrificed lives and fortune in a successful war of revolution, they set about establishing a new nation, the likes of which the world had never seen, including a constitution designed, among other things, to prevent autocracy from ever gaining foothold. To which end they included specific means to redress executive excess. 

This bold country survives, in large part, because its citizens once comprehended the importance of their governing documents, implicitly accepted the demands of citizenship, recognized that laws are only as good as their willingness to follow them, even when some might prefer not to. “Consent of the governed,” some have called it. 

Then, unforeseen by the founders, who intended exactly the opposite, a quirk in their mostly brilliant creation leads to the selection of a classic demagogue, an amoral, serial adulterer and abuser, whose prior career is one of lies, baseless braggadocio, shirking responsibility, being punished for breaking laws, failed and scam businesses, propped up by money from his daddy and other disreputable sources. A man who, proudly unread and uninformed in matters of governance, nevertheless recognizes a path to power can be found by exploiting human weakness, by nonstop lying and instilling fear and hatred of “the other.”  

What’s horrifying isn’t that such a man exists, or even that the system allowed his “election.” It’s that millions of citizens, laying exclusive claim to love of their exceptional country, cheer like Brazilian soccer fans when that man announces those founding documents are, in fact, crap. Mocks them. Belittles the very idea of constraints on his power; shouts that what had been, till now, a co-equal branch of government charged with keeping the executive in check, has no business fulfilling that obligation. Refuses to comply. Insults those holding him to account. Calls them stupidly childish names. 

And his idolatrous believers, excusing this history-echoing demagoguery, ignorant of how democracy depends on principled opposition parties, laugh and cheer adoringly, convinced that anyone who disagrees with their unprincipled hero or demands he follow the law, who believes in separation of powers, must be thoroughly vanquished. Barred from voting. Deported. Locked up, even.  

Do any of them stop to think this isn’t what made and kept our country great? Realize this would-be despot is demanding absolute power? Understand this is exactly what our Constitution is about preventing? Recognize how un-American this is?  

Not a one. 

Hard to say which is worse: a “president” who openly ridicules the Constitution, or his crazed followers’ delirious joy in hearing it. Citizens who cheer a man who flouts the law and claims unlimited power, consider themselves the ones making America great, while dismissing as their enemy those taking issue with unchecked presidential power. 

And now our mythomane-in-chief is raising his lying to stupefying levels. Claiming what is the inverse of reality, he crowed that he, and only he, has protected and will protect pre-existing conditions. The truth, of course, is that such protection is a cornerstone of the Affordable Care Act, which his government is doing everything it can, including lawsuits, to wipe off the books, with no replacement in the works. Do those same patriotic supporters find such blatant dishonesty disturbing? Personally insulting? Or just plain nuts?  

Not a one.  

There’s more. Because of data showing a recent decline in cancer deaths, resulting from years of research leading to better treatments, he’s taking credit, having done nothing except cutting funding for such research, to help offset tax cuts for his wealthy friends and polluting paymasters. In fact, he’ll make cancer rates worse, by reversing rules keeping carcinogens out of our food and water supplies.  

Also, because his Suleimani assassination justifications change daily, we KNOW he’s lying about it. And this is simply unspeakably grotesque mendacity.

In the United States of America, created with faith in the rule of law, predicated on a thoughtful citizenry that values truth, one deplorable man and millions of dis-educated, lie-preferring followers, are bringing it all down. 

As more evidence of Trump’s and his associates’ all-encompassing corruption mounts daily (thanks, Lev) Trumpists yawn. It’s clear why Republicans want to speed through the impeachment trial without new witnesses or documents.  

Because Moscow Mitch, disposing his oath like last week’s trash, chose his own reelection over America’s future, November’s vote has become our now-or-never hope. 

[Image source]

A High Price To Pay

Saturday's newspaper column, today:

You shouldn’t need to be a historian or member of a minority group to observe Trump’s increasingly incoherent, malevolent rallies and fear for our country. In me, of Jewish heritage, they create a physical feeling of revulsion, literally a cold chill. Which is why I can’t write gently. Montana was the worst yet. 

It should escape no one that those in attendance adored everything Trump said, no matter how hateful or false, about the opposition party, journalists, abused women, investigators, immigrants, and anyone who’s criticized him. The veneration presumably includes his endorsements and hiring of white supremacists. Their chants, shouts of approval, stomping the risers, are barely distinguishable from terrifying rallies known for generations, hosted by fledgling despots, continuing after the subjugation was complete. 

These are frightening people, enthralled by a man who fans their grievances, promotes resentment of those unlike them, in the pursuit of unchecked power. To which, like Congressional Republicans, they appear happy to assent. Those rallies, the attendees’ faces, Trump’s self-satisfaction as he feeds their resentments, prove it CAN happen here. Lacking only in numbers, it already has.  

It’s what Trump got right and President Obama got so wrong. The latter, long after it was clear he’d misjudged the distribution of good will among Americans, continued to appeal to generosity and compassion. Yes, he said some careless things, easily misinterpreted, understandably seen as condescending. Yes, he wrongly believed health insurers would act in good faith. But he kept speaking of shared values. Even as Republicans met on his inauguration day to plan unwavering, unanimous obstruction, regardless, as one of those present admitted, whether it hurt America, President Obama continued to seek a path. 
 
Trump, on the other hand, saw the suppurating dark side, and reichly concluded it could be easily manipulated (he should know!). If both Trump and President Obama saw Americans struggling, only the former saw it as something to be cultivated and exploited. Yet unknown is whose vision will prevail, but for now Trump’s ugly rallies suggest his measure of the hate and fear and ignorance out there, primed for stoking, appears to be winning. 

My drawing of distinctions between Trumpists and conservativism have fallen short. Better than I, true conservatives like George Will, Max Boot, and others, have made the case for voting against their party, for now, to save the Republic. The contemptuously mined hate, fear, and ignorance are most obvious at those ominously intensifying rallies. It’s hard to understand how anyone who claims to be unlike those people can stay on board. 

To deny sharing Trumpic animus and bigotry while maintaining support is approval by default. It places particular priorities above decency and the survival of democracy. That sort of rationalization extenuates Trump’s authoritarianism, condones looking away because of some singular issue considered overridingly important. 

I’ve conversed with some for whom abortion is an example (how many of his multitudinous liaisons...?), outweighing the ascent of autocracy. Convinced Democrats want abortion on demand at all stages of pregnancy, they couldn’t be more misinformed. Weirdly, they’re also climate change doubters. 

For others, it’s the hyperbolized scourge of illegal immigration. Believing Trump’s lie that Democrats want open borders and free-range criminals, they applaud separating children from parents, for its message to stay away, immorality notwithstanding. All have said they felt insulted by my characterizations of Trumpists. 

It’s fair and honest criticism, but it begs amplification; so I ask if there’s no bridge too far. Do your personal concerns – or pocketbooks -- excuse ignoring Trump’s dictatorial attacks on his opponents, his threats and lies, his fomenting hatred for journalists (except Fox’s, most of whom are the opposite), his bullying mockery? Is there no point at which protecting the institutions of democracy supersedes your issues? Not the health of your children and theirs, as they face no-hoax climate change and deregulated pollution? 

Not protecting voting rights, access to healthcare, public education? Not Trump calling Kim, who pantsed him in public, a “great guy;” not facilitating murderous Vladimir Putin’s dream of weakening NATO, calling him “just fine,” then meeting him in private? How about taking down the FBI agent in charge of countering all Russian espionage? Not a little curious?  

Surely we share some values too indispensable to renounce. Aren’t truth, and democracy itself, among them? Borrowing from an apocryphal Churchill quote, now we’re just haggling over your price. 

[Image source]