A Sinking Feeling

God finally let His feelings on Trump be known when He sank those rally-boats. Knowing Trumpists, by nature, would ignore sensible rules and be unconcerned for fellow boaters, creating undrained swamping was easy. “Make Liberals Cry,” said a sign on one of them. Ironic. Rather than feeling concerned for the lost boats, though, let’s agree all boats matter and move on. 

Speaking of BLM, responding to last week’s column, a reader renamed them “Behave Like Monkeys.” On lake and land, one’s impression of Trumpists is confirmed.

Are blind racism and curated hate for liberals enough to justify voting for a flag-hugging faker who considers our troops “losers,” especially those who were captured or killed? Do loyalists believe his denials despite his being on record calling John McCain one? When even Fox “news” confirms the reporting, citing “impeccable sources”? Better known for the peccable kind, Fox’s corroboration is compelling. 

His decline accelerating, on Monday Trump accused military leaders of waging wars to boost defense industry profits. He, who brags about “rebuilding” the military and selling our fabulous weapons around the world. Funny: it’s presidents and Congress, not generals, who start the wars the military wages. Not funny: the “Commander-in-Chief” is decomposing before our eyes. 

None of this bothers Trumpists, as long as he continues to validate their aforementioned bigotry. This week he moved to end racial sensitivity training, calling it “un-American.” In his America, where supporters care only about themselves, he’s right. It’s also admitting he can’t run on managing the economy or the pandemic.

Maybe that doesn’t matter, either. As November approaches, Republican states are in full vote-suppression mode. Even after a detailed study found a sixty-eight-percent error rate when Georgia’s then-Secretary of State purged legitimate, mostly Democratic voters while running for governor, winning narrowly, the state is celebrating another purge-fest. In Florida, the local USPS, taking orders from Washington, refused inspection of two major centers by a Democratic US Congresswoman. 

While that was happening, we learned Trump’s unqualified Postmaster General became a Republican star by unlawfully forcing his employees to make campaign contributions, then laundering reimbursement. Crooks and liars. The lot of them.

Meanwhile, Trump disgorged his own solution to overcoming votes for Joe Biden, urging his people to vote twice. Was he joking? He repeated it more than once. Either way, William Barr, his lying, nakedly partisan, malevolent Attorney General, refused to say if voting twice was illegal in all states. (It’s a felony, Bill.) Then he described an incident of mail-in ballot fraud that never happened. His latest is brazenly federalizing the New York-based defamation lawsuit against Trump by one of his many rape-accusers. Theoretically in office to defend our laws, not the “president,” he’s just another of Trump’s America-destroying lackeys. 

Moving from executive duplicity to pervasive Republican science-rejection, Idaho’s legislature just voted to end coronavirus-related restrictions. Pandemic? Legislate it away. Perfect. 

How many slaps can one forehead take? How much can Trumpists swallow before realizing they’re being poisoned? Whatever the number, we’re not there. Nor will the recent barrage of wildly dishonest ads, falsely edited videos, and deceptive tweets from Trump cause supporters to question where their gilded idol is taking them. 

The “where” is an Orwellian dystopia in which the worst response to the pandemic among all developed nations is, in fact, “the best.” In which his predecessor should be in prison for hallucinated “treason.” In which, deploying his “best words,” he calls his current opponent “stupid” and lies about imminent socialism because he can’t claim anything worthwhile for himself. It’s a world wherein admitted lies about the pandemic are justified to avoid creating “panic,” but claiming liberals will burn your city, open all borders, and outlaw your religion is necessary information. 

The “where” is a fearful country ruled by a delusional sociopath, whose intelligence agencies are afraid the truth will upset him, so they water it down; where they’re ordered to hide the fact that Russian hackers successfully placed vote-erasing malware in voting machines. Also, where climate change doesn’t exist.

Last month, in Seaside, an ISIS-mimicking caravan of trucked Trumpists, bearing long guns and sidearms, occupied its main street, proving, uh, something, looking tough in their mirrors even though no demonstrators were there to intimidate. At a pro-Trump rally in Salem, a speaker, to cheers, called for Democratic leaders to be “shot dead in the streets.” That’s where Trump has taken us. 

And, yes, because we care about America, the planet, our children and yours, it makes liberals cry. 

The Death Of Democracy

Michael Cohen’s book, the forward of which he just released, won’t change anything; won’t shake loose a single Trump voter. For all of Trump’s “presidency,” we’ve been given every reason to believe it. Plain observation has made clear who Trump is and has always been. Lying about Russia deals? No surprise. Slimy sexual peccadillos? Of course. He’s bragged about it. 

Tax evasion, mob deals, threats, hush money. It’s his lifelong modus operandi. It’s why those of us who voted against him, voted against him. Clearly, it’s why those who voted for him did what they did. No one was unaware. In Cohen’s book, we can expect confirmations, not surprises.  

But let’s assume everything in the book is fake news. It’s Cohen, not Trump, who’s the pathological liar. We know of thousands of Trump’s lies and none from Mr. Cohen since he found a conscience, but we weren’t there. 

We ARE here, though, bearing witness to the most dangerous, un-American, dictatorial acts any president, or in this case, “president,” has committed. There’s never been a greater threat to our country; not wars, not al-Qaeda, not ISIS, not even Putin’s Russia. 

We’re on the precipice of allowing dictatorship. Happening in plain sight, it’s with the de facto approval, by their silence, of the Republican Party – the party of patriots. The party of tough-guys, armed, camoed, and Kevlared to protect our freedoms against a dictatorial government. The party of Moscow Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham; Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson. 

We speak of Trump’s unbelievable – except it’s Trump -- attack on the US Postal Service, to prevent mail-in voting. Not just his repetitive lies: he’s defunding and physically destroying it, having mail-sorting machines dismantled, mailboxes pulled out of the ground and hauled away. Seeing video of trucks carrying those boxes is looking back at the USSR; it’s Tiananmen Square, Hungary in 1956.  

These are the acts of a dictator, strong-arming to retain power by whatever means necessary; a man who believes in nothing America stands for, nothing but himself and maintaining the position he knows he never deserved.  

Now is when democracy lives or dies. For voting is the ultimate and only check individual citizens have on an out-of-control autocrat like Trump. If he takes it away, which is what he’s literally doing by taking away the means, it’s over. The unthinkable will have happened.  

After months of lying that it’s Democrats who are “rigging” the election, setting the stage for his brainwashed supporters to reject the result if he loses, he’s rigging it for real. In plain sight. If he loses, Trumpists won’t accept the results, based on his lies. If he wins by forcing this kind of brazen cheating, Democrats will understand it was a coup, based on reality. There will be, however, nothing they can do.  

Because if it’s allowed to happen, Trump will have already burned the Constitution forever, with the complicity of everyone who voted for him. There will be no recourse, because there will be no law and no order.  

Republicans and Trumpists must, finally, ask themselves, do they care about real American greatness or not? Will they accept a dictator and the end of meaningful elections because they share the same hatreds, or will they find the courage, the integrity, to say this is too much, even for them? If witnessing this destruction of voting rights, though it’s intended to disenfranchise only people whose politics they don’t like, doesn’t shake them to the core, there was never a core.  

It’s not just voters: it’s McConnell and Graham, Susan Collins and Ted Cruz, Jim Jordon and every other Republican in Congress, all of whom but one let this dangerous, impeached “president” remain in office. If none of them demand an end to his attempt on the life of our democratic republic, even though they’ve spent years doing their own brand of somewhat milder voter-suppression, they’re traitors, every single one.  

Trump’s pandemic response, allowing unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands and tanking our economy, is incompetence and stupidity, but likely survivable. Disenfranchising tens of millions is purely evil, and, for a democracy, fatal. People who don’t see it are blind; those who excuse it may as well stiff-arm the sky.  

Michael Cohen says Trump will stop at nothing to retain power. Turns out he’s the one telling the truth, after all. The question is whether Republicans care. The answer, it appears, is, of course not. Can it happen here? It is.

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