Lessons Of January 6

 

If the January 6 Committee hearings have changed minds, there’s only one direction they can have gone. But people who needed to watch probably didn’t. Taking cues from Trucker -- partisan witch hunt, fake news -- despite the fact that the witnesses were lifelong Republicans, they stayed away.

Maybe some second-thoughting Trump voters tuned in. If so, they’d have learned plenty. For those who haven’t had time to watch them, last week’s is all it should take to convince anyone of Trump’s and his cohorts’ deceptions and outright lies. Every American who values democracy ought to see it. Here’s a few of the salient revelations:

A persistent Foxian theme blames it all on Nancy Pelosi. Didn’t act, didn’t call for the National Guard. It’s a now-obvious lie promulgated even by R leaders whom we saw standing right there in their insurrection hideout, listening as she called various officials asking for that, and more. It’s on video!! Which, yet again, confirms the bottomlessly low regard they have for their voters and for the truth. How many times have the Foxotrumpified repeated it; swallowed it like steak and potatoes?

Also made clear were the many times, many ways Trump was told he’d lost the election fair and square. And that he’d privately acknowledged it, refusing a public admission because it was “too embarrassing.” Repeatedly, he was told his claims of fraud were false; repeatedly, he told his rally-goers he’d won in a “landslide” anyway. For that, there are only two possible explanations: he’s clinically insane or he’s the worst, most dangerous kind of liar. Either way, he should never be allowed within a Pinocchio-nose of the Oval Office again; the fact that he was ever there is an irremovable stain on our country’s electoral processes and enduring proof of right-wing susceptibility to calculated misinformation.

Those who still support him, ignoring the irrefutable evidence, are the political equivalent of flat-earthers; or believing there are litter boxes in schools for kids who identify as cats. It’s hard to accept that, in exceptional America, there are so many and that they were made to submit so easily. But there they are. Ready to vote in less than three weeks. 

Even the right-wing Wall Street Journal came around, writing: “…What the committee has accomplished is to cement the facts surrounding Mr. Trump’s recklessness after Nov. 3 and his dereliction of duty on Jan. 6. The Justice Department and Mr. Trump’s own campaign repeatedly told him that his fraud claims were without basis. Whether it was willful blindness or intentional strategy, he kept repeating them…” Welcome back, WSJ.

The Committee also made clear that the Secret Service knew, days in advance, of plans for violence on January 6. Which means Trump knew, too; yet he ordered metal detectors removed from entry points to his up-whipping of the crowd that day. Makes one wish those texts and emails hadn’t been “accidentally” erased, doesn’t it?

Worse, a top-level aide has opined that Trump wanted elected officials to be killed, so he could invoke the Insurrection Act, declaring martial law, as a path to maintaining power. Hard to believe? Consider the deaths resulting from Trump’s and his aides’ efforts to squelch Covid-19 truth, because it “reflected badly” on the “president.”  

R leaders don’t call out Trump’s lies because they’re an excuse to impede Democratic votes. Justified by whipped-up belief in non-existent voter fraud, election deniers are being put in charge of elections, while thousands of “poll watchers” are training to intimidate selected people at polling places. Candidates such as Kari Lake, running for governor of Arizona, are already saying they’ll only accept results if they win. Senator (!) Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) says President Biden wants to keep the pandemic going so more people will vote by mail.

No one should fail to see where this leads: non-acceptance of any election they lose; discouraging all voters but theirs. Ending democracy by default and discouraged disengagement.

Another example: Trump-successor hopeful, Florida’s Ron DeSantis, just brazenly eased post-hurricane voting rules in three Republican districts but not a single Democratic one. How confident he must be in the right-wing disinformation machine’s ability to deceive voters nationwide. 

Meanwhile, getting things done, “soft on China” President Biden, who’d previously rescued Trump’s imploding economy and created millions of jobs, just crushed China’s semiconductor industry, and “anti-Israel” President Biden achieved a significant diplomatic agreement between Israel and Lebanon that had eluded prior presidents (and one “president”) for decades. Has anyone heard about them?  

If all Americans valued truth-telling, competence, and bettering lives, every Republican running in November would lose. Then, to the sound of pig wings flapping, their party might reengage in the business of our democratic republic. 

Devolution

Dan Evans. Mark Hatfield. Tom McCall. Everett Dirksen. Jacob Javits. Dwight Eisenhower. Nelson Rockefeller. Margaret Chase Smith, John Lindsey, Arlen Spector, Howard Baker, Lowell Weicker, Chuck Hager. Ulysses Grant. Abraham Lincoln. My remarkable aunt.  

What’s become of the party that once embraced people of conscience, ideas, believers in democracy, cooperators for progress, acceptors of election results? How can it have devolved to one whose heroes are small-minded, election-denying liars, racists, liars, antisemites, xenophobes, devoid of positive ideas or helpful plans? And liars. 

Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Lauren Boebert, Trump, Matt Gaetz, Ron DeSantis, JD Vance, Greg Abbott, Trump, Kevin McCarthy, Marsha Blackburn, Tommy Tuberville, Herschel Walker, Mehmet Oz. Kanye West, of all people. Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz. And Trump. Let’s not forget Trump.

How could we, though? From Trump’s recent rally comes this from featured speaker, know-nothing, former football coach and now Senator, because Alabama is football is Alabama, Tommy Tuberville. Speaking about Democrats: “They want crime. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”

Thunderous applause followed the undisguised racism and unoriginal lies about Democrats and crime. Another rally-featured, mendacious Trump sycophant, MTG revealed that Democrats have begun murdering Republicans. From leadership? “Didn’t hear it.” Their silence – anyone’s silence – is complicity.

How did the devolution become so universal? Top to bottom, Republicans no longer bother to hide their turn to fear-mongering, hate-fueling, and resentment. Knowing it’s what brings in their votes, they run on it, unashamed. Abandoning people of conscience, people open to ideas, ones hungry for legislative problem-solvers, they cater to followers of Tucker Carlson and Q-anon conspiracists. And, leading the lowly list, Trump, now taken to wearing Q badges, and whose mental health is deteriorating ever more rapidly, as he claims to have declassified the documents he stole, with his very, very large brain. 

Rather than helpful policies, Republican politicians expect – with good reason – their enraged voters to accept lies and vote accordingly, on their constantly-fed fears and resentments. This they do fully confident that no matter what legislation they propose or how they vote in ways that will hurt those same people, they’ll have their support.

Thus, their unanimous “no” votes on the Inflation Reduction Act and, now, as jobs and money for included projects come to their states and districts, they take credit. Write to President Biden to ask for more. While four Republican legislators, including Marco Rubio, up for reelection, introduce legislation to undo the part of the IRA that lowers prescription costs; benefitting no one but the drug companies who’ve given hundreds of thousands of dollars to their campaigns. There’s no better evidence of Republican fealty to contributors, not constituents. 

They count, too, on their ability to wipe from memory how President Biden’s leadership has created millions of jobs; how the American Rescue Plan saved a crashing economy, preserving more millions of jobs. Get them to focus on inflation, blame it on Biden, they decided, not our corporate paymasters making record profits. Or the pandemic’s aftereffects. On the Foxotrumpified, it works.

Worried that belief in Trump’s election lies alone might not carry them to victory in November, they’re flogging another one, nationwide and here, repetitively, backed by dark money super PACs. 87,000 IRS agents, coming “to harass the middle class,” claims a local candidate, sweet and smiley. Despite it having been debunked repeatedly, she’s more than willing to spread it. Knowing it’s far harder to convince people they’re being lied to than to embed a lie in the first place, it’s what they do. 

And, sadly, they rightly count on Democrats to fail even to try to counter with the truth. We’ve seen the ad literally hundreds of times. Rebuttal ads? Zero. Same with the “wide open borders” feverish figment, which ignores the record number of interdictions both of drugs and illegal border-crossers under President Biden. And, for the wall-eyed, the fact that most of the intercepted drugs are discovered at border checkpoints. Ask any Trumpist, though, and they’ll bear credulous witness to the lie.

Or another big one: crime, which as we heard from Coach Tommy, Democrats want. Whereas it’s true murder rates are up (the highest rates are in red states), there’s been a steady decline in violent crime, nationally, since 1990. It’s everywhere, though, candidate ads blare. What do Republicans, including our smiley senate candidate, plan to do about it? More silence. 

Surely we can all agree on this, however: what a relief it’ll be, no matter the outcome, when the election is over. I can no longer stand the ads from either side.

Too Much To Take

I almost passed on writing a column this week. Thinking hard enough about our political future to put it into writing is becoming depressing. For example: how can Hershel Walker be deadlocked with Raphael Warnock in Georgia’s senate race? Is it because Trump endorsed him? If so, then how, after all the criminality roiling around the former “president,” can his imprimatur still be influential?

The latest news about the ex-football player’s personal life doesn’t matter to Trump, for obvious reasons. As to the ex-football player’s denial, who can doubt the word of a man who graduated at the top of his college class, spent years in law enforcement, and runs four hospitals? He says. His son says, “Family values, people? He has four kids with four different women, and he wasn’t in the house raising one of them. He was out having sex with other women…” 

Senate Republicans and “pro-life” groups have made it clear they’re with him no matter what. So is Mitch McConnell’s super-PAC. Of course they are: they stopped caring long ago about qualifications or expectation of positive contribution to America. They’d support a spawning salmon if it’d give them a majority, enabling their undoing of democracy. Say what you want about libs, they’ve never put forward such unseriousness for senator. Not since LBJ drove Southern Democrats into Republican arms. Even Ronald Reagan would be ashamed.

Curious to see how well Pennsylvania’s Lt. Governor John Fetterman speaks after his stroke, I participated (i.e., made a contribution) in a Zoom meeting on Monday, with him and Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, the latter of whom is running against Wisconsin’s Senator Ron Johnson, regularly referred to as America’s dumbest senator. Fetterman did fine; stumbled on a word here and there, but not to any dramatic degree. And Barnes can hold his own anywhere. I hope their debates are streamed.

If it’s possible that a domestically-violent, unqualified, campaign-coached, debate-canceling ex-football player can defeat smart, informed, dedicated incumbent Senator Warnock, the prospect of Mr. Oz the snake-oil-selling, charlatan doctor representing the cradle of our democracy is even worse. To this fellow surgeon, anyway. An unabashed quack dealer, he’s another who has much in common with Trump. An embarrassment. Seriously. Watch this video.

And Ron Johnson: in favor of banning abortion with no exceptions. If women don’t like it, he says, they can move. Laughed off January 6, saying the protestors “did teach us all how you can use flag poles.” Became the slippest Freudian, ever. A hardcore, Trump-excusing election denier, he had this to say about Covid vaccines: “Why do we think that we can create something better than God in terms of combatting disease?” No doubt many voters, alive thanks to creations of medical science against God-created diseases, are thinking the same.

It matters. If Washingtonians can’t vote for the better candidates in Georgia or Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, we can consider what their nomination tells us about today’s Republican party; and why it behooves any actual conservative, along with liberals, whose policies have repeatedly benefitted America, to refrain from supporting any Republican for federal office, until they abandon Trumpism.

Which includes our own, one of whose many misleading ads pushes the discredited lie about 87,000 IRS agents coming after the middle class. And who’s been unconservatively silent about Trump’s latest call for violence, echoed, from the same stage, by Margorie Taylor Greene, who makes the ex-football player seem more motherly than Theresa.

Democrats are planning to kill Republicans, said she, to applause, meaning it literally. Mitch McConnell has a death wish, said he, along with a racist comment about Mitch’s wife, also to applause. Given what January 6 insurrectionists said about Trump’s instigating words, someone might well feel called upon by their God-given idol to attack McConnell. Nary a word, except stumbling excuses, from Republican leaders. (MTG also warned that electric cars, which can leave gas cars in their dust, are [checks underwear] “emasculating.”)

Returning to our local lady, wouldn’t it be nice if political ads were prohibited from lying? Product ads are, after all. It’ll never happen as long as Republicans have the filibuster, because it’s all they have. They killed a bill to require revealing “dark money” donors, too, and Democratic bills protecting voting rights, among many others of benefit to us all. In my Zoom meeting, Mandela Barnes made a strong case for ending the filibuster, which makes a structurally unfair body even more so.

It’s too much to process. Demonizing the vulnerable, dehumanizing asylum-seekers. Overruling doctors and their patients, rejecting certified election results, endumbing education. MAGAfied candidates: Congress, governorships, secretaries of state, state legislatures, judges. If Trumpublicans win, that party – and maybe the country – is lost for generations.

What's At Stake

Come November we’ll be voting in yet another “most important election, ever.” Not to be the wolf who cried “boy oh boy,” but if this isn’t THE one, it has a heck of a lot more riding on it than any in memory. Like, you know, survival. Literal and figurative. Republicans, especially the MAGAfied ones, are making no secret of what’s in store if they take control of Congress. Let’s remind ourselves who they are:

Rick Scott (R-FL), chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is responsible for getting Rs elected to that body. It’s he whose healthcare company paid the largest fine, ever, for Medicare fraud, BEFORE he was elected governor and then Senator. He just sent emails to Republicans, seeking suggestions for where “illegal immigrants” should next be sent: Barack Obama’s house, the White House, San Francisco, or “other.” 

Funny, right? In fact, the already-sent aren’t illegal. They’re legitimate seekers of asylum, having escaped with their lives, allowed in, legally, to pursue their quest. The kind of people whose life-risking commitment to freedom has made this country great; whose presence in America angers Trumpublicans. Threatens their ability to feel superior, maybe.

But that’s not the issue. The issue is, in what way does loading desperate people onto planes, lying to them, shipping them off in hopes they’ll be mistreated and abandoned, differ from loading people into cattle cars? Sure, there are a few details. But anyone who thinks it’s hilarious, who isn’t appalled by the dehumanization and the oh-so-clever poll, isn’t far removed from those who stood silent or cheered, 75 years ago, in Germany; arms raised like Trumpists in Ohio.

Can anyone still believe “it can’t happen here”? It already is. Cruelty is the point, acquiescence the propagator, Trumpism the fuel. It’s who they are, and, if put in charge, what they want America to become. 

Also who they are: Ted Cruz (R-TX). If they take over, he said, Republicans would impeach Biden “whether it’s justified or not.” To anyone with more brain cells than the number of MAGAgonists giving that Q-anazi salute, there’s no legitimate reason to impeach President Biden. There’s plenty for MAGA Republicans to disagree with. That’s okay. It’s policy. But “high crimes and misdemeanors?” Maybe there’s a copy of the Constitution in one of the boxes Trump stole. That, he'll get back. After he reads it for the first time, maybe he’ll share.

As justification, Cruz floated “failing to enforce the border,” despite the record number of arrests under President Biden, and hundreds of thousands of drugs being interdicted. If scaring people about “rainbow meth” and fentanyl deaths (which tripled under Trump) is good campaign strategy, “rampant crime” is better. Which makes right-wing outrage over the FBI’s arrest, at his home, of a man who punched and knocked down a 72-year-old who was escorting women out of a Planned Parenthood Clinic. Punched twice, till he fell and was injured. “Outrageous FBI overreach,” said Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah), one of many. 

Back the Blue. Blue lives matter. Unless they’re retrieving stolen documents, arresting Trumpists storming the capital or punching protectors of women. If MAGA Republicans take over Congress, there’s reason to believe only white, male, Christian Trumpublicans will be welcome in America.

Okay, Sid, calm down. Stick to the facts.

Flanked by climate-change-, vaccine-, and election-deniers (and a few not-completely-nuts Rs) Kevin McCarthy announced the Republican “Commitment to America,” pending their ascendency to power. Containing many words forming sentences, it promises to solve everything, by spending lots of money (ironic) while making no mention of where it’ll come from. For that, we return to Rick Scott, whose economic plan features a requirement to subject government programs (Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, etc.) to re-approval every five years. One doesn’t need insurance-covered cataract surgery to read between those lines.

The rest of the “Commitment” is full of focus-group-tested promises. “Fight inflation and lower the cost of living.” Hey, who isn’t for that? Double hey: who needs actual plans? Energy independence is on the list, too. Based on their accompanying video, via more drilling. In Russia, evidently, since the video showed pumping there. Climate change? Who cares? Fires, floods, droughts, hurricanes? Fake news. 

How ‘bout this: “Expand parental choice so students can receive the education their parents know is best.” Translation: so long, public education. No child having to learn American history, read challenging books, or become empathetic. And this one is especially good: “Personalize care to provide affordable options and better quality, delivered by trusted doctors.” Any idea what that means or how it happens? Seriously. Read the “document.” Think beyond the headlines. 

And then, unless you believe the election was stolen, climate change is a hoax, and you want a national abortion ban, overcome any inclination to vote for any Republican. Including a pretty lady who says Democrats are “working overtime” to raise prices, and who, after winning her primary, scrubbed her website of election fraud claims and abortion bans.

Belief Relief

 

“Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought to be deprecated.” George Washington, 1792.

To the dismay of many religious and political leaders, increasing numbers of Americans, especially Christians, are becoming unchurched. Which is ironic: it’s the actions of those worried leaders, their attacks on people who don’t believe or love like them, forcing their zealotry into legislation, that younger generations find off-putting. Plus the hypocrisy, as political proclaimers of Christian faith, and their voters, treat people in need in the most un-Christlike ways.

Children born into religion follow suit. Eventually, some will raise questions; for example, given the misery so evident everywhere, the Biblical descriptions of God. Of course, opinions about the literal truth of the Book vary from absolute to not at all.

At birth, we’re atheist. Humans aren’t born believing, any more than they’re born racist. They have to be taught. Awareness of mortality preceded religion and still does. “Am I going to die,” children ask before wondering about gods. “What happens when we die?” The answers they receive depend on accidents of where, when, and to whom they’re born.

To relieve that existential angst, immutable – if untestable -- credenda are a human longing. And, since no truths are manifest, the need produces them. “If you’re good, you go to heaven. If you’re bad, hell.” “We’re reincarnated till we get it right.” “We were, and rejoin star dust.” “We get our own planet.” “Your thetan forgets your past life and starts you over.” “We live on in the hearts of those who cherish our memory.” “We needn’t fear death, because we experienced it before we were born, and it’s that to which we return.” Each offers comfort to some.

Polytheism was a logical first invention: forest gods, specialist gods, enough to explain the fearsome: volcanoes, earthquakes, thunder and lightning, disease. Good things, too: love, food, intoxicants. No god fully in control, lesser ones tormenting each other and us, creating havoc because they can. But, at the end, a promise of life beyond death.

To many millions, that celestial chaos comports better with life’s vicissitudes than one all-powerful, all-knowing, loving god who allows, or causes, boundless pain and suffering, even in innocent children; born in sin, eons removed from a disobedient apple-eater, doomed unless forgiven. Meting out, to the unforgiven, eternal roasting on the coals of hellfire seems unloving, too. Not everyone agrees.

For every person accepting religious doctrine with unquestioning certitude, there’s a billion others who believe completely differently and with equal certainty. Since they can’t all be correct, absent objective criteria of rightness, there’s little reason to assume all but one are wrong.

The same applies to holy books and texts, multiply translated and revised; one at the behest of a seventeenth-century king; others appearing only a few decades past. Contradicting each other, unquestioningly accepted, summarily dismissed. Which speaks less of truth or falsehood than of the inescapable urge, across all cultures, to make peace with life and death. That’s the origin and purpose of every religion. For most people, their choice satisfies. Which is good.

Nobel-Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman said, “I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.” Me, too. But I don’t consider it superior to certainty: it’s a state of mind. My skepticism, however, harms no one, except, some insist, me; whereas, as America moves ever closer to punitive, far-right (un)Christian theocracy, its lawmakers and judges are intentionally harming different-believers.

Ron “Full armor of God” DeSantis got stick-it-to-the-libs laughs for treating desperate asylum-seekers, including children, told they were following the rules, in the most dehumanizing, unchristian way imaginable. Tucker Carlson was tickled red. He, DeSantis, and the MAGAwful who loved it, make one wish hell is real. And, for the stuck-it-to libs who gathered, lovingly, to provide, heaven.

The point isn’t whose religion is right or wrong, for, in this life, we’ll never know. In our corner of a vast, unknowable universe, we Earthlings have produced widely divergent responses to mortality; each of which, objectively, has as much claim on truth as any other. Therefore, one ought to be humble about one’s personal choice, accepting that others settled upon theirs for reasons that deserve the same respect as yours. Which means public policy should be kept separate from all religions: yours, mine, theirs. THAT is the point.

Those who need to legislate their beliefs into secular law must be so insecure in their truth that knowing others disagree frightens them unto death. Pour souls: they have it backwards.

In The News

 

There’s no foreseeable end to the formerly respectable Republican Party’s disappointing descent. Here’s some of the latest evidence:

Louis Gohmert, R-TX, who’d lose a debate with a box of rocks, just greeted Dr. Simone Gold with a ceremonial American flag upon her release from prison. She’d been incarcerated after pleading guilty to charges related to participating in the Trumpist defiling of our nation’s capitol.

Prior to that, she’d acquired infamy for vaccine lies and touting useless, debunked cures. In addition to the flag, Gohmert graced her with the designations “American hero” and “political prisoner.” Decried the fact that her “cures” had been called out for their ineffectiveness. Glossed over the fact that when one confesses to a crime, punishment is apolitical, except to the extent that our laws derive from the politics of democracy, as they should. Ted Bundy: not a political prisoner. Nor would be someone convicted of stealing government secrets, keeping them unguarded in a basement, and lying about it.

Gohmert’s stunt preceded the anniversary of 9/11 by only a couple of days. The day, we might remember, when several brave and actually patriotic Americans, one of whom was MAGA-reviled gay, sacrificed their lives by downing their Flight 93 before it crashed into the capitol. Louie thought it quite appropriate to make a hero of a person who’d done pretty much the opposite. In his party, he’s no outlier.

The Congressman decided to retire to run for Texas Attorney General, but he’d have been reelected as long as he chose to stay on the dole. He is, after all, the archetypal MAGA Republican. That he came in last for AG shows the power of gerrymandering Congressional districts: the state rejected him, but his district loved him and will, no doubt, produce a comparably clueless clone.

Fully MAGAfied, Mr. Gohmert pushes the big election lie. And, until he got the Covid-19 virus, made a show of not wearing a mask. Then, required to wear one on the floor of Congress after testing positive, blamed the mask for giving him the disease. Evidently a time-traveling mask. A favorite Fox “news” guest, his appearances were marked by insane conspiracies (terrorist babies) and other lies. His role as America’s dumbest congressman will soon be up for grabs. MAGAuspiciously, there are plenty of others ready, willful, and able to step into the void.

If Gohmert’s buffoonery has provided occasional comic relief for our over-slapped foreheads, there’s nothing funny about Chief Justice Roberts’ disingenuous attempt to defend the integrity of his hyper-partisan court. Echoing Justice Thomas’ prior comments, but, considering the latter’s spousal activities, less ironic, Roberts suggested that people are questioning the Court’s legitimacy because they dislike decisions that don’t go their way. “Simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for criticizing the legitimacy of the court,” he declared.

Astoundingly, he also posited, “You don’t want the political branches telling you what the law is.” Really? Isn’t that exactly the Constitutional purpose of the legislative branch? What he said, as they say across the pond, is “all bollocks.” Smart enough to know better, he said it anyway, thus lowering people’s estimation even further.

To the extent that people characterize the court’s current lack of legitimacy, an activity as old as the Constitution, it’s because of the court's current lack of legitimacy. All of its Sanctimonious Six, for instance, were hand-picked by the far-right Federalist Society, specifically to overturn the Civil Rights Act, Roe, and environment-protecting regulations. Which they have. Its two most recent occupants warm the bench because of Mitch McConnell’s spectacular, even for him, hypocrisy about appointments in election years.

And, contrary to Roberts’ insistence that the Justices are impartially interpreting the law, we were treated to Mr. Justice Alito’s smug braying, in Rome, about his brilliance in overturning Roe. Sneering at the reaction to it from world leaders. Particularly proud, was he, of the snark in his majority opinion. If that’s legitimacy, so’s this.

SCOTUS’ illegitimacy is mirrored in the judge who approved Trump’s request for a special master to review his pilfered papers. Appointed after Trump had lost the election, raising McConnell’s hypocrisy to stratospheric heights, she’s a lifelong member of the Federalist Society and now a lifetime MAGA on the bench. Judge Cannon found herself criticized from all sides for a clearly ridiculous decision. Bending the law to conform to the wishes of the guy who appointed her after being resoundingly voted out of office. Legitimacy? By no measure.

Republican judges have been hired to approve a hard-right, antidemocratic agenda: nationwide abortion ban, discriminatory voting laws, reversing marriage rights, degrading public education, promoting pollution. They’re exceeding expectations. Illegitimately.

Strait Talk

 

Though everything President Joe Biden said last week in “The Speech” was true, he could have put it better. “Fascists. They are fascists. Not all of them… but we are getting closer. We have to win this election.” 

Oops, sorry. That was Trump, two years ago. 

So let’s not feel sorry for MAGA Republicans. They threaten democracy exactly as President Biden described. Their hurt comes from hearing truth from a presidential podium, rather than the lies they’ve lapped for years. What Trump campaigned and “governed” on was purposefully divisive. He’s still at it.

Oh, but Joe said he wouldn’t. Right. Before seeing MAGA Republicans dismantle, brick by brick, the walls protecting voting rights, Constitutional rights, public education, elections; while they build one around their lawless leader.

But President Biden could have made it less of a campaign speech. Knowing his words would send MAGA Republicans into elephantine dudgeon, he reached beyond them, positing (questionably) that most Republicans aren’t so extreme and anti-democracy. If his intent was to convince those people -- enough of them to defeat candidates who promote Trumpism, such as refusal to say Biden won fairly, which includes one from our state -- he could have left out the list of accomplishments, impressive though they are. Made it exclusively about real, not-Trumpic patriotism, democracy, and the now-or-never need to rise above partisanship.

As MAGA Republicans continue to nominate election-denying, regressive candidates, real conservatives must recognize the need to stand against the party. For America. For now. Even if only this once. Send the message that Trumpism is poisonous to conservatism.

President Biden’s speech was divisive only to those who don’t share his commitment to preserving American democracy. Will not-oxymoronic “reasonable Republicans” do what’s needed? We’ll see. Not if right-wing media and current R leaders hold sway. Their tears insult crocodiles everywhere.

Which, in a non-sequitur sort of way, brings us to the historically consequential question our country, our democracy, and our Constitution will soon face: to indict or not, the Fifth-pleading (like his family and lawyers), undeniably law-breaking and, as facts are revealed, not-impossibly treasonous former “president.”

Ominously, documents seized by the FBI included details about another country’s (Israel?) defenses and nuclear capabilities. Wouldn't Trump's Saudi pals love that?

Any other public employee would already be in jail. Misappropriated sensitive documents. Lied about it. Kept them unsecured. Obstructed a legally-warranted investigation.

And now it appears Trump still has more, somewhere. Shared – could it be? -- with our adversaries? He does have a history. And what about those empty folders, marked as having contained classified material? Coincidence or not, since Trump departed D.C., a record number of US overseas operatives have been compromised, arrested, or killed. 

Recognizable to anyone not employed or deceived by rightwing media, or not an elected Republican, Trump engaged in criminal behavior. Guilt isn’t’ the question; what to do about it is. Like movie mobsters, Trump, Lindsey Graham, et sycophanti, warn of riots in the streets. Rioters who'd include Trumpists who called BLM a terrorist movement and decried the violence that accompanied some of their rallies; much of which, according to the FBI, was instigated by rightwing infiltrators.

Compared to what Trump’s well-armed, flak-jacketed, lawbreaker-lovers would attempt to deliver, BLM was nothing.

Even without rioting, indicting Trump would stir righteous but wrongeous anger; the viewer-attracting outrage from Tucker and his similars would be red-hot. “How dare liberals enforce our laws? We, not they, decide which ones are breakable, and by whom. Because we’re the law and order party. Like that Special Master ruling: Trump’s judges work for us.” 

For any non-MAGA, historically conservative Republican, it’s a brainer. If anyone commits crimes that put at risk or actually compromise national security and isn’t indicted, our laws mean nothing. This especially applies to a “president,” because presidents are above the law only in the dictatorships Trump loves. Prosecution would be like chemotherapy for America: a challenging, worrisome, unpleasant, but necessary process to rid the body politic of a cancer. There’s too much at stake not to.

If riots there be, and painful disruptions, no matter how transiently destructive, when the blood dries there will have been cleansing. “But no president has ever been indicted,” say the adulators. “It’s deep-state overreach.” Well, unprecedented begets unprecedented.

Indict him. If a jury agrees, convict him. Then, in deference to his brief, rejected “presidency,” slap on an ankle monitor and confine him to Mar-a-Lago. Golf course excluded.

For the moment, though, as he’s demanding immediate reinstatement as “president” and pushing Qanon conspiracies on his “Truth (anti-)Social” platform, the more pressing question is whether he ought to be restrained and medicated, for his own good.

Semi-Fascist

 

I hate to keep pointing out the proto-totalitarian mendacity of today’s Republican Party. After all, who wouldn’t want to see them become helpful? Well, as it turns out, they.

Take inflation (please). People are hurting. Yet here’s what Florida Senator Rick Scott, notorious for paying the highest fine ever for Medicare fraud but elected anyway, Trumpishly, said about it: “This is a goldmine for us.”

Which explains the Republican response as inflation has begun declining: accusing Biden of lying. Insisting, against CBO economic analysis, that the Inflation Reduction Act, won’t. Casting full blame on President Biden when inflation has many causes and is higher in several other countries. Asked what their anti-inflation plans are, Republicans change the subject: immigration, walls, crime (but not Trump's). Because they have none and don’t want one. Why look a “goldmine” in the mouth? 

Or consider President Biden’s plan to cancel a portion of student loans, mainly for those making an average of $70 thousand/year. Controversial, for sure. If, as in better-educated countries, post-high school education were included in government funding, it wouldn’t be an issue. While Rs eruct outrage, morality being their strong suit, they ignore their own who had PPP loans forgiven, including some of the loudest screamers. But it’s unfair to students who paid, is what they say. 

Being fair-minded, I won’t bring up the many hardworking contractors Trump stiffed, or his six bankruptcies, which allowed him to skate on millions he owed. Curiously, this lifelong history of absconding on debt wasn’t disqualifying for Republican voters; the same ones, no doubt, extruding red-hot offense over President Biden’s action.

Nor would I even think of mentioning that “Forgive us our debts” thing in The Lord’s Prayer. I will, however, point out that as progress happens, pre-progress people may not benefit. That’s how it works: progress progresses past the past. Social Security, medical breakthroughs. Automobiles. Indoor plumbing. Unfair to the previously born.

But there’s something that reveals even more clearly to whom Republican leaders are indentured, what their political priorities are, and in what low regard they hold the voters they consider their gullible base. Namely, the reactions to funding 87,000 IRS agents, as contained in the Inflation Reduction Act. Contemptuous lies: impenitent, confidently cynical, too many to recount here. 87,000 agents, they shriek, armed with AR 15s, will be busting down doors of ordinary people, taking their hard-earned money and their children’s lemonade stands. At gunpoint.

The lies aren’t coming only from execrable media conspiracists like Jones and Carlson. It’s the head of the RNC, Cruz, Scott, Graham, McConnell, McCarthy, Rubio, Grassley, and more, plus the usual House crazies. Repeated hundreds of times, by actual count, by R Congresspeople and their “news” dispensers, the lies persist despite thorough debunking.

And, of course, they’ve led to Trumpism’s favorite activity: death threats. Which, it should be noted, are also happening to employees of the National Archives and FBI after Trump attacked them for doing their jobs. Trumpists believe anything and stop at nothing. Leaders count on it.

Here’s the truth: new hires will occur over a period of ten years. Due to normal attrition, the net result will be an increase of 40 thousand employees, bringing the IRS back to the number it had in 1990; most will be customer service representatives and analysts, not agents.

The number of new agents added over that decade will be fewer than 7,000. Less than one percent of IRS agents are armed, and that won’t change. Their targets are super bad guys, like drug cartels and Russian oligarchs, among which, we assume, typical Americans – even Trumpists -- aren’t. 

The IRS has made clear its intent to use the increased resources to go after very wealthy cheaters, who bilk the government out of billions. Which exposes the reason for those Republicans’ shameless lies: frightening people who don’t cheat into voting for them, at the behest of and to protect those who do. 

Bending truth may be a bipartisan political activity, but this level of incandescent Republican lying about everything bespeaks a party committed to nothing but its own power and its paymasters’ demands. Aware that their policies don’t attract average voters, they’ve made disinformation their electoral strategy. The violent, scapegoating rhetoric of their next great blight hope, Ron DeSantis, against LGBT citizens, Anthony Fauci, public education, and more, shows there’s no bottom for Trumpublicanism to hit. Encouraging civil war if laws are enforced and Trump is charged for his crimes, they echo the worst of human history. 

MAGA Republicans, who recently feted Hungary’s fascistic Viktor Orban, are indignant that President Biden called them “semi-fascist.” Agreed: he was wrong to say it. There’s nothing “semi” about them. 

Fahrenheit 45

 

Edward Luce, reporter for the Financial Times, tweeted this: “I’ve covered extremism and violent ideologies around the world over my career. Have never come across a political force more nihilistic, dangerous and contemptible than today’s Republicans...” To which General Michael Hayden responded: “I agree. And I was the CIA director.” Which he was, serving presidents GWB and BHO, left and right.

Not even Republicans, especially Trump’s diehards, can dispute it. In fact, the more nihilistic and dangerous their leaders and candidates are, the more inflammatory and dishonest rhetoric they dispense, the more enthusiastically Trumpublicans, still in control of that party, endorse them. They WANT nihilistic and destructive candidates, fawn over them, no matter what their fellow citizens, including themselves, stand to lose. Exactly what Luce and Hayden were talking about.

Over the top, you say? Blinded by unwarranted, commie, “woke,” CRT-pushing, Soros-funded, baby-eating, infanticide-promoting, climate-hoaxing, (education-promoting, library-liking, science-understanding, diversity-not-fearing, empathy-endorsing, sexuality-comprehending) baseless Trump hatred? Hardly. Just look around.

Starting, again, with the obvious: Trump illegally removed highly-classified documents from the White House and took them to America’s leading toxic waste repository known as Florida. Recent reporting states he personally inspected all of them last year: he knew what was in them; knew some were higher than top-secret. And not planted. He refused to return them when requested. Why? What did he plan for them? And why would any law-loving American defend it? The facts are undisputed. His “only-the-best-people” lawyers are making it clearer every day. 

Central to the American system of justice are checks and balances. The FBI can’t “raid” homes without a warrant; including former “presidents.” Their lawful retrieval of documents, which Trump had no right to keep, followed months of investigation, ignored requests, and lies; coming only after authorization by a Biden-appointed US Attorney General, Trump-appointed CIA director, and a Trump-era federal magistrate, all of whom found probable cause. Their suspicions have been confirmed. Never one to pass up a good grift, Trump is, reportedly, sucking $1M per day from those suckered into contrived outrage.

From the right, there’s been virtually no support of constitutional rule of law. “If the home of a ‘president’ (who illegally removed highly sensitive documents and left them virtually unprotected) can be raided, so can anyone’s (who similarly broke the law and put national security at risk)” scream the screamers. This is anti-democracy nihilism at its close-to worst.

Closer is the lineup of unqualified, cynically-chosen, anyone-who-can-win-the-MAGA-vote candidates, top to bottom. Hershel “too many trees” Walker. Snake-oil pusher, TV creation, Mehmet Oz, who had to know he was peddling fake cures and did it anyway. To the tune of millions of dollars and countless deceived people. A skinny Trump. Also, JD Vance: former never-Trumper who five-fingered the wind.

Unmoscowed, Mitch McConnell is worried that, because of such terrible candidates (“candidate quality” is how he bemoaned it), he won’t regain senatorial majority leadership. And we’d miss his signature hypocrisy: doing what he accuses Democrats of doing, while decrying Democrats if they do what he’s been doing. 

Bad as that is, it’s in the states where theocratic intolerance is spreading like Carlsonian conspiracies. Governors, state legislators, secretaries of state, city councils, school boards, are being packed with election-denying, book-banning, Foxotrumpified Christian nationalists claiming to protect us from their latest, focus-group-tested MAGA manipulator: “Woke.”

But what’s more agenda-forward than banning history books, novels, any pages and words that might cause white Superchristian children or their parents to feel discomfort? Of the kind that stems from being asked to recognize equality under the law, of people other than those they see in the mirror.

In Florida, Texas, and elsewhere, they’re busily ensuring that people who respect religion enough to believe in keeping it separate from government have no voice. “Woke,” if it has any meaning at all, is, in fact, shorthand for Jesus’ most fundamental teachings: empathy, generosity, open-mindedness. Pushers of the opposite, like DeSantis and his holier-than-everyone-else followers, think it’s their ticket to Heaven. This is ironic. 

Running a close second to the preceding descriptor of Florida, Texas has passed a law limiting ballot drop-off locations to one per county. Henceforth, Loving County, with fifty-seven residents, will have the same number as Harris County, which includes Houston and has 4.7 million people. It’s not mysterious where most Democratic voters live.

In red states, the march to America’s unique, anti-Christian “Christian nationalism,” with its censorship, white supremacy, and enforced ignorance, appears unstoppable. And, since the Constitution unwisely embedded minority rule federally, nationwide takeover is well on its way. 

Lacking easy solutions to self-created problems, humankind is turning to scapegoating and authoritarianism, demanding only thought-free obedience and certitude in one’s unique, unassailable rightness. Which explains it all.

Coming In Fifth

“The truth shall set you free.” John 8:32

“The only reason to plead the Fifth is if you’re guilty.” Trump 0:yes.

440 times, did Trump so plead. Though contradicting himself mid-sentence has been a signature move since he first deescalated into politics, he decided to defend this particular flop of a flip, unfurling the familiar witch hunt metonymy. Funny: armed with truth, witch hunts should be the perfect forum for fighting injustice with it. But his truth wouldn’t have been freeing. No mystery there.

There is mystery surrounding those documents lounging at Mar-a-Lago. Why did he take them? Why had his lawyer sworn they’d been returned? Did Trump bleat that the FBI would plant evidence because he knew they’d find incriminating stuff? It’s reported he watched on the same CCTV on which the DOJ had previously observed people carrying boxes into and out of the unsecured room; which is why they’re fingerprinting the documents. Lacking standable legs, Foxotrumpists attacked the FBI and lied about the judge who approved the warrant. Leading, Trumpistly, to death threats. 

Contradicting his planted documents claim, Trump announced he’d sprinkled magic declassification dust on them. It doesn’t work that way, but okay. Let’s see them. How do you spell FOIA? 

Lying with no consequences to adoring millions who never question or demand accountability makes a person careless. As craven cohorts contrive to condone it, there’s no denying Trump broke a law he’d signed, lied about President Obama doing the same, flung excuses like a misaligned pitching machine, hoping for a strikeout. But documents were there, labeled top secret. Spin on it. 

The preposterous pretext prize goes to “He takes work home.” The guy who, per multiple sources, was disinterested in security briefings unless they were reduced to pictures, who watched TV past midnight, did homework. (Brooklyn Bridge.) Less amusing possibilities: passing secrets to Putin and MBS as payment for electoral help and billions in cash. Blackmailing the French government. Showing it to his paramours? We may never know, but nothing in Trump’s past takes anything off the table; in fact, his lifetime of multiply-investigated business practices, lawsuits, and purported associations with Russian mobsters put it snugly in the credible column. Russian TV implied secrets are already in Putin’s hands. 

Impossible? Recall that, even as the half-Obama’s-size crowd was demobilizing from his inauguration, Trump shared secrets with Russia’s foreign minister, in the Oval Office, causing the CIA to extract a deep-cover agent from Russia. 

Darker in its implications for our country than Trump’s potential harm is how the right (or, more properly, the wrong) slavishly defends it. The crazies calling for killing FBI agents on sight; one giving it a prehumous try. The no less bedumbed, in and out of Congress, demanding to defund the agency. (Oh, Irony, you crafty jokester!) Government overreach, they call it; political tyranny, despite the fact that, prior to executing the warrant, they’d requested the documents, been lied to about them, even subpoenaed them, to no avail. Possible crimes against America require investigation. Surely even America-loving Trumpists can agree.

Imagine an employee found to have removed secrets from the Pentagon and taken them home. Of course law enforcement would investigate. Yet, while leaders remain silent or join in, Trumpublicans are calling for civil war over it. “The party of law and order” needs an update. How about “The party of lies, death threats, and encouraged violence”? (Insert BLM whataboutism here.)

Trumpists will never waver. But do no Republican leaders, other than Liz Cheney, who just lost her seat for the unforgivable sin of speaking truth to Republicans, have the courage to say enough is enough? Even at the risk of becoming yet another lie-rejector purged from the party, Stalinist Politburo-style? In the Trump era, to remain an elected Republican in good standing, one must accept and defend lies and crimes, no matter how debasing. How troubling for those who have remnants of conscience. If any there be.

Eric Trump is sure President Biden was behind the FBI search because when he was allowed off-leash in the White House he saw daddy ordering his Attorneys General around. By contrast, understanding and defending American democracy and the Constitution in ways Trump never has, nor ever will, here’s President Biden, swearing in Attorney General Merrick Garland: “... You aren’t the President or the Vice President’s lawyer. Your loyalty is not to me. It’s to the law, the Constitution, the people of this nation to guarantee justice.” Trumpublicans find that impossible to comprehend.

Meanwhile, as they scream, prevaricate, and eschew policy, President Biden and Democrats have been enacting legislation that benefits us all. Come November, don't forget to remember. 

Bill Of Particulars

 

Rarely are we provided an exemplar that perfectly captures a complex subject, requiring only simple observation to understand everything: what’s become of the Republican Party, for example. Improbably, at last week’s CPAC convention, there were two.

Least surprising was the featuring of Europe’s most dictatorial right-wing leader, Hungary’s Viktor Orban. Fresh off a speech in which he’d unequivocally staked his claim to white supremacy (“… we do not want to become peoples of mixed race”), he was showered with standing ovations; thus were eliminated any doubts of Trumpublicanism standing for authoritarianism, xenophobia, and white grievance. CPAC is Trumpublicanism emblazoned: all of its wannabes and neverbes, its liars and demagogues, flock there as if to the Holy Land, to strut the stage, aglow with received adulation.

But the most mind-blowing proof was off-stage. Representing incarcerated January 6 insurrectionist law-breakers, on display, in a cage, was an orange-outfitted “prisoner” actor, weeping performatively. Oh, the heart-rending injustice: criminals, properly found guilty in courts of law, paying for their crimes. Gathered tear-eyed as if before a creche, bearing witness, the formerly law-and-order-crowing crowds raised their hands to heaven in prayer. If the scene doesn’t confirm the mindless cult that’s become of a once-useful party, nothing does. 

Insinuating herself into the cage, Marjorie Taylor Greene, idolized not in spite of but for her insanity, knelt before the man – A PAID ACTOR!! – camera-ready praying and holding his hand. And yet (hold tight your head, lest it snap on the swivel) she says no one will ever convince her the insurrectionists weren’t Antifa. In which case, for whom tf was she praying?

Proof of their descent into irrationality is undeniable, the Bill of Particulars long. Lauren Boebert got Orbanish applause for demanding, smug-faced and self-satisfied, that Dr. Fauci be prosecuted.

Away from the convention hall, there was worse; though some was amusing. As Fox “news” reported President Biden’s record-breaking, prediction-busting jobs numbers, they ran a chyron stating “WH misses forecast on lower July jobs growth.”

Not a single Republican senator voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, which will benefit all Americans, even those who don’t care. For the first time, it’ll address climate change seriously. It beefs up the Affordable Care Act, takes important steps to lower prescription drug costs, and fights inflation. Having failed to block President Biden’s pro-America package, Republicans got back on their cruelty feet to kill a bill capping the cost of insulin, which is around ten times higher in the US than anywhere else. The cap would have still been three times higher.

Many of them said no to the CHIPS act, aimed at making the US more competitive with China in manufacturing computer chips. Indiana’s strict anti-abortion laws are driving corporations away and causing Ob/Gyn doctors to look and go elsewhere.

We learned that, during Brett Kavanaugh’s hearings, as dozens of tips about his bad behavior came in, the FBI chose not to investigate. As despicable liar Alex Jones finally got his due, we’re reminded that Trump appeared on his show and Fox’s super-spreader Tucker Carlson called him “one of America’s most important truth-tellers.” And we read of the ongoing struggle of generals to keep Trump from using the military as his private police force.

Which brings us to the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, in which the party of law and order sees Q-anon levels of abuse of power by President Biden. Right. With nothing but good news lately about Joe’s succession of successes, he’d raid Trump to get the news off the front pages? News like unemployment at a fifty-year low; gas prices at three-month low; inflation down; Zawahiri eliminated; the CHIPS, PACT, and IRA acts passed. What it says, in fact, is that, unlike Trump’s control of the FBI and attempts on the Pentagon, President Biden had nothing to do with the DOJ decision.

For Attorney General Garland and a federal judge (appointed during Trump’s “presidency”) to sign off, there had to be compelling reasons to suspect criminal behavior, concluding, as reported, months of investigative lead-up. But law-loving Trumpworld took time off from chanting “lock her up” to express outrage that laws apply to everyone. Evidently, it's crime only when liberals and minorities do it. 

Raiding Trump's rule-skirting home is no more unprecedented than the crimes of which he’s suspected. It had to have been justified extra-convincingly, which Trumpublicans will never believe. Trump has a copy of the search warrant. To prove he's being wronged, he should release it. Paradoxically, rational analysis was available only to Fox “news” viewers.

Alternatively, take it from me: Anyone being investigated by the FBI is not qualified to be president of the United States.

Oops. Sorry. That’s what Trump said about Hillary Clinton, incessantly, during the campaign of 2016.

Apocalypse Now

From a recent letter to the editor: “… Biden and his cabal of leftists are crushing American energy with their America Last policies, focusing on climate change, proposing massive new taxes, and denying we are in a recession...”

From another: “… This country is better and deserves better than people like Schwab who really do nothing more than sling insults aimed at degrading and discounting large groups of people simply because they have a different view ...”

Apocalyptic times call for apocalyptic writing; mine, too. I wonder, though, how writer #2 would characterize #1. He also implied, if cheek-tongued, that my opinions make me a domestic terrorist. When it comes to hyperbole, it seems, we’re in it together. It’s nice, as Americans, to share.

Except that in the latter case, the writer, whose Facebook page contains warnings by fact-checkers that his posts are false, misstates and repeats a claim about calling decent conservative citizens “domestic terrorists” because they disagree with “liberal” positions. That assertion, we don’t share. 

Characterizations of domestic terrorism have been applied by proper definition; such as to Proud Boys, who invaded the US capitol on January 6, and to citizens screaming their way into school board meetings, aflame with the false notion that Critical Race Theory is being taught, and/or overblown LGBT lies, threatening violence to board members, their families and homes. It’s not about disagreement, #2: it’s about violence, real or threatened. Disagreement is good for democracies. Tell that to Donald Trump.

Not that writer #1 was better informed. President Biden has, in fact and to the dismay of climate activists, okayed more drilling on federal lands. This he did with rising gas prices in mind. As to “crushing American energy,” he and Democrats, seeing the climate on the wall, are pushing, wisely, for alternative energy innovation, in which America could and should become the world leader.

Massive new taxes? Only on billion-dollar corporations making record profits even as they jack their prices. The money raised by and the programs in the Inflation Reduction Act will benefit all Americans. And, yes, reduce inflation. Not all of us see that as a bad thing. Same with “focusing on climate change.” Dangerous as they are, though, I don’t consider her opinions akin to domestic terrorism, as #2 might, if other-shoe-footed. 

Those two letters are but a tiny sample of the disinformation, deliberate or due to unwitting Trumpofoxification, in rightwing apocalyptic claims. Supporters of Trump, listeners to Tucker, buy their lies about Democrats wanting to “destroy you.” Or quash dissent. On the rare occasions they specify, it’s about “grooming your children” to become gay, transgender, or dinner. Or wide-open borders, bringing in illegals to vote Democratic. None of which are remotely true. Otherwise, it’s just inchoate fear-mongering. And wishing our problems away, which, unlike Trump, President Obama and President Biden didn’t. 

Would the “liberal agenda” destroy America? Depends on which America. If it’s the longed-for one where gays were closeted, women had little control over their reproductive decisions, climate change could be ignored, minorities found it extra-difficult to vote and “knew their place,” then yes. Liberalism is about equality, economic fairness, addressing climate change, fair election laws, protecting humanity and the environment from industrial poisons, ensuring quality public education and more widely-available, less-expensive healthcare. And science.

It’s an agenda aimed at making life better for all Americans, including Trumpists. Other than those who’d make America an evangelical Christian theocracy, lacking public education, accessible healthcare, and unrestricted access to voting. And those who believe Trump’s obvious lies. Those lies aren’t the apocalypse: believing them is.

The Trumpublican agenda favors only the very wealthy, and corporate CEOs who prefer to be unregulated. They no longer pretend otherwise. We’ll all suffer, Trumpists included, from ignoring climate change. And forced birth. They may think they’ll “stick it to the libs” forever by preventing fair voting and promoting Christian Nationalism, but forever lasts a long time. So does history.

What about blocking funds for veterans suffering from burn-pit poisons, then fist-bumping their joy, for no legitimate reason but the aforementioned lib-sticking? (After the deserved uproar, it passed, but their first instinct is illuminating. Eleven R senators still voted no.) Twenty House Republicans voted against a child-trafficking bill. Eight abstained. Refusing to stand against pedophilia. Why, for God’s sake? 

If some far-lefties propose defunding police, for example, they’re not mainstream. Election lies, by contrast, and anti-democratic laws that follow, are central to Trumpublicanism. So is nominating unqualified crackpots to office. If both sides claim their opposite will destroy America, only one seeks progress for Americans of all kinds, while the other seeks to block it. Come November, vote accordingly.