This Unholy Mess

In December of 2015, at the fifth Republican primary debate, Jeb Bush turned to Donald Trump and said, “Donald, you’re not going to be able to insult your way to the presidency.”
Oops. Because it turns out it’s very possible in today’s America to insult your way to the top. It was done not once, but twice now, through generous use of insults, of course, but also through other kinds of related, scurvy tools citizens now appear to accept in political campaigning: blather, boasting, lying, threatening, and the wildest kinds of exaggeration. The less decency and decorum, the better. That stuff is SO boring.
But here is what insults and those associated tools will not do for you: It will not allow you to govern well or effectively. And it’s pretty clear why.
Campaigning now insists that a successful candidate should not just draw as clear a distinction as possible between her- or himself and the Other One, but should dehumanize the opponent, accuse them of hating America or even of being a traitor. Once you’ve done this, as our current “president” has done, you are stuck with pursuing an increasingly ruinous and divisive agenda. If, as Lincoln said, “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” then our current “president” is a walking, talking recipe for our destruction.
For those of us who see the stark truth of this, these times are beyond frustrating. It is hard to watch a president take a wrecking ball to institution after institution, often seemingly gratuitously, perhaps just to create the dramatic impact that gives him the attention he craves. In the middle of this maelstrom, the major disadvantage of most Americans is that they actually believe in the system of government we have, with all its flaws. This prevents us from advocating for some form of revolution, a radical revision in the way we choose to govern ourselves. We want to believe that ultimately the system will work, even as we see absurd expansions of executive power, humiliating abandonment of responsibility by Congress, and unprecedented, indefensible decisions from the Supreme Court.
In this environment, any counsel that is the equivalent of “keep the faith” is often viewed as weak tea. But make no mistake, “keeping the faith” is anything but passivity and capitulation. Whether we are keenly aware of it or not, it is the focus, the attention, the vocal objections of sane Americans that has kept this “administration” in a defensive crouch even as it foists its greatest outrages on the nation. It can smell its own illegitimacy. It’s there in the eyes of Hegseth, Rubio, Patel, and the rest of the menagerie. And as events play out, more and more people will peel themselves away from the core of those who initially chose not to see the truth. They will open their eyes to the Big Hideous Bill that will strip healthcare from so many Americans; the failure of the new, gutted version of FEMA following the Texas floods; the powerful alienation of formerly solid allies like Canada; the stripping of vital research from the NIH, FDA, and EPA.
As things get more horrifying—which they likely will—it is important to note that all Americans are getting a crash course in the reasons why the Mob Boss model of executive power does not suit the Constitution any more than does the “America Alone” model, because if those models actually did represent American greatness and renewal, we would have to return the Statue of Liberty to France and permanently disavow our own history. You know: we would have to insist that America came to the aid of European allies in World War II only because we had worked out lucrative trade deals which would cover the costs of our participation in the war. All that stuff about freedom and human rights? We weren’t going to be played for suckers. We were tired of being taken advantage of by weaker nations like England and France. We had all the cards!
This is absurd on the face of it. So now the real questions revolve around the long road back to reclaiming our identity as a nation. How long will it take? How much vigilance will be required? How much perseverance? Will we finally throw in the towel and say, “Okay, I’m willing to move on?
I don’t know about you, but I am not going anywhere.