“But none are saved, all are lost.” George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
Just when you think the Trump Reign of Error can’t get any more absurd, the man goes to Europe and opens his foolish mouth, and something resembling language spills out. Trump sounds idiotic even when he’s reading from a prepared script, but when he veers off script, as he is prone to do, to the horror of his handlers, nearly everything out of his mouth sounds like gibberish. What he says today, on the record, on video tape, he denies tomorrow. The man has never in his wasted, pathetic life accepted personal responsibility. Trump bludgeons the truth every single day. The entire world -- with the exception of the parrots on Fox News and most members of the Republican Party -- knows Trump is a liar, a bigot, a fool, and an imbecile.
The Trump junta is a nightmare from which there is no awakening, no relief, no escape. Should the United States engage in dialogue with Russia? Yes, of course. With North Korea? Yes. With India and Pakistan? Yes. Israel? Sure, even if it’s done with a wink and a nod to Bibi. Nuclear powers need to talk to one another, explore mutual interests, and ease tensions whenever possible. I do, and yet don’t, understand the hysteria about Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Is it really a Pearl Harbor, 9/11-style event, a grave threat to our democracy? I’m not willing to go there. It seems a certainty that Russia attempted to influence the election in Trump’s favor, but how effective their efforts were is more difficult to pinpoint, at least from where I stand. What we shouldn’t forget is that the US has been interfering in the elections, governments, and economies of sovereign nations for decades. Please, can we at least step back, pause, and recognize our own hypocrisy? It’s not worse, Democrats, because it happened to us, and I’m not willing to crown the FBI, CIA and NSA as glorious protectors of democracy, because these agencies have long, dark histories of subverting the democratic aspirations of other nations, not to mention spying on Americans. And the intelligence apparatus lies, all the time.
It also seems obvious that the Russians have something on Trump that Trump is desperate to keep locked away, hidden from sight. The Orange Menace is a degenerate of the highest order so there could be a tape of him cavorting with underage prostitutes, but far more likely is money laundering. I think we will see before too much longer that money Russian oligarchs stole from the Russian people was funneled through the Trump Organization and came out scrubbed clean. For the right price, Trump would sell Melania and his children into bondage and never bat an eye or lose a moment’s sleep.
It has to be the money.
We must understand two things about Trump’s grotesque presidency: First, it’s not normal. Trump doesn’t represent America. Second, Trump is out for himself and no one else. He cares not a whit for the poor sod in Michigan or Ohio or Pennsylvania who lost his union job in a ball bearing factory ten years ago and has been scratching out a living on Walmart wages ever since. Trump is a con man -- always was, always will be. If you’re a working class person who thinks Trump cares about you, well, I’m sorry. Both American political parties sold you out long ago. Some of your grievances are justified. You have a right to be worried for your future and your children’s future, but you backed the wrong savior; you’re a casualty of a system that is bigger and far more enduring than Donald J. Trump. Your enemy isn’t African-Americans or Mexican immigrants or women or gay people -- your enemy is neoliberal capitalism, the “free” market, unchecked corporate influence; these are the forces that have upended your world and ruined your shot at a middle-class life. And you’re not alone. Millions of us are huddled in this leaky boat.
My body involuntarily convulses, I feel a cramp in my leg, I sit up in bed and shake my head to rid my mind of the vision of Donald J. Trump’s leering visage; I’m dreaming and wide awake, certain my country is in its death throes, tottering on the edge of the abyss. My bed is on fire and just a few feet from me, Trump is rubbing a computer server and demanding that it reveal its secrets.
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