Unbelievably Bad — Literally

I’ve been listening to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Unfinished Love Story about the Kennedy and Johnson years.

The dignity.  The decency.  The higher purpose.  The seriousness of purpose.  The moral clarity*.

And now Trump.  It is to weep.

Yes, sure, it’s funny to read how Trump cheated at golf; funny to hear Charlie Sheen’s cufflink story.  He’s a rogue!  The king of bankruptcy!  (Not so funny if you’re the contractor who hasn’t been paid.)  He sells steaks and Bibles and grabs women by the pussy — a man’s man with a bone spur inducted into the fake wrestling Hall of Fame.  A felon, a showman — fun! — in ways Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Biden — the other presidents of my lifetime — never were.

And I’m all for fun.

But as leader of “the free world”?  By which is meant the world that rejects autocrats rather than exchange love letters with them . . . rejects autocrats rather than aspire to their unchecked power . . . rejects autocrats rather than trust them over America’s own intelligence agencies . . . rejects autocrats rather than take their side over an invaded nation struggling to remain free.

The dreadful bill Trump signs today is the worst possible way to celebrate July 4th.

Steve Benen writes: “Many Americans may be surprised by just how horrible the Republicans’ megabill is.”

But what really stands out in his piece is that — as with much else Trump has done — when people are told the facts, many simply refuse to believe they could be true.  What Trump and his cowed Congress have done is so unbelievably bad, people literally don’t believe it.

Worth the read.

The bottom line, it seems to me, is that you and I have a once-in-a-lifetime responsibility — to our Founders who fought for Independence, to our forefathers who fought the Nazis and the communists, to the rest of the free world that looks to us for leadership and partnership, and to generations to come — to do all we can peacefully to resist as Fascism in the USA Enters the Fifth & Final Phase.  Not just to watch — to resist.

Enjoy the burgers and watermelon.  Roast marshmallows.  But tomorrow make a plan (if you haven’t already, as many of you have) to do more than you ordinarily would.  For starters: resolve to be as annoying (if that’s possible) as me.

*Vietnam being the glaring exception.  But Johnson agonized over whether to surrender or escalate in ways one imagines our current president has never agonized over anything.