Enjoy Your Summer

Enjoy your summer. It's becoming increasingly likely it will be your last under the two-century-old experiment of an American democratic republic.

Remember that for most of our history, the Supreme Court, with rare periods of enlightenment, has been the repository of injustice and corruption - from protecting slavery, to reversing the reforms of Reconstruction through Jim Crow, to shielding monopolies and great concentrations of power at the expense of workers and the individual citizen, down to today, where homelessness and a woman's control of her own body is criminalized, but insurrectionists, bribed politicians (and Justices), Big Oil and swindling corporations are all handed "get-of-jail" cards to further concentrate wealth and power and accelerate their crimes.

All achieved at the hands of a sociopathic narcissist, greed his heartbeat, revenge his very breathing, reckless and cruel, masking his bottomless stupidly with a relentless animal cunning, his insanity drawing an army of racists, grifters and open haters of democracy seeking nothing less than "the erasure of the 20th century."

And how do we fight this existential threat? With an American Hindenburg, an excellent President throwing away his achievements by arrogantly proclaiming himself, even as he would approach 90 at the end of a second term, as the essential man, only him - no one else. And he may be right, as "leaders" fall over themselves evading the basic fact that more and more voters appear to find the prospect of his re-election so suspect they're willing to giving their vote to an opponent who, if not perhaps moral - or truthful - or sane, projects vigor and confidence.

Against such a dangerous, despicable man, "I would vote for Joe Biden in a ventilator." That is what we - including myself - say, though it sounds more like our own virtue-signaling than a viable strategy. We're trapped in our own derangement syndrome, that if we just restate the obvious, crucial difference loudly and frequently enough, people will come to their senses and do the right thing in November.

Except, faced with the incumbent's variable appearances, every poll indicates voters are more and more skeptical, more forgiving of the lies and innuendos. Exactly what magic, what miracle, do we expect to reverse this over the next few months?

It may already be too late, but right now only self-sacrifice and action has a shot at averting disaster. Joe Biden needs to step aside, and someone like Gretchen Whitmer, who survived an assassination attempt, ended far-right control of the legislature, and was re-elected in swing-state Michigan by ten points, needs to take his place.

Right now, no one wants to be the adult, so the malevolent, murderous children play freely.