We did it!

 

Now is no time for fall modesty.

The body is still warm, yet the pundit-sphere is already vomiting smug post-mortems, laying out how everything would have been just dandy if Kamala had had only followed their advice and done this.  Or hadn't had done that.  Or, from the Joe-Bros, how if we had just let a doddering, visibly declining President run the course, triumph was inevitable, and are you happy now?

The second-guessing virus runs rampant, but the simple, inescapable fact is this:

We did this.  As the American body politic, we did this.

We had a choice between 

... an imperfect but reasoned person with a long record of public service and rationality ...

... and a deranged, exhausted 78-year old in clear cognitive decline who is a convicted sex felon, friend of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, perpetual business fraudster, serial liar, racist, insurrectionist, Russian asset, violence inciting wannabe authoritarian dictator - and those are his kinder points.

... and We, the People, said:

"That's our Hitler!!!"

Donald Trump spouts nonsense as freely as Buckingham Fountain spouts water.  He hatches paranoid revenge plots with as much fecundity as superchicken does eggs. Much of it expires as soon it escapes his lips and meets the air.  The remainder become the deepest of obsessions.

Last time, he had a cadre of rational people around him who worked to deflect his worst insanities.  This time, he will have an infinity of sycophants and a band of ruthless opportunists for whom he's the enabler of their darkest stratagems.  Today, it's "All Quiet on the Western Front", but soon, and with a compliant Congress, it will all become clear.

As the United States, we've done a lot of stupid things in our history, but never have we sided so openly with a possible authoritarian end to our multi-century experiment in Democracy.And there's little certainly it won't snowball.  Before the election, billionaires like Bezos, Soon-Shiong and Dimon were already hedging their bets.  Now we'll see full-scale acquiescence.  Trump's victory has sent stocks soaring.  They're all wet-dreaming about untold new riches if they just keep their mouths shut and endlessly flatter the emperor with no clothes.  

If there's even an election in 2026, there's no certainty the usual off-year switch in party control will take place.  If things still don't look too bad, and there's enough seeming good news to spin on, the Republican majorities may only increase.  Consequences can still be hidden off in the future.  Remember, it took the Great Depression to pull back the American Public from an infatuation with unbridled Capitalism, and the attack on Pearl Harbor to pull it back from a very real flirtation with Naziism.

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - H.L. Mencken, 1916

Mencken saw America's experiment in Democracy less as noble than an ever-entertaining circus, featuring a "boobosie" worthy only of ridicule.  His cynicism is ever-relevant, but it's the take of someone who doesn't see himself as having any personal stake in the game.  But believe me, we do.

There has always been a lunatic fringe - not just mistaken about policy, but full-up tin-foil wackos.  They've now seduced a majority of us. The task is ignore the self-serving Wednesday-morning pundits (Oh, God, have we heard from Tom Friedman yet?) and work to figure out how to coax at least 10% of our fellow Americans back from the ledge, and keep Donald Trump from tearing down the Republic while we do it.

Until then, no joke, no kidding around, here's the deal ...

The "Enemy of the People" is us.

Congratulations to Us . . .

.., for holding 250 years of the greatest experiment in democracy the world has ever known so cheap as to kick it into the gutter for the embrace of a deep-in-cognitive-decline malevolent sociopath criminal flagrantly intent on its destruction.

Enjoy the show.

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.