Last Exit Before the Toll

I have written so many times already about how disgusted I feel about what is happening vis-a-vis Trump and his actions and the state of our country.  I think I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing left to do or say regarding my effort to persuade any of you that we are in desperate straits concerning our future.

Trump will continue to push against all the boundaries of the rule of law until we finally get rid of him. And it is entirely possible that we will not actually get rid of him, in which case the America we once knew will be no more.  And it is probably unrealistic to expect to wholesale rid ourselves of what has become of the Republican Party and its sycophancy to the Trump administration. 

There seems to be this insurmountable barrier of obliviousness, unconsciousness  and ignorance that a substantial portion of our countrymen can’t seem to penetrate.  That is perhaps the biggest surprise that I have regarding the state of our union.  I know there have always been squabbles between branches of our government, but what we are seeing now is the inexorable destruction and dismantling of a moral architecture that has guided our country for the past 229 years since 1787 when the Constitution was ratified and signed.  I wonder what the framers would say about where we are today and what has become of their work.

Actually, I think some of the Sunday talk shows should create some ‘special editions’ where they have some of the Framers of the original Constitution on as guests to debate the state of the nation with some of our current politicians.  That would make for some interesting television!

We, whether wittingly or unwittingly, elected an autocrat to be President.  Many would say that he is just part of a worldwide wave of such individuals, mostly if not all men, who have answered a yearning for something more than the inaction and incompetence of democratic systems that simply react too slowly to an increasing rate of demand for action to solve increasingly complex social problems.  That is probably true, however it is most painful to see the net effects of that when we have lived in the most revolutionary free social system the world has ever seen.  It is heartbreaking to see the breakdown of such carefully constructed norms that protected our citizens from despotism and bondage for the past 229 years. 

We now have a leader who is actively trying to investigate and prosecute his countrymen who have opposed his autocratic actions.  He wants us to believe that a free press is the ‘enemy of the people’.  His sycophantic Republican Greek chorus chants his tune like the blindly following lemming-like followers of dictators like Mussolini or Hitler.  I wouldn’t be surprised if during the next election cycle, he gets all his Republican legislative supporters to offer up a bill to extend his ‘reign’ or time in office, just like the weakened leaders in 1930s Germany did when they made Hitler Chancellor and then President after he suspended individual and civil liberties.  Hitler convinced the mass of Germans that they needed to fear the Communists.  He brought together the unified right/conservative/nationalist coalition of the time to consolidate his power and essentially become a dictator.  Sound familiar to what is slowly happening here?

Don’t scoff…we are headed in that direction.

Just look at the position the administration is taking with regard to Congressional oversight.  They simply are rejecting what has been a fundamental tenet of our Constitutional system.  And with a Congress that is not united in its protection of that oversight responsibility and obligation, there is no one to stop this inexorable march to autocratic power. 

You probably say, “The Courts will stop this slow but steady spiral…” but not really.  McConnell and the Republicans in the Senate have made it their mission to ratify the nominations of as many far right judges to the Court system as they can, as fast as they can.  The balance of power in the Supreme Court has shifted with the illegal stopping of the nomination of Merrick Garland and then the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, along Republican party line votes.  Trump now has ‘his court’.  Let’s see if the decisions of the Court chart a course that is congruent with current accepted law and Constitutional norms, or strike out in new and ominous directions at the behest of a President who does not believe in the rule of law and only pays lip service to the Constitution.

As much as I hate to say it, our last exit before the toll appears to be the election of 2020.  Over the next 17 months, watch for the increasing vitriol against all opponents of Trump in the upcoming election.  He and his lackeys will try to paint them all as criminals in some way.  He will claim they supported “Lock Her Up” Hillary. He will label them as socialists, maybe even Communists (Just like Hitler did in the 1930s).

He will continue to lie to the country about what he is doing, as he has done consistently since he was elected.  His policies will be more and more hidden in secret conversations with like-minded autocrats like Putin, Xi of China, and European leaders like Viktor Orban who he said he was honored to have sit next to him in the Oval Office yesterday.

His appointments will be more like Bill Barr, as he brings people to the administration who will kow-tow to his policies of exclusion, fear, innuendo and lies.  He will resist any attempt at oversight.  He will do whatever is necessary to stop investigations into his actions that are clearly against the law.

As we approach the election of 2020 he will incessantly claim that there is fraud going on and he is being denied his victory because it is all rigged against him.  Remember, he has still not admitted there was Russian intervention in our election of 2016.  He will never admit it, and it will be present again in this cycle with his blessing. 

Isn’t it amazing that his Attorney General is now investigating the reasons for the appointment of Mueller as Special Counsel, when the reason for it is so plain to see.  We were attacked by a foreign enemy who monkeyed with our election!  Mueller laid out that event in great detail and secured indictments for over 30 people!  Is that not reason enough for us to have done the investigation?  Trump is telling us there was no problem with that, and in fact we should ‘investigate all those who perpetrated that hoax on the American people’!  That is insane.

Yes, the day of reckoning has appeared on the horizon.  Our election in 17 months will be the crossroad where we must choose the path for our future.  Pull out your suitcases, lovers of liberty and freedom!  You may be packing for a long journey to a far better place after November 3, 2020.