The Biden Presidency Is Over

The original title of this post was “The last political cycle is repeating itself, only worse.” I wrote that in June 2021. Below is the aborted text of that post:

If Joe Biden was hoping for a bi-partisan epiphany from Moscow Mitch and Cowardly Kevin, he's delusional. The Republicans are replaying 2009 and 2010 when a Republican president left a hot mess for Obama and decided they would obstruct everything  Barack needed to do to avoid a depression and begin extracting us from two unnecessary wars. And their plan worked. The stimulus needed to begin a robust recovery was far too small, and Republicans ran in 2010 on the lie that the Democrats were taking over health care and exploding the national debt.

In the 2010 off-year elections, the Democrats were crushed, losing control of the House of Representatives  for the next 8 years, getting annihilated in state legislative races, allowing the Republicans to gerrymander dozens of Congressional seats, and giving Obama an obstructionist legislature for his final six years in office. Mitch and Kev intend to do it again. And this time, if they're  successful,  they stand ready to elect a right wing president in 2024, regardless of the outcome of the vote. A majority of House Republicans voted to overturn the presidential election in 2020. If they control the House and Senate in 2024, they will surely do it again. The Democrats had to have seen this coming. They did nothing to stop it.

Republicans want to win elections when they don't have enough voters. So logically, they want to take rights away. They want to make their rich friends richer. They want to destroy the regulation regime (EPA, CDC, FDA, IRS, Department of Education, OSHA, FEMA). They want to dismantle state gun regulations (as the Court will do to New York this summer). And when leftists complain, they say, "you're being hysterical. You're in power. You're exaggerating. That little rally in he Capitol was overblown. You're making it all up." Or in the case of overturning Roe, they say, "the Court is just sending the issue back to the states." That's what you call taking away liberty from women. That is gaslighting.

It is really happening. And while I might come across as a crazy person now, we shall see where the nation stands in 2025 when President Noem or DeSantis steals an election, and the next one. And then stacks the court 7-2 or even 9-0 to the right. Sotomayor looks ready to walk and Breyer won't live much longer.

Republicans are evil. Anyone who joins their side is in for some fun in online forums, "owning the libs," or encouraging their children to murder their classmates, but it will destroy the nation in the process. And that is the bottom line. Republicans would rather burn the nation down than share power with brown people and women. That is what we are seeing. The bros and their white supremacist allies are having their final stand. It's one last party for the bros who marked keggers in their calendars.

10 months after I wrote those words, it is clear this nation is is being destroyed. The decline is noticeably fast now.

Joe Biden got his single Supreme Court pick. Joe Manchin will ensure he gets nothing more accomplished. The Biden presidency is finished.

The Biggest Mess Left Behind For A New President

I think I’m correct. This is by far the longest list of crises left to a new US president.

For example, Truman was ready to take the helm in April 1945. FDR’s death didn’t rattle the nation in despair and chaos. But 2020? It sure ain’t 1945.

The Trump horror show is ending with rushed Federal executions, a shattered republic, an ongoing withdrawal from Afghanistan, broken confidence in our democracy, and a failed public rollout of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.

The vaccine is not reaching Americans in group 1C. I got my vaccine, but my 79 year-old parents haven’t heard shit about their pending vaccinations. What. The. Fuck.

The Biden administration is doomed. It hasn’t begun, but it is set for failure. All because we let an angry, reclusive, sick New Yorker take shits on our Federal government and our nation for nine long, painful years (if you include the long buildup to Trump’s run and nomination, which I do - just look at Trump’s 2011 and 2012 Twitter feeds).

There’s no movement to help Biden fix what Trump has broken. There’s no widespread public desire to heal our wounds and take care of our elderly. We’re just a nation of selfish monsters who are acting like the pandemic is over. It will linger for years, until the next pandemic.

We will never change. We will never learn. And we will never be good. Just like Donald J. Trump.

The Alternate 2020

What could an alternate 2020 looked like? For a while, in January and February, it looked like the US was headed for a real war against Iran (presumably with Saudi Arabia doing some of the fighting). The illegal airstrike that killed General Solem Soleimani could have easily set the Islamic Republic off. It would have resulted in thousands of civilian deaths, but the US had committed an act of war on top of Iran’s provokation of having their top general in Iraq. Instead, Iran fired warning shots at US forces (which still caused concussions and ruptured eardrums, which Trump didn’t care about, but that’s another story).

Another alternative 2020 would have been a close, but not unexpected re-election for Donald Trump. After all, we didn’t know at the time, but Trump had been gaining in popularity throughout his residency, particularly with Hispanic and Black men. Against a old, non-confrontational Biden, he probably would have won.

And in yet another alternative 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic still happened, but Trump took it seriously and let a panel of public health experts set a national policy, keeping the death toll under 100,000. His good handling of the pandemic would also result in a re-election victory.

American Totalitarianism Started In 2019

The arrival of Bill Barr. The suppression of the Mueller report. Trump’s secret police. The destruction of the US Postal Service. Voter suppression. The Bible moment (preceded by tear gas). The transparent requests to throw out urban votes (and by urban, I really do mean black).

Democracies are not guaranteed to live forever. They can die. We saw American democracy die a little in 2000 with Bush v. Gore. We saw several more stages of death in the last two years.

It would take an effort of colossal proportions to prevent the republic from dying. The nation is sliding down a deadly slope. One idea to rescue it is to open it up to a new wave of massive immigration. Bring in over 300 Million hard working people to turn it around and fund all new infrastructure and a new surge in education funding. I am not a big fan of Matthew Yglasias, a young pundit who has been incorrect so many times before (or is that Ezra Klein? Oh, it’s Ezra. I get all my millenial pundits confused!). But Yglasias does have a point. Every time the US has had a wave of significant immigration, the nation has gotten stronger and the quality of life has improved. There’s no guarantee that it would work the next time. However, the historical track record is well-established.

If pushing for a doubling of the US population seems like an impossible task, then you have a grasp of how difficult it will be to save the republic. Because something quite radical is required to save it. Any radical change would require a colossal effort that I don’t think we’re capable of - even the activists and progressives among us.

Something Worse Is Always Coming

The GOP appears to be backing off from its threat to stage a coup. But the damage has been done. And Lindsay Graham might have just gotten away with a felony, just one month after violating another law.

The GOP is testing the media and Democrats. They want to know how far they can run with this. The further they can go with this, the more likely they will stage a real coup in the future. Think back and reflect on the recent history of the GOP. With each cycle, they have become more crazy and more evil. From Goldwater to Nixon to Reagan to Newt to Bush 43 and now Trump. That's why people like Joe Scarborough talks about Newt Gingrich like he was just a sensible politician who wanted to cut the deficit. Joe will insist to the end that the GOP was being 'noble' and 'sincere' in 1994. Never mind they wanted to kill Social Security and Medicare, as well as repeal Title VII (the Civil Rights Act and Affirmative Action), Title VIII (the Voting Rights Act), Title IX and Title X.

Incredibly, the Republicans of the recent past don't seem so nuts today, because the party is becoming more and more nuts. That's why some Democrats speak kindly of the worst president we ever had -Bush 43. And that's why, 10 years from now, some talking heads on MSNBC will say that Trump wasn't so bad, given who will be president in 2030. Something worse is coming. Since Goldwater, something worse is always coming.

Trump Isn't Ill. He's Evil And Depraved.

Captain Queeg wasn't evil, only paranoid and unfit for command responsibility. Trump, of course, is mentally ill, and has a clear narcissistic personality disorder. His psychological and anti-social pathologies render him manifestly unqualified to hold ANY public office.

But there the analogy to Queeg ends. Trump is also -to use a very old term- evil. That is to say, he is depraved. He deliberately harms people, including small children, who he separates from their parents and locks up for months. In such a case, this deliberate cruelty is the point of his policy. He seeks to use the power of his office to arrest and prosecute his predecessor, his previous opponent, and his current opponent. If permitted, he will steal the coming presidential election, and call on his most devoted and unhinged followers to unleash armed violence on the democratic institutions of the country. If he loses this election, he calls for blood in the streets in order to enact revenge on his own people.

All of this is not to argue that Trump isn't suffering from mental illness. Ge obviously is. But he's also the most evil and depraved person ever to hold the office of president. He must be defeated, and then held responsible for his countless crimes.

It Will Get Worse Again Soon

Joe Biden didn't beat Donald Trump. No, Donald Trump beat himself. His big mouth lost him Pennsylvania and Arizona. His refusal to be decent and kind set up his defeat years ago. I'm thrilled he sunk himself. But we have to acknowledge that his loss is all on him. He had this election almost in the bag. Turns out Americans didn't care about the recession or COVID-19! They were ready to give him a full pass! But he insulted the ghost of John McCain and insulted Pennsylvania. Cocky bastard.

We’re getting another Trump. Sooner than we think. And he or she will be more competent, charismatic, and get even more votes.

As much as I want to see Harris become president after Biden, we have to acknowledge that Trump’s base is huge. If there’s a slip in enthusiasm on the Democratic side, the GOP takes back the White House easily. Or worse, if the vote is close enough, the GOP will steal the election.

We need to build a movement to keep the Democrats in power. Threatening and shouting to move to the center is not going to get that done. Glorifying and worshipping militarized police and sheriffs departments is not going to get that done. Cheering on fossil fuels for another decade won’t do it either. Another catastrophe is coming in the form of a destructive, abusing Republican president, and this time, I won’t care as much. I’ll be in my 50s and I will be well past the point of giving a shit. Good luck, kids.

Now We Have Trump To Kick Around

Donald Trump will leave the White House. We have no idea how soon or which tactic he will take. Could he just play golf every day for the next three months? Could he disappear for long stretches of time? Could he flee the nation, knowing that both new York State and the Southern District New York (SDNY) are likely preparing indictments for him and his family right now? I have made many inaccurate predictions about what will happen to Donald Trump. But it appears that Thursday, January 21, 2021 could be the worst day of his life. If I were Jay Alan Sekulow, I’d suggest fleeing the country as an option to both Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani.

Trump has been kicked around by the news media all his adult life. But starting now, he’s getting his ass kicked by the voters, and soon, some prosecutors and banks. If he thought he was “treated badly” before, he’s in for a shock. He will be kicked around for the rest of his miserable life.

In the meantime, we have what may be the most damaging remarks made by a sitting president in our history. Past presidents have done more damage through war, absolutely. But I can’t think of a president who did more damage with words than Donald Trump. His press conference on Thursday November 5 was an atomic bomb of words. It could have triggered one or more gun massacres. It could have blown up our republic. Thankfully, Trump’s followers didn’t act. They had to make dinner or help their kids with their homework, or something. They had more important things to do.

Look at that. That’s far, far worse than, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” Play that on loop at the Trump presidential library, which at this stage, will be someone’s basement game room in Nassau county or Alabama.

A presidential library? Can you imagine the grift and fraud just getting the damn thing built?

When Nixon was in his last days as president, he was drinking heavily, talking to the paintings of his predecessors hanging on the White House walls, and asking that famously religious leader, Henry Kissinger, to join him in prayer. I've always thought that Nixon's going round the bend was likely to be the record setter for presidential meltdowns. But you have to hand the crown to Trump. He's utterly, unquestionably unhinged, and I hope the Joint Chiefs are prepared for the possibility of batshit crazy orders in the next two months. It would be wonderfully, hysterically funny, if it wasn’t so dangerous.

Oh, and by the way, we're adding 100,000 new cases of a lethal virus every day in this poor, benighted country, and more than 239,000 of our fellow citizens have died. Other than that, we're doing splendidly.

Uncle Tim contributed to this post.

More Thoughts On Biden's Stunning (And Infuriating) Victory

As I wrote a few hours ago, I have mixed feelings. First, I harbor a lot of resentment at party elites. Yes, they were correct. But if you think it through, the path to defeat Trump was always to rebuild the "blue wall" from Minnesota to New Jersey. But party elites decided to let the nomination battle play out organically until southern leaders decided to hit the override button and rescue Biden’s campaign. They decided that only Biden can rebuild that wall. They were correct, fine. But I will always have rude words for Jim Clyburn. I will never understand why party leaders in South Carolina and Georgia have to be at the helm when we might never win those states again in my lifetime.

Same for Charles Schumer, who failed to convert the all-time voter turnout record for Biden into at least a tied Senate. He has to step down as minority leader, and finally some of his fellow senators agree.

I am furious at how Trump’s projection sometimes worked. Often, the public and media would see through it. But in the case of Cuban and Venezuelan Americans in Dade and Broward counties, it was a brilliant cynical move. Donald Trump, a man who sees himself as an authoritarian and would love to declare himself president for life if given the opportunity, was able to convince hundreds of thousands of hispanics in Florida that Biden was too similar to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez. Oh yeah, he is just like them. And that worked. A rare Trump projection that worked right where and when he needed it to work. Bad guys only need to get it right once. We good guys need to block them at every attempt. We failed to block this tactic in south Florida. Spanish language radio and social media in Florida is now an arm of the Republican party, much as it was in the 1980s.

The DNC feared that Bernie Sanders would lose Florida because he would be called a socialist in Miami. However, they failed to protect Joe Biden from the same fate. Pete Buttigieg is a little corporate shit, but he was correct when he said that the GOP would label any Democratic nominee or policy as “socialist.”

But what makes me mad and sad most of all is what the Democrats -as weak and as useless as they are- cannot control. Trump became more popular since 2017. When Charlottesville happened, I and many others thought that Trump just saw himself as president of the 63 Million people who voted for him. We figured some of his voters would die before 2020, and some new, teenage voters would vote with their parents. We thought those should cancel each other out, and Trump ought to to match his 63 Million vote total, but no more. He didn’t do anything to overtly court independents and Democrats to his side. He was never a positive, friendly president. He was angry and negative, which was reflected in the national mood. And of course, he did nothing but harm and insult the 21 states that Clinton won. But this week, Trump got 4 million more votes. 4 fucking million! A Los Angeles of new voters. After everything that has happened. After all the insults and early morning tweets. After all the blatant racism and white nationalism. And in the middle of a pandemic and an economic depression that is ongoing. He gained in popularity. That disgusting, indecent man.

[Update, November 5: Trump now has 5 million more votes than he had in 2016!]

[Update, November 6: Trump now has 6 million more votes than he had in 2016! A Los Angles and a Houston!]

[Update, November 10: Trump now has 7 million more votes than he had in 2016! An incredible 71,469,850 votes and counting]

[Update, November 30: Trump now has over 10 million more votes than he did in 2016! A staggering, scary 74,077,537 votes and still counting!]

And some brothers defected to Trump! A small wave of black men didn't vote at all in 2016 but voted for Trump in 2020. In fact, an estimated 1 in 3 college educated black men in Florida voted for Trump. What would Malcom X say? I know what I say. Ladies, do not give any sex to a man until there's a Federal law legalizing abortion or until Kamala Harris is president, whichever happens first. Actually, all women should make that vow. Yes, it's going to be a long wait.

I will never be comfortable with the fact that 48% of voters would rather burn down the republic than share it with women and brown people. It's been this way for decades. This is just a reminder that nothing has changed. We have made zero progress. Half the nation wants the other half dead. Try to sleep well after being reminded about that fact.

Trump Can't Be Smooth And Likable Like Reagan When He Dips Into White Nationalism

When Trump goes all racist and white nationalist, he can’t make it go down easy. He can’t say it with a joke or a smile. He just rants, and can’t use coded language or dog whistles. He is a racist bullhorn.

Trump is closing out his campaign by attacking Senator Kamala Harris for her ethnicity, complexion, sex and name. Grandfather Reagan would never do this. He was so much more smooth.

Remember 1980, when Reagan opened his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a town where 3 civil rights workers had been murdered by klansmen in 1964? He insisted it was merely a coincidence, and not an obvious appeal to the white racist vote in the south. After all, the incumbent president, Jimmy Carter, was from Georgia, and Reagan was counting on the southern states to get him elected. This was the same "Dutch" Reagan who incessantly spoke of a ‘welfare queen’ who drove a pink Cadillac and spent her food stamps on booze, (which is impossible because food stamps can't be used to buy alcohol). Who spoke of young, unemployed black men as "strapping young bucks" and who told Richard Nixon that African diplomats in the U.N. hadn't yet learned "how to wear shoes.”

The party of Lincoln long ago abandoned any pretense of concern for African Americans, as it pursued power by following a race based " southern strategy " Trump is just the latest, and worst, iteration of the corruption and cynicism of the Grand Old Party.

So of course this past spring, Trump chose another atrocity site to launch his campaign for reelection. It's as predictable as the sunrise. He only changed the date when enough outraged people pointed it out that his planned rally was on Juneteenth. So imagine that - a campaign launch on Juneteenth and in Tulsa. A double dose of deliberate insults and salt in our wounds that will never heal.

Trump's Enemies List Is Even More Pathetic Than Nixon's

Here’s a sample of Trump’s enemies list. It’s comedy. Richard Nixon had an enemies list, and it was drawn from politics, journalism and entertainment. Trump, who imagines himself an entertainer and showman, is furious that most people in show business despise him. His feelings were badly hurt that not one actor, singer or musician from the "A list" appeared at his inauguration.

Trump’s attempt at an enemies list reminds me of Marx's famous remark that, "history repeats itself, first as tragedy, and second as farce".

Stay In Your State Until 2022

When will the pandemic end? SARS-CoV-2 will remain with us forever. But the pandemic will one day end. I think it will end in the spring of 2022. We have to assume that the first generation vaccines will only be 40% effective, and that only half of American adults will get them. By the way, thanks Trump and anti-vaccine idiots for turning people against the vaccine. Trump spoiled public opinion by promising it was coming in October 2020, and through his denial of the pandemic overall. He really thinks the media will stop reporting about it next week.

I don't have any travel plans until June 2022. I have nothing booked yet. But I hope to be in Vieques, PR that month. Oh, and I am never going to stop wearing a mask outside my house and car. If nothing else, I will catch fewer colds. I am never going back to a life without face masks. Not after something so traumatic and world changing as this.

2021 will be another year locked in my home state of New York. Thank goodness it is a big, beautiful state. With a car, road trips are possible. I will rent other people’s houses if I want a chance of scenery. I will endure another 18 months.

Let’s see if I’m correct.

This TV Show Is Going To End

Donald Trump is just a complaints and grievances machine. When he isn’t destroying the republic, violating human rights, watching TV or tweeting, he whines and complains in an annoying Queens accent. America, why aren’t you giving this guy four more years! He’s amazing! People line up and wait for hours to hear him complain for nearly an hour! He’s the best touring entertainment act we have!

Fortunately, close to 70 Million Americans don’t agree. This show is being canceled.

I See A Dark Short-Term Future

I'm not worried about the media spinning a poor Trump debate performance into a comeback story. What our media has always done is normalize him. That's far worse. The media normalizes his truly insane statements. He could tweet to his followers to kill Biden and Harris and the media would report, in a calm, normal tone, "In a controversial tweet, the president called for this killings of his opponents.”

That’s what worries me. Once the media calls Florida for Biden, right wing death squads will descend upon boards of elections and ballot counting centers. There will be massacres of vote counters and innocent Democrats in a desperate attempt to prevent what we all know is coming.

Here is what’s coming: Trump is going to lose big. He might lose by over 100 electoral votes. Go play with an interactive Electoral College map. Give Trump Texas and Ohio, sure. Heck give him the Carolinas. But he has already lost Georgia and Florida. I repeat: he has already lost Georgia and Florida! My toy map has Biden winning 334 to 203!

It’s over and he knows it, and that's what makes him so dangerous right now.

While the Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, KKK and Aryan Nations are conducting their post-election day massacres, Trump will flee for a condo in Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia or Russia to become the first US president to live out the rest of his days in exile. And while that happens, our media will bend over backwards to describe the massacres by white nationalist groups as "clashes between left and right wing extremists."

On a similar note, protecting the vaccine supply and supply chain is going to be a top priority of the Biden administration. Imagine a violent landscape in which right wing anti-vaccine gangs attacking trucks and trains carrying the vaccine - no because they want to steal it, but because they don't want the vaccine distributed. This is not some wild scenario. This is something the FBI is thinking about. Same with right wing gangs attacking boards of elections and ballot counting centers on election night. The NYPD shouldn't worry about us lefties marching. They should be worried about right wing death squads coming in to stop the counts. Unless that's what the NYPD wants, since they are aligned with Trump.

That is our future two weeks from now. Stay inside and stay safe.

Can These Two Rats Just Fuck Each Other To Death?

A different kind of ratfucking. Is it possible for it to occur across party lines if both candidates are rats?

Staten Island is a shithole. And most of the people on it are shit.

Max Rose is the current Congressman who represents Staten Island (and the slightly less racist Bay Ridge, Brooklyn). He is a piece of shit. He is one of the most right-wing members of the Democratic caucus. Whenever he poses for a photo, it is almost always with cops, soldiers or union leadership, and those people are almost always white. Just look at his Twitter feed. Max Rose is a white supremacist. He just doesn’t realize it. He’s a pro-war, pro-cop, pro-white, right wing Democrat. And he has to be in order to hold his seat in his district. If he wasn’t a de-facto Republican, he’d be gone.

His opponent this cycle is Nicole Malliotakis, an ultra right-wing politician who unsuccessfully tried to defeat mayor Bill de Blasio two years ago. I don’t have to elaborate about her. She is objectively far worse than Max Rose. She’s anti-woman, anti-immigrant, anti-poor, and pro-Trump. Fuck her.

Tonight is their one and only debate on New York 1. I will not watch.

But my wish is this. I want these two rats to fuck each other to death. They are both despicable and deplorable. And I want Staten Island to join New Jersey, where it belongs.

Staten Island does not belong in New York City, culturally nor politically. It is more aligned with the Jersey Shore. It is right wing, white supremacist, full of STDs and addicted to artificial tanning. It needs to go. It needs to die. And so do these two winners.

We Are So Far Past "Enough"

Anyone who supported Trump after Charlottesville, is a co-owner of his legacy.

Anyone who supported him after he put child refugees into cages, owns it even more so.

Same with anyone who still supported him after his attempt to extort the government of Ukraine.

The same for anyone who still supported him through the current public heath, economic and civil rights crisis. Needless to say, they didn’t budge when it was revealed that Trump knew how serious COVID-19 was, but decided to “play it down.”

Obviously, the same is true for anyone cheering the GOP on for rushing a new Justice onto the Supreme Court to cement their minority rule for another generation.

Ditto for anyone who stuck with Trump through the revelation of his recent tax returns and massive debts.

And finally, the same is true for anyone still sticking with him after he discharged himself from Walter Reed Medical Center and resumed pulling reckless stunts.

We are so past saying “enough,” and yet 42% of Americans passionately support this awful human being.

If the Nixon years were “our national nightmare,” and the George W. Bush years were our darkest days as an empire, then what is this? Granted, we’re not invading nations or killing innocents at record high numbers, but Trump is a dark cloud on the minds of every registered Democrat -nearly 70 Million citizens. Strike that, he is a poison to the majority of US citizens.

Americans can stomach their empire slaughtering Iraqis, Somalis, Yemenis and Afghans, but they have an intolerance to Trump and his threats to destroy what is left of our republic. When and how do these dark days end?

Show No Respect Nor Mercy

We left wingers have to be brutal. Never be sorry to see your opponents kill themselves. They hurt us. They shot at us. Some of them have shot us. They drove cars into us. They blew up our economy and our way of life. They put us into cages. They put us into unmarked vans. We must be brutal. This is war, god dammit.

Brad Parscale doesn’t have long to live. Once someone puts a gun to his head and threatens to kill himself, it is only a matter of time before he goes through with it.

Here’s to Brad Parscale’s upcoming suicide. I have no sympathy, no respect and no mercy. So should all people who consider themselves progressives and left wingers. It’s OK to disrespect your enemies if they threaten to kill you or are actively trying to kill you. This is war.

Democracy's Fatal Flaw

“The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage and whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy—then go back to the office and sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece.” - Hunter S. Thompson

There’s no need to any anything else.

But I want to add that since 2000, we have had the GOP controlling local and national politics as a ruling minority. The GOP has mastered leveraging inherent power in rural states (thus having a constant advantage in the US Senate), packing the Federal courts when they have control of the US Senate, leveraging the Electoral College so that it has won the presidency twice while losing the popular vote, and using gerrymandering and voter suppression to create advantages at both the US House and state levels. We don’t dare call any of this cheating, mind you.

So if I wanted to pollute Thompson’s perfect sentence with one of my own, I would add that the second problem with any democracy is that it’s deceptively fragile. The ruling party can completely ruin it if the opposition party doesn’t notice, doesn’t care, or assumes they can fix what is broken if and when they return to power. This is particularly the case if the ruling party has no moral compass, no shame, and even accepts foreign assistance to stay in power.

That’s a threshold for a failed state. No form of government is self-correcting. Every form of government needs strenuous maintenance and reform, or it will eventually collapse. Things fall apart.

And I will also add, given recent events -

We should not be upset at Justice Ginsburg for refusing to retire in 2010. She worked tirelessly, days and nights, doing a fine job of being an impartial judge committed to the ideal of the Fourteenth Amendment. If the future of our republic really did hinge on her staying alive, then this republic was already doomed. I think it is. Since 2000 it has been absolute hell.

The Cruelest Administration In Over 150 Years?

We have to pause and acknowledge it sometimes: Donald Trump is cruel. He loves seeing violence inflicted on people. He loves to see our cities burn. He throws baseless, terrible accusations on people, and hopes they land hard. He likes to see people drown in hurricanes, and perish in wildfires. He likes blaming the victims of disasters while claiming to be an expert on them. He is a sociopath. And he loves being cruel. He’s the cruelest president since Andrew Johnson (1865-1869). Or how about 183 years, the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837)?

Other modern presidents have slaughtered millions abroad, through direct war, war by proxy or support of totalitarian regimes. I’m talking about a president being cruel to people on US soil. Trump is unprecedented.

Many of Trump’s domestic policies are cruel for the sake of being cruel. With Trump, the cruelty is the point.

Will his cruelty ever catch up to him? Will Trump ever get what we deserves? I continue to doubt it. He exists to make us miserable and to destroy our republic. If we cared about our nation, we would have arrested him for fraud and money laundering before 2015. And if he somehow still became president, we would have removed him from office.

Trump’s purpose is to destroy the nation and its institutions. We let him do it.

We Let Trump Get Away With Everything II

The American public, its news media, its state governments and its Congress are, collectively, the worst parents in the world. We could have stopped Trump’s fraud and white collar crimes up to 50 years ago. More alarmingly, New York State could have stopped him 20 years ago, when it looked like he was out of business ideas, out of cash, and about to be caught with his fake adult learning business and non-existent charitable donations after 9/11. But we failed. Now, over 1,332 days into his first Term, Trump has not been given any meaningful punishment for his lies and crimes. We just act horrified by his latest lie or crime, and then let him get away with it. Hardworking people, like Daniel Dale, report his lies every day, but we then move on to the next set of lies at the next Trump rally. We even let him kill his followers at his rallies. There’s no stopping him. And what’s next? He will will declare victory on election day, and no one will fight back? He will call Joe Biden’s 64 to 67 Million votes fraudulent, and we’ll let that pass? Assuming Joe Biden wins the Electoral Vote, Trump will still be tweeting in the executive residence on inauguration day, and we’ll let him hang around?

Trump’s history is clear. He gets away with everything. We let him do it. If he was our child, the verdict on our parenting would be that we are a total failure. In order for Trump to go, he has to finally be forced to do something he refuses to do. His bankruptcies and 2019 impeachment don’t qualify as punishments for Trump. He wiggled out of both predicaments, again because we let him. When he leaves the White House, it will either be against his will, or when he is dead, which would mean that he became a president for life. He has told us, repeatedly, that he wants to be president for life. And all we have done is report it under the assumption that it can’t happen. It can happen. It’s happening.

We have never beaten Trump. If he leaves office in January 2021, it will be the first time he’s been beaten. We have let him cheat and steal all his life. I don’t have confidence that we’re going to stop him now.