Dear America,
I was going to watch the Republican debate this week, but every time I see one I am reminded of the clown car at the circus, and then I don't take them seriously. But some of them are dangerous, so I didn't watch the debate just so that I wouldn't start taking the 2016 election for granted. And it was probably a good decision based on the news accounts, which suggested that the whole affair was just more of the same, and not just more of the same as we have been getting in 2015. It seems like a rerun, albeit with new characters, of an old slap-stick comedy from 2008 or 2012. The debates in 2015 are populated by a cast of characters that I wouldn't want to run Hewlett-Packard, much less the United States...just like in 2008. But this year, the persistent front-runner who never seems to get sufficient support to be a threat in the general election, but who is becoming more and more inescapably the likely Republican nominee, isn't just a patrician buffoon who drives around with his dog in a cage strapped on the roof of his car who has an elevator in his multi-million dollar Florida vacation home just for his wife's Cadillac. This time, we don't just have a multi-millionaire whose father bequeathed him a fortune but who thinks he is a self-made man none-the-less. This time we have a billionaire who thinks those things, even though if he had just put his inheritance in the bank he would have been where he is now in terms of wealth...but without multiple bankruptcies on his record. And not only is he richer than last election's millionaire businessman, he is dumber and more outspoken about it. Donald Trump is so obviously a fool in every respect that his popularity defies reason...even for most Republicans. The experts and insiders have been predicting his political demise for months and months now, but he just gets more and more support from what I used to think of as the lunatic fringe, but what I now recognize as the mainstream of the Republican Party. Donald Trump is what the Tea Party has been wishing for, and if he ever were to get elected, we would have a complete set in Washington: a White House, a Senate and a House of Representatives controlled, albeit not numerically, by zealot reactionaries.
This quote has been attributed to Abraham Lincoln since about twenty years after his assassination:
As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.
Attribution of this quote to Lincoln is by scholarly consensus a canard. The reasons given by various "scholars" for their incredulity with regard to such attribution vary in every way from elegance to lack thereof, and in reality, they are immaterial. I believe that the source of an idea is not necessarily significant, especially if the idea has its own merit and needs no cachet from an author for it to be so. In this case, it seems to me that whether or not the attribution is apocryphal, the author, no matter who he was, was onto something, and unfortunately, the premonitory nature of the quote is both striking and inductive of consternation. The leading Republican is a very rich man, more by dint of fortuitous birth than of any talent or ability. He seeks power by pandering to the worst fear and passions of a portion of the population that seems to think that fascism is acceptable if it's in the name of a good, American cause...like ethnic purity or religiosity, both of which we have seen used by fascists before. He is becoming a juggernaut, and even those whose nomination he seeks are seemingly powerless to stop him. The social policies he proposes are ignoble, and he virtually manifests the danger of the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, but the establishment continues to do no more than blithely rely on good karma for salvation.
It may not have been Lincoln who warned us of the danger we face. But it matters not from whence the portent came. It has come to fruition, and its favorite son wants to be president.
Your friend,
Mike
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