Dear America,
I think of this era--and I hope it's just an era and not an epoch--as the post-truth era, and it will continue until Donald Trump ceases to be a pox on our house. Unfortunately, that probably won't be until he dies since as long as his lips can move, lies will come out of his mouth, and there will be fools who believe them, mostly Republicans and many of those, "conservatives." I put conservatives in quotes because I use the term as a euphemism in this case since those conservatives who subscribe to Trumpism are not really conservatives. They are closet bigots, xenophobes, would-be militiamen and militiawomen, and in general misguided malefactors who think that patriotism is theirs to define and that anyone who disagrees with them opposes freedom. They were liberated from their inhibitions, and thus "legitimated," by their leader, Donald Trump. It never crosses their tiny little minds that what they think of as American exceptionalism is actually tyranny in the guise of national pride, which itself is no virtue. It never occurs to them that pride, at least according to St. Augustine, is the worst sin in any form: anti-Christian...anti-civility...contrary to any concept of virtue other than theirs, and it doesn't dawn on them that in a truly free country, they don't get to decide what we all should think. But of course, none of this is a revelation, and it only barely touches on the real problem: the Republican Party and most of those in it who back and enable Trump, the malefactor-in-chief.
People like Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, senate-candidate J.D. Vance, Jim-half-a-moron Jordan and countless others are Trump's enablers, probably not because they believe Trump's nonsense but because Trump legitimates their fetid closed-mindedness. For example, I doubt that Jordan has ever had an original thought in his life. If you listen to his rants, as we all have been forced to do when he has been on a couple of committees investigating other would-be conservatives of ill-repute and their activities, he never says anything original. In fact, most everything that comes out of his mouth is a verbatim repetition of something his mentor, Donald Trump, has said within the past few days on the same subject. As to McCArthy, when Trump refused to intercede to quell the January 6th insurrection, Kevin called the then-president and implored him to do something, on which occasion Trump rebuffed The Speaker and let the mob kill a few people instead. Now, McCarthy is one of Trump's best friends; talk about hypocrisy! Of course it would be unfair to tie that albatross around McCarthy's neck without tying one around Mitch McConnell's neck too. McConnell rejected Trump's lies on the floor of The Senate, but when asked recently whether he would support Trump if he were nominated for president by the Republicans in 2024, he was such a poltroon that he wouldn't say. He simply responded that he would support the Republican candidate, which saved him from the wrath Trump would have unleashed had Mitch said something consistent with calling Trump out as an unworthy liar, which is the ineluctable inference to be drawn from McConnell's senate speech on the subject before January 6th. But perhaps the most reprehensible of them all is Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
During the 2016 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Graham pilloried Trump every chance he got, not just as an opponent but also as a sanctimonious, self-righteous, righteous...as in Christian...Republican. He accused Trump of every vice a politician could be possessed of, and rightly so. But once Graham was out of the primary race, his tune changed under the self-serving pretext of party loyalty. And now...now that Trump is no longer either a nominee or an office holder, but apparently a senator maker...Graham flies down to Mar-a-largo to play golf with Trump, who now occupies the role of Republican Grand Inquisitor. Graham's obsequiousness brings new meaning to the word as it is not just directed toward self-aggrandizement; it is apostasy. It is disavowal of everything that he purportedly held dear and sacred just six and a half years ago, and probably claimed to be his ethos all of his life. I doubt that his mommy and daddy are proud of him in the after-life.
Add all of this perfidy against the legitimate precepts of our nation's democracy to the overt dubiety of it all and the jeopardy to our democracy in which we all find ourselves immersed every day and you get cardinal, socio-political sin. It is socio-pathological if not psychotic of those who perpetrate it, and they do it all with the expectation of political reward rather than the secret remorse that it merits. And the repudiation of truth...demonstrable truth...is at its core. So remember this, America. On election day, the nation as a whole gets what it deserves. Maybe what we deserve is the death of the American ideal. Maybe it's dead already.
Your friend
Mike
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