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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFound on Facebook: "Watch how a republic dies"
"In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, "And we shall overcome." I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over. I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh's madness in Oklahoma City. I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing 'Amazing Grace' in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
"These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job. They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.
"And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators. Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.
"The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides. We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.
"Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don't have to be heroes to be good presidents. They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.
Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn't he a funny man? Isn't what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now."
- Charles Pierce
-Posted by a friend, reposted by permission.
secondwind
(16,903 posts)roamer65
(36,745 posts)In 10 years, many of us will be flying different flags on our lawn flagpoles.
jg10003
(976 posts)roamer65
(36,745 posts)Michigan would soon follow suit.
Being a province in the Canadian confederation would remove much of the straight jacket that these states now have under the US republic.
Canadian provinces can run deficits, for example.
llmart
(15,540 posts)I'd be absolutely fine with becoming a Canadian.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,002 posts)Haggis for Breakfast
(6,831 posts)Ilsa
(61,695 posts)It'll be "Trumpland" based on these flags I've seen here in the south:
cannabis_flower
(3,764 posts)Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio will be part of New Christendom. They will be islands in New Christendom. Sort of like the Republic of South Florida.
Eko
(7,315 posts)PatrickforO
(14,576 posts)This isn't a perfect country any more than the presidents Pierce mentions were perfect.
We have a long way to go in so many way.
But under Trump we are so going the wrong direction. He is an evil man, evil on so many levels.
not fooled
(5,801 posts)are responsible for this. They set in motion the forces to destroy our government and civic discourse for their private benefit.
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,349 posts)The Republicans have fed and nurtured a class of greedy sociopaths for decades. That oligarchy has no loyalty to our Constitution and cares for the general population only so far as it can be exploited for their gain -- in power or possessions.
DLevine
(1,788 posts)Delphinus
(11,831 posts)I've read some things by him but had not seen this. Thank you for sharing.
llmart
(15,540 posts)I hadn't seen it. Thanks for posting.
Martin Eden
(12,870 posts)GW Bush inflicted more harm than Trump has, so far. He belongs in prison for war crimes.
But I understand the target here is Trump, not Bush. Ranting about the war based on lies would have detracted from that.
Personally, I will never forget nor forgive. The normalization of GW Bush as a respected former president is worse than nails on a blackboard for me.
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)When they should have been concerned with protecting the disadvantaged ones.
We picked our side and it was "the kids whose mothers are proud of their manners."
cannabis_flower
(3,764 posts)Well, some of the are deplorables. I've always said that there are several types of Trump voters. There were stupid people. There were Hillary haters. There are those that voted for him because he was a businessman or because he was an outsider who said he was going to clean up the swamp. I'm sure there were even people who genuinely believed that he would be a better president than Hillary.
And then there were the "deplorables". People who are racists and like that Donald Trump "tells it like it is". He allowed them to be proud to be racists. The media could have done a better job of acknowledging that some of Donald Trump's supporters were deplorable.
Whiskeytide
(4,461 posts)... stupid people and assholes. You can place any of the people you describe in to one or the other.
If you voted for trump because it benefited you financially, youre an asshole for sacrificing the democracy and the welfare of other Americans for a few shekels.
If you voted for him to inflict pain on minorities and immigrants, youre clearly an asshole.
If you voted for him because you thought he brought new or good ideas to the job as a businessman, outsider or swamp detergent, youre too stupid to vote, and probably need to wear a helmet.
The thing about trump is that he never pretended to be anything other than what he is - a raging, bullying, narcissistic, racist, lawless, grifting, predatory, fascist, man baby bent on destroying our democracy, undermining the rule of law and reshaping the foundations of our country to plunder the treasury and neuter the regulatory functions of the government. HE OPENLY RAN ON THAT PLATFORM!
His voters either wanted that, or they were too stupid to see what was plainly in front of them. Theres really no in between.
Poiuyt
(18,125 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)But Hillary had an e-mail something or other, I'm told...
SergeStorms
(19,201 posts)No. He occupies an office which the Russians gave him. "WE" didn't give him jack shit!
I keep trying to hammer this home, that he is - and will always remain - an illegitimate President of the United States. He won nothing by himself.
Lonestarblue
(10,011 posts)I refuse to be left behind in a place called New Christendom or Jesusland!