Imagine having final straws!?!

[kpete]

How is it that Conservative parliamentarians in the UK were able to dispatch a narcissistic, power-hungry leader in two days of internal bloodletting, while their GOP counterparts in the US are still, 18 months after the January 6 insurrection, in thrall to the violent, irrationalist Trump cult?
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/boris-johnson-trump/

For an American liberal, however, the schadenfreude brought by Johnson’s collapse is mixed with envy. We are watching a still-functioning democracy dispatch its bombastic populist leader because his amorality and narcissistic dishonesty were simply too much. On Wednesday, a day after resigning as health secretary, Sajid Javid lambasted Johnson during Question Time in the House of Commons: “We’ve seen in great democracies what happens when divisions are entrenched and not bridged. We cannot allow that to happen here.” [...]

But, of course, Britain and the United States are very different countries, and not just because the U.K. is a parliamentary system, a generally more effective form of government than our own presidential system. British people are still evidently capable of being shocked by officials’ sexual harassment and shameless untruths, even when those officials are on their side. Their country is not heavily armed, and does not have a powerful faction that regularly threatens violence. Britain still appears to have some minimal social agreement about acceptable political behavior. Its government is falling apart precisely because its society is not. [...]

The quaint part is the near universal condemnation of their behavior, and the widespread acknowledgment that, after years of bullying and dishonesty, Johnson’s dissembling was the final straw. Imagine having final straws!

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/07/opinion/boris-johnson-resignation.html

Trump has never experienced what Johnson has just gone through. At no time have Republican leaders — senators, House members, governors, national or state party officials — collectively tried to confront him. After Jan. 6, 2021, there was talk among Trump’s Cabinet about invoking the 25th Amendment and declaring him unfit for the office, but it came to nothing. Lawmakers condemned him for the attack on the Capitol and then over time began to compliantly fall back in line.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/07/uk-boris-johnson-resignation/