What We Talk About When We Talk About Donald Trump

[babylonsister]

The Good Fight
How to save liberal democracy.
Dec. 4 2017 1:56 PM
What We Talk About When We Talk About Donald Trump
I’ve never been more worried about how Americans would respond to a murderous authoritarian government.
By Yascha Mounk


The last days have brought plenty of reasons for schadenfreude. Many of my friends seem to be seized by a mood of dizzy excitement. I get why. Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn faces time in jail. Donald Trump may have incriminated himself with yet another impulsive tweet. Impeachment, though still a distant prospect, looks a lot closer now than it did a few weeks ago. If this is not yet the beginning of the end, it may, one day, come to be seen as the end of the beginning.

And yet, I have felt neither excitement nor schadenfreude over the past days. Instead, in one of these strange mood swings of which this year of Trump has been so full, I’ve found myself filled with an even more profound sadness than before.

Sadness that craven liars and chancers like Flynn were—and let’s not kid ourselves, are—in charge of our government.

Sadness that all the evidence of treasonous behavior close to the heart of power seems to have so little bearing on how my fellow citizens feel about the president.

Sadness that run-of-the-mill Republicans who have spent decades worrying about the deficit care so much about giving handouts to billionaires that they are willing to vote for a tax reform that would hugely raise the deficit.

Sadness that Sebastian Gorka was contracted to give speeches at the Heritage Foundation, marking yet another step in the Republican establishment’s surrender to the Trumpkins.

Sadness that about half of all voters in Alabama remain likely to vote for somebody who was banned from a local mall for preying on teens.

Sadness that even the prospect of nuclear war with North Korea—unlikely, perhaps, but far more likely than any nuclear confrontation since the end of the Cold War—does not appear to have focused the minds of all those congressmen and senators on Capitol Hill who, in private, rave and rant about how irrational Donald Trump is.

And sadness, too, that the gravity of this political moment still hasn’t sunk in.

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http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_good_fight/2017/12/the_sheer_cravenness_on_display_in_american_politics_should_make_us_all.html

[dhill926]

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