Thread by @JuliusGoat

2017. This should have been it. More than scandal enough for impeachment and removal. Almost infinite opportunities for conflicts against the national interest and corruption.

The trump presidency should have lasted 8 weeks. npr.org/sections/thetw…

What the Republican Party has normalized, permitted, and encouraged is a vandalism to the international socio-political contract so profound it’s hard to imagine recovering. Certainly not in my lifetime.

The only way forward I can see is the complete dismantling of the party.

We’re going to have to prove to the world—our citizens, our allies, even our enemies—that we can be sane good-faith actors again, domestically and internationally.

This will need proof.

Not one Republican should hold a position of power at any level a decade from now.

Right now our constitution is in the shredder. Our treaties have been proved subject to the whim of the sort of intemperate and ignorant churlish racist boob we’ve proven ourselves capable of electing, a man who hired a neo Nazi to mock the promise of the Statue of Liberty

Purge

Evaporating environmental protections in an age of environmental emergency.

Demolishing social safety nets in an age of vast income disparity.

Removing financial restraints in an age of financial corruption.

Deliberately fomenting lies and alternative facts.

Unacceptable.

Republicans in the Senate are about to teach a deeply cruel man who openly aspires to dictatorship that no law applies to him, and then they're going to turn him loose with limitless power to wreak as much havoc as he wants.

Republicans broadly support this vote.

Unacceptable.

Mocked allies
Praised dictators
Packed our courts
Promoted nationalism
Defended supremacy
Separated families
Disinfranchised voters
Gerrymandered
Withheld aid for political gain
Argued in court against soap for imprisoned children

Soap

Unacceptable, unacceptable, unacceptable

Demonized journalists
Banned Muslims
Mocked the widow of a recently slain soldier
Fought with San Juan's mayor while letting Puerto Rico drown
And just today we learn, sent nuclear tech to people who dismembered a reporter with a bone saw

Dismembered

Unacceptable, unacceptable

Every day something new and previously unacceptable. Every day. So many you forget them. Each of them a link in a terrible chain.

Each link something completely unacceptable, being accepted.

Dragging us into the sea.

To accept all this. To find a way to ignore it or justify it.

Or: to be encouraged by it. To cheer.

The lesson of the past 5 years is this: the worst suspicions I had about the historical darkness that still existed in our national soul wasn't close to bad enough.

Yes: our.

Easy enough, and at times situationally necessary, to turn this outward, to the elected officials who deliberately sanction all this, who must be defeated.

But there's also the harder work. The inward journey. Confess and repent.

Ask: What have I accepted? And how will I stop?

Once you know the truth, speak the truth.

Once you see the truth, change what you can control.

Refuse all acceptance of the unacceptable; create a great expectation for something far better.