Some night during this horrific presidency have been harder than others--the nights we realized that he was a traitor or a criminal or a racist or an ignoramus or a narcissist or that so many Americans just did not care, in fact they celebrated all that about him.
Tonight is one of those nights. Because the spectacle of Trump's return to the WH underscores again that he has not only failed to rise to the greatest challenge of his presidency, this pandemic, but that he has actually, repeatedly made it worse for the most selfish of reasons.
But it has also driven home for me, in a way that has not been so clear to me before, that as of now, a madman is president of the United States, a man so mentally unfit that you would not trust him alone in a room with your children. It sounds over the top.
But it is not. What is more, his delusions of grandeur, of himself as an invincible hero, as a leader chosen by God, are enabled by a coterie of White House sycophants, supported by media outlets with the most cynical of motives and supported by an addled, lost populace.
Millions will cheer this lunacy. Millions of our neighbors. Millions who have been taught for years to reject reality if it does not suit them, to embrace the comfortable fantasies and empty promises that their grievances will be addressed.
Trump reminded us today that every day he remains in office he will compound the damage he has already done, further weaken our nation, add to the rolls of the dead and unemployed, the suffering & disenfranchised. But the fever-dream quality of this era also reached a new level.
For five years I have written that Donald Trump was the greatest threat this country has faced since the end of the Cold War. I have listed his crimes and have even written a book comparing his betrayal of the country to every other traitor in American history.
I have known that he was unfit. But I have to admit, this was one of those days when, yet again, I thought, "I had no idea it could get this bad." But it was also one that underscored that the worst of our problems is not Trump--though we must be rid of him.
Nor is it his enablers in the GOP leadership--though we must be rid of them. It is that the 40% who celebrate this lunatic, this criminal, this racist, this tool of foreign enemies, seem to be as unshakably committed to rejecting reason as they are science, history & decency.
Trump's time is coming to an end. He will not be missed. But we have learned that our system super-empowers his backers and that if they have alighted on him for now, they will find another vehicle and that we have no reason to assume that he or she will be better than Trump.
Worse could very well lie ahead. Can a new Administration show them that a different approach can actually serve their interests? Can a new president show that how Trump and the GOP have used and taken advantage of them? That must be our hope and our plan.
But it is almost midnight after a long, disturbing day full of images that will not leave our minds for years to come. And I think we can be forgiven if we also see the possibility that a happy resolution of our disturbing, once unthinkable circumstances, may long elude us.
Some nights...obviously...it's late...and Twitter still does not have an edit function. Sorry.
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