We Aren't Better Than This

If I believed Donald was an intelligent human being, I'd say this last week was all part of some grand plan to get impeached so he can just go home already and not have to work so hard at being president.  Telling the world that he flat-out fired the man in charge of investigating his campaigns ties to specifically because of said investigation would probably be enough, but, just to be safe, Trump went ahead and met with the Russian Foreign Minister and Ambassador (who is a key figure in said investigation, remember) which he barred American journalists from covering while allowing Russia state media to cover it and, just for the cherry-on-top, leaked out some confidential information just in case he wasn't selling the whole "I'm totally in the bag for these people" act hard enough.

Problem is, Trump is the President of the United States, so unless he holds a press conference in the Presidential Rose Garden confessing a decades-long practice of pedophilia with a live demonstration to go with it, that dude's not going anywhere.  You know Trump isn't really a student of history when he thought something as chump change as obstruction of justice would be enough to get him thrown to the curb.  His Republican predecessor started a war of aggression and launched an illegal domestic spying program and the worst thing that happened to him was almost choking on a pretzel that one time.  Obama assassinated American citizens but everybody just kinda forgot about that since he did a good Al Green impression and made a nice Superman quip.  Oh, and Obama also voted for the bill that retroactively made all the Bush-era bullshit legal before he expanded it and started his administration with 'Yeah, they did a lot of terrible things.  But since I'm going to pretty much do the same things and then some we can't really hold them accountable so let's look forward, not backward.'

And it's not like Trump's private life showed any examples of powerful people being held responsible for their fuck-ups.  All his Wall Street buddies who crashed the global economy by selling subprime mortgages they knew were garbage never even saw handcuffs, let alone jail time.  And in the almost ten years since after laundering money for the Sinaloa cartel, rigging pretty much every market they were involved in, plus foreclosing on homes they didn't legally own, all of that was met with the Obama administration telling them they were literally too important to prosecute.  Obviously we know how to make sure people suffer for their crimes and abuses of power, yes we do.

One does imagine that Congressional Republicans are privately giddy about the constant shit-storms emanating from the White House since the distractions make it absurdly difficult for them to get anything done.  They'll bitch and moan in public about how they hate it just so much, you guys, but since Republicans can't really maintain the con that they care about the common people if they keep passing bills that actively makes said people's lives worse, there's no way they're going to do anything to stop Trump from being a daily punchline.

Surely electing the Democrats back into majority could stop this madness, right?  Well, no.  Because remember oh, say, eleven years ago when there was a widely despised Republican president doing horrific shit and Democrats promised that if America just gave them the chance they would make things right and hold the president's feet to the fire?  No?  That's okay, because nothing ever really came of it since once Democrats had their majority they went about rubber-stamping everything Bush did anyway. You could say that this time it'll be different, that Trump is a new kind of awful, they're bound to do the right thing this time, just you wait.  And sure, you could say that, because I'm positive  once Godot shows up and makes his special delivery of backbones and principles Democrats will step up to the plate and right all the wrongs they played a pivotal role in creating.  You betcha.

What's most fascinating about Trump's presidency is how it's called forth this delusional picture of what the country was before he got elected. Liberals have been incessant in saying that Trump is Not NormalTM  but, let's examine that.  He won by inflaming white anger against the rest of society by playing into the sense that their well-being has been sacrificed at the altar of equality for the minorities.  This has been Republican politics 101 since the Southern Strategy and Regan hooked up with the Religious Right fanatics.  His immigration policy is basically "Deport like Obama did, add stupid wall."  His foreign policy just escalates the wars Obama and Bush started, and his treatment of the press again is hardly anything more than just continuing on the path laid by his predecessors.  Even the whole "possibly colluded with a hostile foreign power to get elected" thing isn't an original sin.  Yet everyone wants to pretend that he's some radical new figure in our political culture that will distort it beyond repair if we let him continue.

No one really wants to face the fact that Trump is just a by-product of the all the twisted and corrupt policies and strategies the parties to championed for decades.  Ever since 9/11 we've all watched as the presidency accumulated more and more dictatorial powers and even now, the discussion isn't really that no president should have that kind of power, but that Trump in particular can't have it.  We need to find the right kind of president again, one who will entrench a Stasi-level surveillance state and 1984 level of global warfare in a dignified, respectable manner.  Trump is nothing more than pus leaking from an infected wound, and all we're really focusing on is wiping it off and hoping the next piece of bile that trickles out doesn't reek so bad.