The scenes are hauntingly reminiscent, shutter flashes of a pre-millennium sci-fi or political thriller, too absurd to believe. But here we are, witnesses to a dystopian undoing of our own world view and all that we have believed about democracy and the American way.
Truth is set aside. Delusion becomes contagion. They would rather die than take a vaccine. They've become a Reich, wrecking a Republic. A tidal rise of insanity, a time of vultures.
The newest revelations of "madness-Trump" do more than confirm, they scare the hell out of us.
Joint Chiefs, the Speaker of the House, national security executives, former leaders all in furtive calls and liaisons desperately trying to avoid a nuclear launch, a rogue war, and the use of federal troops on American citizens. Never before has an American president talked of staging a coup!
Even with all of that, the Republican party is interested only in restricting who can vote, and changing laws to give them control over the count.
They seek to do what the 1/6 insurrection could not, divert the course, change the outcome, of public elections.
It is time to ignore Trump. The Cleveland Plain Dealer has begun to ignore politician's false statements and stunts. All media should do likewise.
I am a first amendment absolutist and as reporter was equally absolute about the public's right to know. I oppose any form of censorship, or restriction of media access. Media has no obligation to quote Trump or even give attention to his absurd lies about the election. There is no news in his mental illness.
Printing or broadcasting his lies does no one but Trump any good. Giving him time and attention is a destructive drumbeat that is a call to damage or destroy the nation.
History speaks to us. Even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has joined historians and those who see in Trump and Republican leadership similarities with the Nazi fascists of pre World War II. It's chilling to consider how the German nation was propagandized by lies into following a liar and madman. Donald Trump is observably delusional. Those who follow him and who do his bidding are a public insanity that should frighten us to our bones.
Despite the monuments that would memorialize democracy, its foundation is not bed rock granite. Democracy is no stronger than its participants are wise.
Stupidity, that is a lack of knowledge, ignorance of history and fact has been rampant. Now, zombie like, mass public insanity rises from the septic mass who elect Q dupes, those who refuse to see the domestic terrorism of Trump, or who cynically swindle public trust and trample the truth as does Mcarthy, McConnell and thousands of Republican office holders. "Good Republicans" are being strangled by evil.
We are deep into it now. I don't know that historians can find a time so replete with mass lunacy and political imbecility.
A war has begun. The Republican party is wholly unfit, anti American and seeks to destroy democracy. They are in league with domestic terrorists.
Democrats would do us all a favor if they went on the offensive. So too should people of conscience.
"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Bonhoeffer was a German theologian and pastor who was executed for his role in attempts to assassinate Adolph Hitler.
He had said if he sat next to a madman as he drove a car into a group of innocent bystanders he could not, even as a man of faith, simply wait for the catastrophe. He said he must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.
Not to act, is to act.
See you down the trail.
