Granted: Trump’s second administration has been the most corrupt in history, characterized by greed, destruction, cruelty, hypocrisy, mendacity, treason, murder, war crimes, racism, sexism, incompetence, and failure. But come on--does that mean it’s been all bad? Of course not! Because we’ve learned from this experience, okay? And that, notwithstanding the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health of ourselves, all Americans, and people around the world (to which Donald Trump and the Republican Party are a distinct danger), is what’s important.
And so, as the nation celebrates its glorious 250th anniversary and mourns the utterly rotten administration that governs it, we thought it would be appropriate to review some of those hard-won lessons. Here, in no particular order, they come:
1. Conservatism has always been a fraud. No, seriously. Think about it. Since World War II, conservatism has supposedly stood for two things: anti-communism and minimal government interference with “freedom.” As to the former: mission accomplished, although a) conservatives were never so much anti-communist as they were pro-capitalist, and did not give a tinker’s fuck about other countries’ “freedom” when, like Chile or Cuba, they installed socialist governments; and b) Trump (who couldn’t define the difference between socialism and communism with a gun to his head) is desperately trying to revive anti-communism in a bid to keep two-thirds of the country from hating his guts. (Fun Fact: It’s not working.)
As to the latter: um, no. Conservatives are more than happy to use government to prevent a woman from having an abortion, to foist on one and all their particular stupid brand of Christianity, to endanger the entire populace by blocking decent gun laws, to protect the right of corporations to pollute the air and water and to ignore climate change, to promote a policy of “freedom” that only really applies to whites, to suppress votes, and to advance racist agendas.
In fact, conservatism has always only been truly about one thing: maximizing the wealth of white men—who, in sharp contrast to the language of the Declaration of Independence, they believe to be the naturally superior stratum of humanity and who should rule over all others. For most of our history those men have been Protestant, but lately some Jews and Catholics have been allowed in that club. But you can’t win political power by announcing you stand proudly for racism and greed. (Even MAGA idiots, who might approve of Trump’s greed, thought he was going to do something for them.) Hence, conservative “values,” which exist to be proclaimed and then ignored. A conservative will always be a hypocrite the way a fish swimming in the mighty Pacific will always be wet. 2.
3. The two-party system as we’ve known it is over. “Sane” and “Insane” are not political parties. Trump owns the GOP; Trump’s policies are toxic to the interests of the rank and file of the party. Ergo, whoever still remains in the party—i.e., the MAGA faithful, who continue to worship Trump as he robs them blind—are either insane or so deeply stupid they might as well be insane. What the party will do when Trump is gone is beyond human imagining. We can’t wait to watch what happens! Meanwhile—
4. When they go low, we go—something. Home? Shopping? Actually, the premise of this is incorrect. They are low, they don’t have any need to “go” anywhere. So the problem to be solved is: How do we deal, on what we must assume to be a permanent basis, with a class of people who choose to wallow in the most depraved types of thinking—and behavior—that humanity has ever devised? (When we solve this it will truly be a Lesson Learned.)
5. The Supreme Court has rotted from the inside out. Yeah, yeah, you already knew that. You (and we) figured that out in 2000 after Bush v. Gore, and then in 2010, when the ruling in Citizens United v. FEC held that “corporations are people.” The first ruling was obviously partisan bullshit and the second was, and is, an absolute catastrophe for a democratic republic in which people are people. But we sort of managed to live with them—until this past year.
Now the cat, to the extent that it was ever really in the bag, is out: When SCOTUS convenes, it is (with the exception of the three liberals) like the gathering of the Five Families in Godfather 1, with Amy Coney Barrett occasionally demurring about the wisdom of getting involved with the heroin trade. Thomas is a waddling bobble-head doll of corruption, Alito demonstrates daily (as did Scalia before him) that no one is more smug than a pious Catholic with a lifelong sinecure, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh barely pretend to actually care about the law, and Roberts brings comedy gold by playacting that he is a paragon of judicial rectitude fervently toiling to insure his “legacy” will be that of a paragon of judicial rectitude.
This has taught us another valuable lesson, namely—
6. The Supreme Court’s very structure must be changed. Lifelong tenure, which was supposed to shield justices from political influence or temptation, has proved to accomplish just the opposite. And nine justices—an arbitrary number—is far too few. The law of the land should not depend on the health or illness of a single person. (We like The Nation’s Elie Mystal’s idea: Raise the number to 21 or more; have them—like a Court of Appeals--hear normal cases in groups of three, and have hearings en banc for important matters.)
IT’S NATIONAL SUGAR COOKIE DAY. DON’T CELEBRATE IT. IT’S TIME TO TAKE THE COUNTRY BACK FROM BIG SUGAR COOKIE. INSTEAD—
7. The Electoral College is a disgrace. Yes, “duh.” It is absurd that the vote of an idiot in Wyoming is ten jillion times more powerful than the vote of an idiot in California. We need a Constitutional amendment to eliminate the College (good luck with that) or, at worst, that popular vote compact deal as explained by Wikipedia thus:
The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC) is an agreement among a group of U.S. states and the District of Columbia to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, regardless of which ticket won more votes in their individual state/district. The compact is designed to ensure that the candidate who receives the most votes nationwide is elected president, and it would come into effect only when it would guarantee that outcome.
Thus far, 18 states and D.C. have signed on. It’s a start. And fuck those states that don’t like it.
8. Billionaires are a danger to the US and to humanity. Why? Because they have too much money, which means they have too much power. It’s not that they can buy any election they want. (They can’t.) It’s that they can buy many, many elected officials at the state and national level, influencing what laws do and don’t get passed, and making things great for themselves often at the expense of everyone else. Among many other things, they buy and pay for lax oversight. This leads to predictable disasters like financial bubbles, recessions, mass food poisonings, bridges and buildings collapsing. It also leads to a failure to address climate change (hence “danger to humanity”). Which makes the next lesson—
9. Get money out of politics. Yes, it’s a lovely thought. But it’s become a cliché that “goes in one ear and out the other.” Our current system is innately corrupt (Cf. Citizens United and billionaires, above). Politicians require vast amounts of money to stay afloat, which requires them to make deals with the ultra-rich, which increases the wealth of the ultra-rich, which increases their ability to buy politicians, etc. etc.
How about we start using new phrases to grab people’s attention. “Get corruption out of politics!” “Rich people own politicians!” “Big campaign contributions have bought your country!” “Shorter campaigns + no corporate money = less corruption!” “The 1st Amendment doesn’t mean politicians are for sale!” Think of others. Say them out loud and put them on posters when you march.
10. The mainstream media—contra to Republican propaganda—has a conservative bias. Every day, in every public statement, Trump either lies or utters nonsense. (Yesterday he mentioned, with the condescending air of someone displaying his esoteric knowledge, “the Islamic Republic of Japan.”) His late-night social media rants are lurid, racist, and unhinged. NATO allies treat him like a deranged uncle who must be indulged for the sake of the Thanksgiving gathering. But nowhere do the major newspapers or television news networks acknowledge that the man is crazier than two waltzing mice. (H/t Raymond Chandler). The sanewashing continues.
The Failing New York Times and the Washington Post do great investigative stories (even if their reporters often sit on the results for a year, so as to reserve them for books). But the editorial stances of those papers is contemptibly feeble when confronted by a president who has been a pathologically-lying thug and bully all his life, and is now a demented pathologically-lying thug and bully. So support alternative news sources.
We could keep going—and we intend to, sooner or later—but that’s enough for now. No doubt you have your own lessons learned, your own realizations of how simple-minded and naïve you used to be about the Founding Fathers and the Constitution and all of that a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it shit, your own slack-jawed moments of disbelief at how repulsive, corrupt, incompetent, murderous, soulless, criminal, and stupid these people are and how they often get away with it, your own fucking just…fucking inability to just…fucking…
But that’s enough for now. Except for the Splitsville (our term for a single geo-political entity in which dwell two or more distinct “nations”) angle. On one side are those who can learn, and are learning, these and many other lessons; learning and yearning and burning to put those lessons into action. On the other side are those who think the only lesson to be learned from our present circumstances is that Trump is God. And then there’s the third side that’s all, like, “Whadaya talkin’ about?”
BUY—AND READ—THE SPLIT. IF NOT YOU, WHO? IF NOT NOW, WHEN? IF NOT HERE, WHERE? IF NOT BECAUSE, WHY? IF NOT THIS, WHICH? IF N
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