This unraveling presidency began with the Crybaby-in-Chief banging his spoon on his highchair tray to protest a photograph — a
photograph — showing that his
inauguration crowd the day before had been smaller than the one four years previous. Since then, this weak person’s idea of a strong person, this chest-pounding advertisement of his own gnawing insecurities, this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron.
Presidents, exploiting modern communications technologies and abetted
today by journalists preening as the “resistance” — like members of the French Resistance 1940-1944, minus the bravery — can set the tone of American society, which is regrettably soft wax on which presidents leave their marks. The president’s provocations — his coarsening of public discourse that lowers the threshold for acting out by people as mentally crippled as he — do not excuse the violent few. They must be punished. He must be removed.
Social causation is difficult to demonstrate, particularly between one person’s words and other persons’ deeds. However: The person voters hired in 2016 to “
take care that the laws be faithfully executed” stood on July 28, 2017, in front of uniformed police and
urged them “please don’t be too nice” when handling suspected offenders. His hope was fulfilled for
8 minutes and 46 seconds on Minneapolis pavement.
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Presidents seeking reelection bask in chants of “Four more years!” This year, however, most Americans — perhaps because they are, as the president
predicted, weary from all the winning — might flinch: Four more years of
this? The taste of ashes, metaphorical and now literal, dampens enthusiasm.
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Voters must dispatch his congressional enablers, especially the senators who still gambol around his ankles with a canine hunger for petting.
In life’s unforgiving arithmetic, we are the sum of our choices. Congressional Republicans have made theirs for more than 1,200 days. We cannot know all the measures necessary to restore the nation’s domestic health and international standing, but we know the first step: Senate Republicans must be routed, as condign punishment for their Vichyite collaboration, leaving the Republican remnant to wonder: Was it sensible to sacrifice dignity, such as it ever was, and to shed principles, if convictions so easily jettisoned could be dignified as principles, for . . . what? Praying people should pray, and all others should hope: May I never crave
anything as much as these people crave membership in the world’s most risible deliberative body.