We watched a portion of last night's debate, then had to turn it off. It was just too depressing. Trump transcends evil and Biden is not the best debater from the selection of Democrats on offer from our last crazy round of primaries. But he is our candidate and a good man.
Trump is in essence the metastasis of Reagan's famous catchphrase about the nine most terrifying words in the English language, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Like Trump, Reagan was a brilliant showman, but he wasn't as straight-up nasty. The Republicans took this idea (which had a deeper backstory, Jill Lepore's These Truths gives a good accounting) and ran with it, and Trump is the logical conclusion. He aims apparently to destroy the Federal Government's credibility lock, stock and barrel. The legislative branch had already greatly eroded its own credibility over the years, due to a number of factors about which many books have been written: ideological hardening, propensity for corruption and capture by lobbyists, etc. We all share fault in this story.
Trump, through his tragi-comic executive overreach and disdain for everything that has come before him has taken a wrecking ball to the Executive Branch. Now, by Ruthlessly (oh, a terrible pun) seeking to jam a nominee onto the Supreme Court before the election following the untimely demise of RBG, he seeks to further weaken the judicial branch. We saw this coming when Matthew Whittaker -- Acting AG between Sessions and Barr -- questioned the wisdom of judicial review going back to Marbury vs. Madison (see here).
The project is to take it all down, and he is succeeding. But only if we let him.
No comments:
Post a Comment