“When you’re a star, you can do whatever you want.”
If the quote sounds familiar, but you can’t quite place it, it’s the important part of Donald Trump’s famous “grab ’em by the pussy” quote, the one that proved to us that when conservative voters say character matters, they’re lying.
Has there ever been a worse American who hasn’t done time? Hell, who’s never even been convicted of anything?
Has there ever been an American so irreligious that his favorite Bible verse is “an eye for an eye” who is so beloved by the most fundamentalist among us?
Will 2021 and 2022 be remembered as the years we let our democracy slip away and became an authoritarian nation? Because that’s really what’s at stake here. It isn’t about Trump. I think he’s old enough and unhealthy enough that I think the odds are only 50-50 at best that he will even be able to run for president in 2024.
But don’t kid yourself. There are plenty of others on the hard right who will be more than happy to be Trump 2.0, and they will almost certainly be more competent at it than the original.
It’s almost scary how prescient columnist and critic H.L. Mencken was. He wrote in 1922 that the republic would fall within 100 years because of ignorance and greed.
What is truly scary is what we hear — mostly on the right — about people voting against their own interests because it’s more important to elect people who make the liberals angry.
Owning the libs.
In many cases, these are people who don’t believe government can or will do anything to make their lives better, so they’re just as happy when people on the other side are hurting too.
So despite the fact that Trump didn’t do anything at all in four years to improve their lives, they love him.
The. biggest “own” will be if the Trump-loaded Supreme Court uses the Mississippi case to overturn Roe v Wade and throw our abortion laws back into a state-by-state mishmash.
That would throw a wild card into the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential election. Of course if enough states screw with voting rights for folks who aren’t old, white and male, it may not matter.
One way it will matter, though, is if it sends what’s left of our republic careening down the mountainside into authoritarianism.
And won’t that be fun.
Never forget that old Chinese saying:
“May you live in interesting times.”
It isn’t a blessing. It’s a curse.