Nixon/trump

I recall, although not very well, the presidential election of 1972, when Nixon, despite having been implicated in Watergate, was the clear winner over George McGovern. Less than two years after the vote, he removed himself from office after it became clear he was going to be made to leave.

Donald trump doesn't even have the few blessings of Nixon's first administration. In his first year of office, Nixon oversaw passage of the National Environmental Policy Act and created the Environmental Protection Agency; he instigated the peaceful desegregation of southern schools, lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, and ended the draft. He was the first US president to visit the People's Republic of China. 

Nixon was a popular president, and I admit, as a 12 year old proto-conservative in 1972, I made sure my parents were voting for him. But as the country improved socially over the decades, I also improved, seeing Nixon and what he represented for what it was: Greed. For money, for power, I'm too small a person to see high enough to work that out. But it was to our everlasting pride as a nation that, when it came to punishing a criminal executive, we did so. 

Which is why so much of why the return of trump and his rethuglican party to power hurts. We had achieved so much--abortion safety, protections for voters and the marginalized among us, more consistent employment--and in the years of his reign and after, saw so much of them eroded. There was more work to do, of course, harder work. But does anyone think a trump administration will prioritize anything but the dismantling of what remains?

What did we trade marginal improvement for? What did trump do in his four years that suggest he has any clue, beyond thoughts of vengeance against his enemies, what he wants to accomplish? Is this why he received slightly better than 50% of the vote, so his followers can watch the spectacle he promises to make of the political landscape? Are they hoping that somehow watching their behemoth battle whatever false enemies he has trumped up will somehow benefit them? That promises to be at best a pyrrhic victory for rethuglican voters, because in any fight between King Kong and Godzilla the losers are always the people who are on the same island.