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. 

The Fred Durst of Presidents

I'll own to more than a frisson of schadenfreude at trump's indictment and arrest. And while it's a shame not to see him frog-marched ahead of members of his administration, or the sight of trump Force One disappearing over the horizon carrying him, his family, and the clothes on their backs and bound for Argentina or Moscow, there is some pleasure to be had by his being taken down a peg by the petty act of not having a door held for him. But that is petty on my part too, and the truth is he's not worthy of my disappointment or disdain.

Those I save for the United States and the rethuglicans in Congress, the Senate, state and local offices, and individuals in the streets and on TV who support him and would, given the opportunity, vote for him. Again. 

It says something repugnant about our nation that trump won the 2016 election and avoided removal from office for four  very long years in which the policies his sycophants enacted under his--well, you can't call it "supervision" or "governance," so call it "willingness"--caused the deaths and misfortunes of countless citizens and would-be citizens. They were allowed not only to occur but encouraged those results. Donald trump, in retrospect, should have been allowed no closer to the Oval Office than Fred Durst should be allowed on a stage without the involvement of a broom. 

So while I delight somewhat in his troubles, I mourn our own acquiescence in the the fact he was allowed to make them. It should not have happened, and once it did, should have been repaired as quickly as possible. We have the legal means granted by the Constitution and laws to have done so but that we did not is a black mark against us, adult US citizens, a millstone that will hang on our necks. It should. We are finally, finally seeing the results of careful investigation and prosecution, and even if he never spends an hour in an orange jumpsuit, his loss of prestige will inevitably lead to the loss of his apologists. Or it should. I don't think we're headed in any way toward an active war, civil or otherwise, but that trumpanistas and rethuglicans are entrenched in their spider holes and mom's basements, as well as in the seats of power, tells us all we need to know about what they believe. 

We should not have to think about him any more, and that we do is our own fault.