Unlike any other president in American history, Donald Trump faces both an utterly supine Congress and an utterly supine Supreme Court. Never before has either branch come close to defaulting so thoroughly in the performance of its constitutional duties as an independent branch of government as both have today. One would find more defiance—and more honor—in an incontinent cocker spaniel puppy. Ambition does not counteract ambition, as Madison would have it. Rather, cowardice enables corruption, and becomes its handmaiden.
Donald Trump’s power, and Donald Trump’s corruption, are inseparable, and each feeds, and feeds off of, the other. Perhaps 40% of the American electorate are filled with hate against “foreigners”, aka “immigrants” and “imports”, and find release in that hatred by Trump’s wanton and explicit cruelty against them. “One, two, three, many Alligator Alcatrazes”—that is what Trump is promising, high-tech Hell Holes deliberately designed to inflict maximum suffering on every inmate—men and women convicted of no crime but only charged with being in the U.S. illegally. Our fellow human beings will now be deprived of every right, and every comfort—and virtually every necessity—on the whim of a gang of arrogant, faceless thugs.
The American people who voted for Trump deserve the primary blame. They have not ignored Trump’s crimes; they have applauded them. It is true that Trump could have been stopped by the Republican Establishment, but the Rolex crowd surrendered without firing a shot, some resigning—as though it were somehow “noble” to run away—while the rest either sold their souls outright or else surrendered them gratis, in the manner of Chief Justice John Roberts1 and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, for they will receive no payment for their self-degradation other than the obloquy of future generations.
Some day we will recover from all this. But it will not be soon. As Fourth of Julys go, this was a real stinker.
AFTERWORDS
I have limned the willful surrender of the Republican Party to the joys of anarchy any number of times, but most volubly here. I have given special attention to the crimes of the Unholy Six and their predecessors in crime on the Supreme Court here.
1. According to Dante, the entrance to Hell says “This portal was erected by Divine Love”. The entrance to the America’s first concentration camp (first of many, as both Donnie and Florida Governor and Trump Toadie No. 1 Ron DiSantis promise) should say “This portal was erected by Chief Justice John Roberts”. Over at the Hot Taake, Sabrina Taake gives a painfully accurate portrait of both America’s shame and the Roberts Court abysmal role in making it happen.
