At dinner with a friend a few years ago, I ventured that the ideals of the Declaration of Independence would endure for millennia. Reflecting on the lunacy of the Evangelical Right, however, and that whole sick shape-shifting pastiche of closely-related nutjobs now known as the alt-Right, I added that I thought it quite possible that it would not be the United States that projected those noble ideals into the future.
I had, then, no idea that the hunger for a benevolent strongman was so acute, or that the collective ignorance of, and disdain for, the First Amendment was so widespread. That the contempt for education, and anti-intellectualism, were so deep-running that a cartoon character like Betsy DeVos could actually be nominated for Secretary of Education. That our indifference to the fate of our cities was so comprehensive that Ben Carson could actually be nominated for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. That the most important positions in an imminent administration would be filled by ex-generals with nicknames like … “Mad Dog.”
That soon gays, and Muslims, and Jews, and Jains, and women, and blacks, and Mexicans, including children, would be accosted by howling morons in the public streets and told they had no right to be where they were.
Or that the stimulus for these national disgraces would be the election of a gaudy, preening buffoon and serial-liar like Donald Trump.
Though Trump supporters — 1984-like, or Joseph Goebbels-like — serenely insist that Trump won the popular election, there is not a scintilla of objective evidence to support that claim. He lost the popular election, and lost decisively; according to the current count, by almost 3-million votes.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Edmund Burke
There is still the courts, and the press — and just wait till the suckers he tricked turn on Trump. If the party hangers-on who comprise the Electoral College prove too cowardly to do their plain duty, there remains an immense — and certain to grow — reservoir of clear-headed Americans of goodwill who love their country’s ideals and understand the threat Trump poses, who recoil from the relentless dishonesty and relentless self-aggrandizement, who are aghast at the prospect of a 3-card Monte dealer with a good line of patter setting-up shop in the Oval Office.
Donald Trump’s scamming will collapse when it is time to deliver on the promises, as scams always do. Right now is probably the high-water mark for Trump, as good as it is ever going to get; from this point forward the tide is likely to run in only one direction — out. We, the People, will still have to do our part, though, will have to confront the lies, the expediencies, the inevitable depredations upon the Bill of Rights.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The Founders could hardly have been plainer: They did not imagine a people who bow and scrape before an Invisible Wizard who lives in the sky, and they did not imagine a people who dance attendance upon a strutting peacock. They envisioned a country of free, two-legged, self-governing citizens — and that vision, the great achievement of The Enlightenment and the beating heart of the great liberal democracies, will soon be challenged as never before.
History is now.