Trump is right there, all over TV and Twitter in his un-American strongman glory, happily doing the kinds of things people said could never happen here.
And despite the evidence he releases daily, sometimes hourly, some fellow citizens are still telling themselves in full denial that America has laws and traditions that will forever guarantee our rights, check government authority and prevent Presidents from running amok.
Snoozing at the switch, or hoping against hope, they hang on to the myth that America would never follow other countries down the devastating, horrifying wrong roads they indeed took.
Believing, at our unfolding, common peril, that America had also learned enough from others' mistakes to repeat them, and would reliably abide by irrefutable truths wrung from our own nightmarish experiences - - whether having enslaved Africans and separated them from their children through violence and sale, or separated Native American children from their parents and shipped them to English language-only only boarding schools, or forcibly interred Japanese-Americans for years in camps - - something of a precursor to the subsequent and updated construction and operation of the current US detention facilities network which is the world's largest and can hold 360,000 people, or three times the number of Japanese-Americans imprisoned during World War II.
Those are past realities we are forgetting, along with the Irish we expelled from the US by the thousands, and the victims of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
I doubt if Trump knows or cares about this history.
After all, he has escalated his demands for broad immigration restrictions and his southern border wall, just as he's more broadly escalating a takeover and take down of fundamental-but-disappearing democratic rights and norms by:
* Patting torch-bearing, night-riding, copycatting-neo-Nazis on the back;
* Insulting African nations wholesale as 'sh*thole' countries;
* Repeatedly ordering our borders closed to Muslim-majority countries.
* Pardoning the convicted racist Arizona sheriff and current US GOP Senate candidate Joe Arpiao;
* Demagogically-cursing, demeaning and endangering the livelihood of NFL players;
* Callously tossing paper towels to a gravely-wounded-and-still-suffering Puerto Rico;
* And worst of all, ordering children at the southern border be torn from their legal-asylum-seeking Central American parents.
By and large, Trump's victims, and also those of the thugs he eggs on, have one thing in common with, say, the Mexicans he trashed as "murderers...and rapists" in his campaign kickoff speech or the reporters and protesters who were roughed for his amusement at Trump '16 campaign rallies.
And with the Central Park Five whom a consistently-unapologetic Trump wanted executed, despite their youth, and innocence.
And with the prospective, New York City tenants to whom he and his father would not rent apartments.
And to his White House predecessor whose American citizenship, college academic achievements and two terms in office Trump has systematically, relentlessly, enthusiastically demeaned.
Darker skin.
As the man said, can't we let into the country fewer Haitans and more Norwegians?
And there are other targets, including the disabled, and families on food stamps, or women suing him for sexual assault, and women Trump is out to punish by crushing Planned Parenthood - - all of whom he believes have less power that does he, his cronies and enablers.
So we and they get only his repetitively harsh verbal and policy double-downs, because Trump and his party and his handlers and his valets and apologists are all about wielding and hanging on to power.
Leading to the shocking, embarrassing and dangerous silence-screaming-consent from the band of spineless, power-over-principle, No-More-Party-of-Lincoln Republicans now cowering in the once-co-equal-on-paper-only Congress they've surrendered in service to Trump, his endlessly-demanding ego and the cash-hungry private property empire he and his family manage from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, and north to 666 Fifth Avenue, 725 Fifth Avenue and addresses worldwide.
This cowards chorus includes GOP elected officials like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, and big-state Trump worshippers like Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz, whose family Trump attacked and degraded.
And closer to home, Trump is excused and coddled by weaklings like Ron Johnson, Scott Walker, Jim Sensenbrenner, et al, ad nauseam, whose wasteful, self-serving squatting in public offices insults their earlier occupants - - genuine giants with humane authenticity and selfless, public service compasses and consciences - - like Senator and Governor Gaylord Nelson or US Rep. Robert Kastenmeier
Speaker-dropout Ryan, Kastenmeier's complete opposite, is now a congressional caricature who is spending his remaining taxpayer-paid days and fast-evaporating credibility raising partisan money instead of raising his voice for civility. And American democracy.
Walker, certainly no less craven, and sharing nothing in common with the environmental champion Nelson, says he'd welcome Trump here for fall campaigning - - as people run from Trump and their White House jobs by the dozens to save their souls and reputations.
Giving Walker another term would validate his noxious, self-aggrandizing governorship and consign Wisconsin to a further potholed, low-wage, stalled-growth, more-polluted, special interest-driven, red state miasma.
His helping reify Trump, his authoritarianism, and increasingly reckless reign resolutely disqualifies Walker from re-election.
And despite the evidence he releases daily, sometimes hourly, some fellow citizens are still telling themselves in full denial that America has laws and traditions that will forever guarantee our rights, check government authority and prevent Presidents from running amok.
Snoozing at the switch, or hoping against hope, they hang on to the myth that America would never follow other countries down the devastating, horrifying wrong roads they indeed took.
Believing, at our unfolding, common peril, that America had also learned enough from others' mistakes to repeat them, and would reliably abide by irrefutable truths wrung from our own nightmarish experiences - - whether having enslaved Africans and separated them from their children through violence and sale, or separated Native American children from their parents and shipped them to English language-only only boarding schools, or forcibly interred Japanese-Americans for years in camps - - something of a precursor to the subsequent and updated construction and operation of the current US detention facilities network which is the world's largest and can hold 360,000 people, or three times the number of Japanese-Americans imprisoned during World War II.
Those are past realities we are forgetting, along with the Irish we expelled from the US by the thousands, and the victims of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
I doubt if Trump knows or cares about this history.
After all, he has escalated his demands for broad immigration restrictions and his southern border wall, just as he's more broadly escalating a takeover and take down of fundamental-but-disappearing democratic rights and norms by:
* Patting torch-bearing, night-riding, copycatting-neo-Nazis on the back;
* Insulting African nations wholesale as 'sh*thole' countries;
* Repeatedly ordering our borders closed to Muslim-majority countries.
* Pardoning the convicted racist Arizona sheriff and current US GOP Senate candidate Joe Arpiao;
* Demagogically-cursing, demeaning and endangering the livelihood of NFL players;
* Callously tossing paper towels to a gravely-wounded-and-still-suffering Puerto Rico;
* And worst of all, ordering children at the southern border be torn from their legal-asylum-seeking Central American parents.
By and large, Trump's victims, and also those of the thugs he eggs on, have one thing in common with, say, the Mexicans he trashed as "murderers...and rapists" in his campaign kickoff speech or the reporters and protesters who were roughed for his amusement at Trump '16 campaign rallies.
And with the Central Park Five whom a consistently-unapologetic Trump wanted executed, despite their youth, and innocence.
And with the prospective, New York City tenants to whom he and his father would not rent apartments.
And to his White House predecessor whose American citizenship, college academic achievements and two terms in office Trump has systematically, relentlessly, enthusiastically demeaned.
Darker skin.
As the man said, can't we let into the country fewer Haitans and more Norwegians?
And there are other targets, including the disabled, and families on food stamps, or women suing him for sexual assault, and women Trump is out to punish by crushing Planned Parenthood - - all of whom he believes have less power that does he, his cronies and enablers.
So we and they get only his repetitively harsh verbal and policy double-downs, because Trump and his party and his handlers and his valets and apologists are all about wielding and hanging on to power.
Leading to the shocking, embarrassing and dangerous silence-screaming-consent from the band of spineless, power-over-principle, No-More-Party-of-Lincoln Republicans now cowering in the once-co-equal-on-paper-only Congress they've surrendered in service to Trump, his endlessly-demanding ego and the cash-hungry private property empire he and his family manage from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, and north to 666 Fifth Avenue, 725 Fifth Avenue and addresses worldwide.
This cowards chorus includes GOP elected officials like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, and big-state Trump worshippers like Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz, whose family Trump attacked and degraded.
And closer to home, Trump is excused and coddled by weaklings like Ron Johnson, Scott Walker, Jim Sensenbrenner, et al, ad nauseam, whose wasteful, self-serving squatting in public offices insults their earlier occupants - - genuine giants with humane authenticity and selfless, public service compasses and consciences - - like Senator and Governor Gaylord Nelson or US Rep. Robert Kastenmeier
Speaker-dropout Ryan, Kastenmeier's complete opposite, is now a congressional caricature who is spending his remaining taxpayer-paid days and fast-evaporating credibility raising partisan money instead of raising his voice for civility. And American democracy.
Walker, certainly no less craven, and sharing nothing in common with the environmental champion Nelson, says he'd welcome Trump here for fall campaigning - - as people run from Trump and their White House jobs by the dozens to save their souls and reputations.
Giving Walker another term would validate his noxious, self-aggrandizing governorship and consign Wisconsin to a further potholed, low-wage, stalled-growth, more-polluted, special interest-driven, red state miasma.
His helping reify Trump, his authoritarianism, and increasingly reckless reign resolutely disqualifies Walker from re-election.
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