Not that I am by any means the first to wonder this, to think that this bat guano crazy train White House and the whole right wing part of the political spectrum in the U.S. has completely gone off the rails, swerving dangerously into authoritarian tyrannical territory. Does any of the legislators on that side of the aisle have any courage left? Any sense of duty, any sense left of right and wrong, law and order, and still know the difference between the good, the bad and the just darn right ugly?

I mean, this guy in the White House is ugly, and everything he touches dies.

Who among the group, other than Amash standing there alone, who else among them has the courage to stand up for the constitution, for the citizens they are supposed to serve, and who are these spineless weasels who have abandoned the rule of law for this sensitive bully man child?

I long ago stopped giving one single flack about what that snowflake commander down yonder has to say, everything is a scam, a lie, a nice try. His beloved Kim Jong Un is executing officials that were involved in that last failed summit in North Korea, and American warships with heroes names on them that he despises are hidden from his precious eyeballs, and of course the good old Russian meddling in elections is I guess viewed by GOP legislators as just what one does to win, and this is where we are.

I imagine I am not the only one wishing this is just some kind of dystopian nightmare and morning is coming soon.

Years from now, when all this is history, when they’ve finally moved beyond this time, do they not think about what their grandchildren’s grandchildren will say about them, these spinless republicans who fear standing up for their country, for democracy, for the rule of law? Do they ever think about that? When these future generations hide their weak and spineless ancestors who enabled this corrupt man to continue his threatening of almost everything that America used to stand for, when these future Americans will wonder what was so important that they would be so willing to throw all of it away, and for him? He, him, this lying, cheating, conman, draft dodger president.

And will they learn in school, how once upon a time America almost let a deranged and narcissistic conman hijack liberty and their right to the pursuit of happiness? That they threw out all their values and morality, scrapped these truths that are supposed to be self-evident, these inalienable rights they were endowed with by the creator? Is that what they want their name associated with?

However much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing.

George Orwell

I do wonder if they understand that, that once they lose, and they will lose, once they lose this stain will forever be etched across their name.

Oh, courage, such a struggle, I know, I know, it is indeed a hard path to follow, to do what is right for the people, with all those dollar signs getting in the way. It is, it is difficult to be that person, like Amash, risking his career to do the thing he was elected to do, you know, serve the people.

You would think that someone who wishes to hold an elected office would desire that job because of some higher purpose, for a calling to serve – but I guess you’d be wrong on that score with a modern day republican. I suppose maybe over the years that mindset has been deemed quaint and old fashion, greed and self-interest being what it is, just seems to be the order of the day in Washington, across America.

They go low, we go high. They go lower, we kinda just stand around and look at each other wondering what the frack they’re up to.

Ignoring subpoenas, judges orders, congressional requests, and across the spectrum, day after day, this administration pushes the boundaries of decency, and destroying everything the presidency used to stand for.

Every time we turn around another administration official from this White House is ignoring the rules, the orders of judges, the constitution, anything that gets in the way of protecting the orange snowflake, and I still have a hard time occasionally wrapping my head around that, a hard time understanding how they could sink any lower, and then they do.

At this point they are so submerged, they are so far gone that it is going to take years to rebuild the party, if there is anything left of it. I question whether they can ever get back to the party of rule of law and all the family values they threw out the window for racism, and stealing a woman’s right to choose, for trade disputes with allies, and bankrupting farmers, and turning a blind eye to cheating and lying, so they can get who they want, what they want, when they want, like spoiled children.

There are those, his base, who believe him to be a for the people president, the best president ever, and as much as I completely disagree, that reality can not be ignored. So the average American is a tax cheat, draft dodger, with no moral code, racist, misogynist, bully?

I’m thinking no.

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right.

George Orwell

It’s too easy though to surmise that Trump’s supporters are just stupid, cause they are not. Sure, maybe there is a contingent that lack critical thinking skills, are not sophisticated intellectually, and are not open-minded, and completely racist. This group also reflects racism in America, and if nothing less that information is illuminating something that has not gone away, it just went underground, hid in the shadows.

For years, decades really, there has been this idea that they were all evolving away from the racist past of slavery and the Jim Crow south. With the election of a black president, one could be forgiven for thinking all that was well and truly in the past.

But over Obama’s two terms in office, that base of haters grew, and grew, and organized, and with fear in their heart at the prospect of more brown skins having power, and belief in the notion that brown people take their jobs and offer no benefit to anything, they finally found that one man, that bully billionaire that would beat back the left-wing demons, and set fire to every single progressive thing that black man had accomplished.

For that base, that is why they love him.

From trade deals, to affordable healthcare, and climate and environmental legislation, much was changed and many believed America was finally going in the right direction. However, there were those, apparently about 40%, who think quite the opposite, and there’s the rub.

In fact, I believe it is their hatred that has blinded them to reality, that makes them susceptible to right wing propaganda from foreign lands, it is that racism that makes them an easy mark to the GOP spin-cycle.

Case in point, is how so many are oblivious to what is actually contained within the Mueller Report, and their surprise that it is not some glowing report on the president’s innocence, but the opposite. They were oblivious, and many still are, to the damning litany of the many suspicious contacts the Trump campaign had, and the multiple times the president obstructed justice, they believed what they were told, isolated as they are in their conservative bubbles of blather and out right lies.

We have over 1000 prosecutors who have expressed the facts that this document lays clear, of the criminality of Trump, and that any other citizen of the United States would be charged with a crime, and go to jail.

I wonder though if possibly at some level the truth is too difficult to accept, too hard for them to acknowledge that he’s a criminal, because deep down all that matters is he will do what they want.

And what do they want? Well, again, to keep brown people out, to erode their rights, and win by whatever means, even if that means trashing democracy, they will trash democracy.

A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.

George Orwell

Perhaps it should not come as such a surprise that such a swath of American’s believe every word from this charlatans mouth, as so many of them swoon to the forked tongue of evangelical mega-preachers, and so they are easy prey, a well seasoned mark.

Perhaps it is time to throw away petty party lines, and begin to think in terms of protecting that precious and fragile democracy the founding fathers envisioned. Not through force, but through understanding, through education, through truth telling, and repeatedly, again and again, over and over, saying the same things, as a mantra, a constant and pervasive reality check. Reminding them over and over that Trump is guilty of crimes, that if he were any other American citizen, he would be indicted and brought to trial.

However, I guess regardless of how someone may feel about the man, pro or con, the simple and basic truth is that he broke the law and no one should be above the laws of the land. With so much at stake, the laws of the land are the foundation of democracy, anything else is a slippery slope towards enabling a tyrant, and creating a monster.

Whoever controls the image and information of the past determines what and how future generations will think; whoever controls the information and images of the present determines how those same people will view the past. He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past.

George Orwell

Yet, with all that said we need to be wary, as that conman in chief is a wily wanker and just when you thought you had him all figured out, he pulls a rabbit out of his comb over. Off in some other direction we’ll be led, just as snookered as his loyal followers, and don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s otherwise. It is due to his obsession, his need to remain at the centre is what has always fuelled his genuine talent to deceive the masses into believing he is something he is not, can do something he can not, and few are immune.

Still, in the air is this kind of hesitancy, this question on everyone lips, afraid to say, where is that hero to save the day? The one from the storybooks, the myths and fairy tales, the knight in shining armour, the great and noble one to slay the dragon?

Sorry to say, but I don’t think they’re coming, cause this is real life, and I guess what is called for is for everyone to find that hero within themselves.

That comes by speaking truth, talking about what you believe, accepting the views of all, listening, to understand, but not in the hopes of changing a mind. Respect for alternate points of view is at an all-time low, as everyone exists now within their own news silos, reads in them, and rarely moves outside them, believes what everyone in that cone believes – imprisoned .

“The Anatomy of Conflict:

If there is no communication then there is no respect. If there is no respect then there is no caring. If there is no caring then there is no understanding. If there is no understanding then there is no compassion. If there is no compassion then there is no empathy. If there is no empathy then there is no forgiveness. If there is no forgiveness then there is no kindness. If there is no kindness then there is no honesty. If there is no honesty then there is no love. If there is no love then God doesn’t reside there. If God doesn’t reside there then there is no peace. If there is no peace then there is no happiness. If there is no happiness —-then there IS CONFLICT BECAUSE THERE IS NO COMMUNICATION!”

Shannon L. Alder