Trump's legacy
Mr. President, you'll be remembered as having no honor.
My anger hides it lately, but I do appreciate the higher roads. In fact, what I miss most about a Trumpified America is goodness. Plain goodness, as a national aspiration at least.
Maybe it’s the official representation of American goodness I miss, the reaffirmation, especially on our 250th birthday, that we’re working toward a more perfect union.
Maybe I’m just pining for monuments and historic sites unsullied by cage fights and racists with microphones.
In any case, Trump’s mob-boss character is getting old. His mug glaring from banners on federal buildings is grotesque, although ridiculous enough to laugh off, along with his Jesus and George Washington comparisons.
Those comparisons, like so much of the chaos enveloping this administration, are unserious. But the threat Trumpism represents to our country is no joke.
It is, to an astonishing degree, I think, a threat predicated on Trump’s character. In his case, character doesn’t just matter; it eclipses all else.
The man has no honor.
For Trump, devotion to goodness, to duty, is for losers.
And not coincidentally, as someone wholly lacking in integrity, the president has surrounded himself with dishonorable people. Republicans in the Senate keep going along.
Trump revels in rubbing his corruption in the world’s face. His backers are expected to stomach that thievery while continuing to delight in the fact that he has no use for norms, constitutional or otherwise.
However, polls indicate that norm shattering isn’t helping people get by.
(Cue communism.)
Trump’s world is a world of lies, which his followers are also expected to see as just part of his schtick, I suppose. He’s a performer after all.
But, you know, he assured them he was no warmonger a few years back, and I think that lie isn’t sitting well today.
The farce that was America First has long-since darkened into tragedy. Innocent people have died — and are dying — as a result.
Trump has no interest in “the better angels of our natures” except insofar as he can use them to identify and attack those inclinations.
He knows he got where he is by exploiting the worst of human nature.