David Remnick from the New Yorker on the remarkable events over the last week:
Trump’s penchant for bald deception and incoherence is not an aberration. It is his daily practice. The vague sense of torpor and gloom that so many Americans have shouldered these past two years derives precisely from the constancy of Trump’s galling statements and actions.
And yet what happened in Helsinki on Monday will not be so easily forgotten. Just as the President’s comments following the torchlit white-supremacist march last year in Charlottesville made it clear that racism was at the core of his character and his political strategy, the contemptible remarks he delivered alongside of Vladimir Putin seemed to mark a turning point, even for some of his most ardent defenders. In the course of a single European journey, Trump set out to humiliate the leaders of Western Europe and declare them “foes”; to fracture long-standing military, economic, and political alliances; and to absolve Russia of its attempts to undermine the 2016 election. He did so clearly, repeatedly, and with conviction. Republicans in Congress (but not enough of them) and a selection of commentators on Fox News declared that Trump’s performance in Helsinki had been disgraceful.
One of the hardest things for any human being to admit is that he/she was wrong. It’s a kick in the stomach. It basically amounts to admitting you’re a fool. You’ve been snookered. You’ve been taken.
If any Republican voter could validly claim that excuse, I’d be happy to listen. But I probably wouldn’t believe it.
Republicans—and by that I mean every single person who voted for this person-- knew what they were buying into already. They winked at the racism, chortled at the misogyny, and pulled that lever anyway because they wanted to stick it to the rest of Americans who were forced to watch in silent horror at this abomination to our Democracy. When Hillary Clinton brought up the fact that Trump was a Russian puppet, they laughed and laughed.
Some of them were acting out on their worst impulses. Some of them were all about “shaking things up.” Some of them were all about “abortion” or that some brown or black person was going to be allowed to get a big-screen TV and maybe raise a family just like them. Maybe some of them thought that the American experiment was just a means of “entertainment.” And for some of them, maybe it still is.
They just didn’t care. Didn’t give a damn about the rest of the country. Didn’t care about their own children’s futures, for that matter. All they cared about was themselves.
They just never dreamed their chosen Leader’s utter betrayal of all things American would be so nakedly obvious that he’d sell his own country out in front of a billion sets of eyes across the world.
But here we are. We’re stuck with a traitor in the White House. One beholden to a man whom historians believe came to power by blowing up an apartment complex full of people.
Because you put him there.
You own this, Republicans, whatever your “reasons” were. Maybe this is the “new normal” for you. I just hope you can justify that to your children.
Those of us who actually care about the country will see you on November 6.
Bye!