In these times, it’s easy to feel discouraged. Past generations had presidents who called us to go to the moon, to end poverty, to secure the blessings of liberty and justice around the world. Today, we have a president who argues about punctuation marks in the childish nicknames he invents for his political opponents, while arguing that he can break the law with impunity for his own political gain.
We are at a low ebb of the tide in America. The waters of decency have receded, and the mudflats of depravity have emerged with their stench in our nostrils. In the muck, screaming with the rage of unbridled corruption, stands the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
As we witness this man pulling our nation ever-deeper into a moral quicksand which, for him at least, there seems to be no bottom — shaking down foreign nations like a mob boss for his personal advantage in the election; calling for the chairman of the congressional committee investigating his improper conduct to be “arrested for treason”; suggesting that if he is impeached it would spark a second civil war; and endlessly tweeting and bleating on TV about how unfairly the media and everyone else in the world are supposedly treating him for actions that are more heinously impeachable than that of any other president in history — we watch, with baited breath, hoping for some patriotic response to come from the Grand Old Party, the Republican Party and its leaders, putting country over party. Yet, for the most part, we wait in vain. For Trump has thoroughly captured the party of Lincoln and turned it into a swamp creature in his own image.
What now for America? Polls show that most Americans support the impeachment and removal of President Trump from office. Trump himself has repeatedly admitted doing the very deeds which any patriotic American would have to admit are serious violations of the American system of government — which even 30% of Republicans, in a recent poll, believe are an “abuse of power,” before any impeachment investigation or trial has occurred — yet he and his mindless or morally compromised followers who dominate today’s Republican Party claim such actions are perfectly acceptable.
Can he get away with it? Can he redefine his heinous conduct as the new normal? Can he change us as a people, refashioning America into a nation where naked self-interest trumps the law, the Constitution, and the wellbeing of the country?
I, for one, don’t think Trump will get away with it. The Senate might acquit him in an impeachment trial, but he will lose next year’s election and go down in history as a colossal loser, for one simple reason: the average American will have had enough of a crooked asshole at the top of our society.
In fact, I will go further than that: I predict that goodness, decency, civic virtue, and true patriotism will become cool again in America. Democratic leaders such as Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff are modeling a greater form of statesmanship than has been seen in this country in a long time. They are rising to the occasion. People will find it appropriate and attractive, and will reward this behavior and seek to expand its cultural influence.
The next year may be one of the most dramatic and disturbing times in American history. The 2020 election will be filthy dirty, assuming Trump is at the top of the ticket, because he will make it so. The American people will be more polarized than we’ve been in decades, maybe even centuries. The Democratic Party will need to be a big tent, for a time, welcoming all who believe in the basic principles of the American way, standing against the un-American cancer of Trumpism. And in the end, good will triumph over evil, because we will make it so.
Tides roll in and out. Pendulums swing. Trump and his type have had their day. Thugs and gangsters have a certain alpha-male appeal for a large number of human beings. But it gets wearing, and the average person tires of a crook running the show. The smell is foul, and the tide is turning. The pendulum will swing back toward those who truly love America; toward those who love virtue; toward those who love their fellow man more than power, more than money, more than scamming the next mark or grabbing the next pussy, whether literal or metaphorical. The tide will turn and wash away the rottenness, the meanness, the sleaziness of the bully occupying the White House and the minds and attention span of our people. Again, America will be a country worthy of admiration. Again, our people will choose goodness over corruption. Again, we will lift our minds higher, and our souls to a loftier plane. We, the people, will ascend from the muck. Only Trump and his dead-end followers will sink and drown in the mire they have chosen as their habitation.
The time is coming — a time for the resurgence of our constitutional republic, when we will truly make America great again after the stain of the Trump era. And Trump’s time, as anything other than a man to be remembered as the worst president in American history, is almost up. This I believe. Because in the end, I believe that America is better than what we’re dealing with today. And if we are not, may God have mercy on us all.