Opinion

It’s probably, politically and spiritually, the darkest Thanksgiving for our nation in my lifetime. So how about a quick story out of America’s earliest history that somewhat echoes this moment and may give us some hope?

Donald Trump has told us he’s going to use the 1807 Insurrection Act to declare a state of emergency, which will allow him to round up not only undocumented immigrants but also his political opponents, who he refers to as “the enemy within.” He came to power using Willie Horton-like ads trashing trans people and is happy to demonize anybody else who stands up to his hunger for absolute power.

Writing, for me, is easiest from the confines of a small, dark room. When I was younger I preferred a view, but now we live on a river where an unidentified bird or duck glues the binoculars to my face. It’s hard to care about rotating Trump buffoonery when a green Heron is standing in stealth, watching his breakfast have its last swim beneath the surface.

Writing columns for a national audience I’ll never meet can feel isolating, but it is ultimately an act of hope. Sussing out man’s inhumanity toward man (and animals) is an expression of shared humanity, an understanding that we are capable of evolving, that eventually we will do better.

So much for American democracy and the concept that “no man is above the law.”

There is no law and not a word in the Constitution that requires Attorney General Merrick Garland to order Jack Smith to drop charges against Trump.

“The political folks believed that because [Covid] was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy.” — Vanity Fair’s Katherine Eban quoting Jared Kushner’s team in March, 2020.

Arguably the most important aspect of political leadership is the ability to deal with a crisis.

In the wake of this terrible election, I will NOT be a part of this self-loathing and whining by too many in Democratic “leadership” in this country right now as they try to convince people like me — a high school dropout — that I am some college-educated elite who doesn't understand what the majority of the “hardworking” white voters want in this country.

They can save it.

I have been alive long enough to see presidents shot dead in the street, civil rights leaders gunned down in their hotel rooms and horrible, horrible wars started on the wretched basis of disgusting lies. But of all the things I have seen in my long life, nothing compares to Wednesday, January 6th, 2021.

On that day ... a terrible, singular day that is burned into our hearts and minds, an evil, broken sociopath who had been voted out of power by the citizens of the United States of America did everything he could to hold onto that power and set the match that led to the most gruesome internal attack on this country since the Civil War.

I’m watching the first snow in Chicago, fighting an urge to withdraw from national news for a while. Any familiarity with world history makes clear the imperative of resistance before jackboots kick down the door, but watching Republicans’ abrogation of duty in service to a charlatan taxes one’s mental health. I don’t want to give Trump and his unqualified goons that much power.

For me, because the destruction won’t begin in earnest until January, the worst part about the election so far is my own internal dialogue: I don’t want to harbor ill will or feel contemptuous disgust for MAGA. I don’t want to anticipate their remorse, if they ever connect the dots between tariffs, mass deportations, and the price of apples come June. But nor do I want to sugarcoat the cruel catastrophe they have unleashed, not just on immigrants and minorities, but on themselves.

For now, I’m not getting involved in the debate over what Kamala Harris did wrong. For one thing, whatever conclusions are drawn now will almost certainly be forgotten by the time of the next election. For another, the debate takes vital attention away from the choice of the majority of American voters, which is to say, their terrible choice.

Why did they break for Donald Trump? Lots of worthy people are going to spend lots of time exploring that question. I won’t, though. What I know is that Trump campaigned on easily proven lies. What I also know is his supporters chose to believe them. What I care about now are the consequences of that choice, and those consequences are going to be bad for all of us, including everyone who voted for him.

Oligarchy is a form of government where the richest people in a country have captured its political system (or even filled it with themselves) and use that control to direct much of the government’s efforts to increasing their own wealth and power.

We’ll soon again have a billionaire president — helped to power by the richest billionaire on the planet — with his election campaign funded in large part by at least $2 billion in direct, reported donations from roughly 150 billionaire families.

I considered waiting to publish this dire warning about what will be coming in the wake of the America-attacking Trump’s inauguration in two months, because too many good people are being asked to process too many terrible things right now.

This simply had to be put to paper, though, because I would be remiss if I didn’t urgently warn you that Trump’s takeover of our military is at the top of his dirty to-do list, and at the tip of his toxic spear in his quest to murder our Democracy.

It takes time for things to stick properly, so please bear with me while I say again that Kamala Harris did not lose the election because of things she said. She lost because of things Donald Trump said she said.

So Democratic Party critics are basing their criticism not on what Harris said but on what Trump said she said, as they are accepting as true the allegations of the president-elect against the vice president.

I have an admission for you: I never took even a single second to consider the terrible residue of a Democratic loss in this month's elections, precisely because of the terrible things that happened last week.

When others brought it up, I would simply defer and say something that tasted like this: “I can’t allow myself to go there, because the consequences will be too grave to even imagine. My focus and energy need to be on ONE thing: WINNING. We must get Kamala Harris into the White House. Losing is just too devastating to contemplate.”

There’s an argument I want to discuss. It goes something like this: Donald Trump’s policies are going to alienate some of the people who voted for him. To be sure, many of them wanted something done about the economy. Prices were too damn high. But they didn’t sign up for tariffs, deportations and cuts to social services, like food stamps.

As a liberal pundit put it, Trump seems poised to follow through with that policy agenda, though going through with it is “political suicide.”