Opinion

Georgia, more than any other place in the country, was where it all went bad for Trump, and he knows it.

It was Georgia where the mythology of Trump first gave way to the reality of Trump, where his excesses finally had electoral consequences, where a few of his fellow Republicans showed the guts to stand up to him, where those same few Republicans proved it was possible to survive his anger and spite, and where voters first showed a willingness to punish the feckless cowardice of candidates who groveled too openly at Trump’s feet.

Few people like being told what they must do. Lorie Smith is one of them.

The suburban Denver, Colo., business owner, a devout Christian, builds websites for customers. She wants to expand her business and begin building websites for couples who are planning weddings.

Poor Donald Trump must be feeling especially unloved right now. Practically everyone in the Republican Party is blaming him for their losses in the midterm elections, and few of his usual media supporters are defending him in his latest legal woes. At least some recent polls have him trailing Ron DeSantis in the forthcoming race for the GOP presidential nomination — and if he pulls it off anyway, suggest that he'd lose the general election to Joe Biden. But what has to hurt more than anything is that his title as chief MAGA troll has been usurped by a man who has outstripped him in virtually every way: Elon Musk.

Now, it's true that Trump can brag that he was used to be president of the United States, but that's getting old considering that everyone knows that he lost his re-election bid and has spent the last two years whining like a tired toddler that it was stolen from him. That accomplishment is irrevocably tarnished. But Musk's business career leaves Trump with his old fashioned real estate fortune in the dust. Musk has nine children by three different women, and iss still working on it. Most important, Musk has way, way, more money than Trump, even if as of this week he's been demoted from the richest man in the world to No. 2.

Failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake — who despite her defeat may yet be a Republican vice-presidential contender — has filed a new lawsuit ostensibly aimed at reversing her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs. Lake appears to be going for a hat trick of courtroom defeats, which remains no match for her idol, former President Donald Trump, who lost more than 60 cases after the 2020 election.

The first of Lake's lawsuits, filed earlier this year, was dismissed in August. It sought to replace Maricopa County's voting machines with paper ballots.

That was former President George W. Bush’s reported take on former President Donald Trump’s angry inaugural address back in 2017.

And that seems to be the consensus on the farewell speech last week from Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey (R-Clarklake), who, notably, dismissed his frequent foe, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, as being “batshit crazy” during her first year running the state.

Everyday people, especially the poor, the working class, Black and brown folks, a large majority of women, LGBTQ people and members of other vulnerable and disadvantaged communities do not have the privilege of ignoring danger. Nonetheless, many of them also practice denial as a coping mechanism, when they arguably should know better.

In the end, any major peril — such as climate change or the current global democracy crisis — will affect everyone, rich and powerful or otherwise. The difference will largely concern the circumstances and timing. Ignoring a problem cannot solve it.

Tuesday is supposed to be a good day. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the Respect for Marriage Act into law, making it illegal for any state to invalidate, repeal or negate the legal marriages of same-sex or interracial couples. No doubt the ceremony itself will all be smiles and hugs. Still, as Biden acknowledged in the White House statement, the bill is only necessary because of "the uncertainty caused by the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision," which reversed Roe v. Wade, in which Justice Clarence Thomas openly invited the right to challenge Obergefell v. Hodges and give the court a chance to destroy the national right to same-sex marriage.

The media coverage of the bill largely framed it as a sign of social progress, focusing on how a strong majority of Americans (71%, according to Gallup) support same-sex marriage. This included glowing coverage of the minority of Republicans who voted for the bill, which threatened to eclipse the real story, which is that the majority of Republicans in Congress very much voted against it. The religious right, which still controls the Republican party, has not given up on its mission to repeal hard-won gay rights and make homophobia the social norm again. On the contrary, this past week's news cycle underscores how, if anything, the Republican backlash against LGBTQ people is only getting nastier, despite strong evidence that such rhetoric is contributing to an atmosphere of violence and hate crimes.

Sometime during the next session of Congress, Republicans will check the box on one of their perennial agenda items whenever a Democrat is president: Threatening to crash the entire U.S. economy if the president doesn't submit to their demand to slash the safety net of senior citizens.

This article first appeared in Salon.