It has been 2,575 days since the United States of America cracked in two, and an ill-mannered, racist, narcissistic goon was elected to its highest office.
So dreadful was that 2016 election, that not a single day has gone by when I haven’t put everything aside for few minutes to sit quietly and consider its terrible implications. It creeps into my thoughts all the time, and won’t let me be, because it is now absolutely verifiable that a sturdy minority of Americans have proven with their vote that they will incinerate any of the good we have collectively done as a nation, to ride to the defense of its original sin.
I know that for the rest of my life, no matter the outcome of any election, I will never again be able to take solace that the country I served to protect will be spared from the threat of tyranny.
Evil has crashed ashore, and now it is waiting to be served.
That’s a helluva thing, it really is.
Our major media outlets have completely failed us, as they naively and dangerously search for both sides of this earth-shattering event that ironically could well end with the loss of their freedoms.
They refuse to report what the terrible end of our Democracy will look like, and instead feed us worthless polls, because there is big money in scaring the hell out of people by lazily amplifying unsubstantiated numbers that indicate the end is already upon us.
Just this morning, The New York Times is out with yet another front-page poll dedicated to “Biden’s Weakness Among Young Voters.” This horror story, written by one of their lead fiction writers, Nate Cohn, spins numbers like so many plates, before they all come crashing down on his head at the end, when he types this sentence: “There are countless reasons the polls today may not ultimately align with the final result.”
Seriously.
Please fire everybody in that newsroom.
It has been 2,575 days since the United States of America cracked in two, and we have to know by now that nobody is coming to save us.
Merrick Garland’s Justice Department, which should have been on the case of protecting our Democracy the second after it was sworn into power, instead tied itself in knots and held itself hostage.
There will never be an adequate excuse for this history-making dereliction of duty. Either Garland was listening to some sinister force ringing in his ears, or he somehow didn’t understand that there needed to be a swift and resounding response to Trump’s bloody coup attempt, ensuring that it could never, ever happen again.
The hope that enough Republicans would rally to the flickering light and help save our Democracy, was snuffed out cold by the lack of any oxygen coming from the lifeless Garland, who criminally said and did nothing about the January 6, 2021 attack on our country for more than a year.
Eventually, even this minority of aimless Republicans, who were stumbling toward doing the right thing, were forced to abandon hope that our attorney general would awaken from his self-imposed stupor and have their back, and surrendered themselves to the dark forces in the GOP’s fiery camps. They bent over, picked up their tyrannical torches, and explained away their brief allegiance to our democracy to anybody who would listen on the rightwing propaganda channels.
Today, the fire rages out of control, and is once again being eagerly fanned by the odious thug who brags of manhandling women, attempted a coup after losing an election by more than 7 millions votes, calls our military "suckers and losers," and is facing 91 felony counts for all manner of crimes.
This is the GOP's overwhelming choice to lead them, and us. There’s no sanitizing it. It is absolutely gross, and incredibly dangerous.
Turns out too many white people in America still have an appetite for hate that’s served up plenty cold, and have set their clocks back 160 years to get a seat at the table.
They were given quite a treat this past Saturday night when the fascist architects who are furiously rebuilding the Republican brand into their caustic, racist image made good and damn sure they planted their blunt instrument in the middle of a football field in the capital of South Carolina — the state that was first to secede from the federal union in 1860.
The time and the place for this one-horse’s-ass show were very intentional.
You’ll read that Jefferson Dumbass was booed at this football game between rivals Clemson and South Carolina, and that would be true. He was also cheered plenty, but even that is missing the point, which is this: He and his caustic brand will be injected into everything everywhere for the next year, and forever if the fascists who are controlling him and his disgusting party ultimately get their way.
They will rub our faces in it, and prove just how much they hate us and our democratic republic.
It was South Carolina Saturday night, where its senior senator, the sniveling coward, Lindsey Graham, once typed: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.”
Graham made good and damn sure to stay out of the way of his orange master during the football game, which means he was still somewhere in the vicinity of Trump’s two-ton ass scooping up the never-ending dung.
It turns out it was way easier than we thought for pathetic men like Graham to fall to their knees, and rub their own noses in their stink.
They are weak little men, and ultimately the reason why I believe good will prevail, and Democrats will once again save our Democracy in 2024.
We are stronger, we are braver, and as we’ve showed time and again the past six years at the voting booth, we are not backing down.
We still believe in our country, warts and all.
Yes, it has been 2,575 days since the United States of America cracked in two, but worry as we might, we know for sure that nobody is coming to save us, or our country.
We must do that ourselves, and there is great strength in the crystal-clear clarity that comes with knowing this.
D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough and https://dearlstephens.substack.com/
