Kirk Swearingen, Salon

In the annals of unheeded warnings about appeasing bullies, there's British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who literally cut a deal with Adolf Hitler and promised "peace in our time." Then we have toddler-man Donald Trump, with his endless hissy-fits about not being treated fairly and mob-speak threats about what a shame it would be if our nice democracy was to — well, was to run into a narcissistic, psychopathic compulsive liar. Somebody like him.

This article first appeared in Salon.

Trump was also impeached twice, let us note — and got off the hook both times....

Why do people who attack the gender identities and romantic and sexual affiliations of others often seem so twisted up? I suppose history tells us that it pretty much goes without saying. But we need to speak plainly about it because we are all now hyper-aware of the serious damage that damaged people can do to others — and to society.

This article first appeared in Salon.

The Republican Party long ago slipped under the sheets with the religious right to become bedfellows in the culture wars, encouraging bigots, misogynists and Christian zealots to insist that others live by their morals (or lack thereof)....

Testimony before the House Jan. 6 committee has often been cringeworthy, primarily because what Donald Trump was actively trying to do — his steadfast intent, in the face of all evidence and most of the advice from the approximately sane people around him — is abundantly clear to anyone who has an open mind.

But it gets especially excruciating when we have to hear accounts of Trump getting all hissy and hurt, his tantrums turning to vindictiveness, like an immature, petulant high school student. (Most likely a ninth-grader with emotional problems.)

None of that behavior is surprising, because Donald John Trump has always shown everyone around him — and indeed everyone, period — precisely who he is, a shameless man-boy who lies and cheats to get ahead and takes pleasure in bullying others, all the while bleating about how others treat him unfairly because they accurately point out that he's a liar, cheat and bully. ...

When I moved to New York City in 1981, I first stayed at the YMCA, and every day I encountered street hustlers on 34^th Street, taking people's money with the shell game. You know how it goes: A pea or a little ball is placed under one of three cups and moved around rapidly; you are enticed to bet on where it ends up. (And after the first "lucky" guess, you are invariably wrong.)

I've been thinking about those shell games because of the endless, reverent talk of "textualism" and "originalism" by conservative, Federalist Society–approved justices on the Supreme Court.

It was Justice Antonin Scalia who first articulated a handy way to expand "gun rights" beyond any reasonable limits, and to render our Constitution as dead as any of the innumerable victims of American gun violence — in the process, going against the explicit wishes of some of the most prominent members of the founding generation, founders, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In the 2008 Heller decision, which somehow blithely dispensed with the whole "well regulated Militia" thing, and in various of his writings, Scalia outlined the right-wing constitutional interpretation now known as "textualism" or "originalism."...

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, recently tweeted: "We now have evidence to support the story of the worst presidential political offense against the Union in American history."

OK, good. Bring it. Please.

In terms of holding onto power, this may still be a country for old men, but it should be no country for insurrectionists. The committee plans to present its case to the American people at last, with at least eight public hearings, starting on June 9....