Falling Prey

 I CONFESS that my senior year in high school I supported and helped the reelection of Richard Nixon. Well, we all make mistakes. Hell, I was seventeen. What I liked about Nixon's first term was  his diplomacy with China, environmental protection legislation, and Apollo Eleven. Then Watergate came along, and mad a born again Democrat out of me. Looking back, Nixon doesn't even seem so bad. It is virtually impossible today to imagine a Republican president signing the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency into law, much less get along with China. Just stop and think about the current Republican party, still under the control of Donald Trump, but struggling with it. All members must fully embrace Trump's big lie, or be outcast. All seventy millions Republican Trump supporters are still, in essence, required to embrace Trump's huge lie as their own. This is cult mind control at its worst, impacting the future of America. Just for the record, everyone in the country knows full well that Biden beat Trump, fair and square. But the cult followers must embrace the lie as long as their leader does, which seemingly will be until the end of time. This in itself is both alarming and dangerous. What on Earth will they do next? Both before and after they voted her out of office Liz Cheney reiterated that she wants to remain a Republican, and to help the party get back on Trump, some sane and reasonable track, post Trump. She seems to understand that a political party with seventy million delusional members will not work. House Leader Kevin McCarthy insisted that nobody still believes that the election was stolen, that the entire controversy must relegated  to the remote, unlitigatible past. Trump himself, however, doesn't seem to agree. More than ever, in his twisted mind, the election was stolen. Trump was impeached twice, both for good reason. His entire presidency was massively corrupt. History will bear that out soon enough, but for the time being it will be necessary to be certain that the American people do not lose sight of Trump's corruption, because it matters. When a nation is fortunate to rid itself of a lunatic and potential authoritarian demagogue leader, it must be equally carefully to never reinstate the lunatic and the lunacy. Sooner or later, we must all accept the realities of climate change, racism, economic failure,  chronic violence and disease, acknowledge our human inadequacies in allowing these disasters to manifest and endure, and take corrective action, cooperatively. It isn't too late, but soon may be, and it just wasn't going to happen under Trump.