Trump, Running

THE GREATEST THING that could possibly happen politically in America happened last night: Donald Trump officially declared for the presidency. His candidacy and behavior will greatly damage the Republican party and the American consservative movement, will in fact destroy both, and require each to redesign and reconstruct itself, praise God. The current incarnation of both has become a twisted, insane version of each, the party, and the ideological political movement. I have two good, intelligent, well educated liberal friends who said they dreaded the idea of a Trump candidacy and expresed doubt as to whether Trump's big message on Tuesday night would even be about any presidential run. I was shocked at their naivete. I assured them both a day in advance of Trump's announcement that yes, indeed Trump was going to run for president, and that, hell yes, that is exactly what we progressive Democrats want him to do! Now is the time for the Democrats and all who fear and loathe the Trump agenda and its followers to become, shall we say, aggressive? Aggressive in constantly telling and informing and reminding the American people that the Republican party officially designates the Capitol insurrection "legitimate political discourse". We must remind the American people that the same people who deny climate change deny Trump's election defeat, and the value of vaccines, incredibly. In talking about bad things like extremism, dishonesty, the embrace of blatant lies, crazy conspiracy theories, violence, anti-government hatred, racism, misogyny, intolerance, stupidity, and so forth and so on, you hear a lot of people say things such as: "There's a lot of that happening on both sides, both ends of the political spectrum. Really? No, not really. All these anti-Democratic, divisive, unpatriotic tendencies are most certainly, most definitely distributed equally throughout American culture, on both sides of the political and culture war. Not by a country mile. All the above naned forms of hatred and evil are overwhelmingly, disproportionately concentrated on the political right, and not just on the far right, but rather, smack dab in the middle of mainstream, Christian conservative America. People often say that the Republican party has moved to the right of where it used to be, and the Democratic party has moved to the left, and both have become less moderate, more extreme. This too is nonsense. Indeed the Republican party has moved to the right - far to the right, of even the Reagan era - but the Democrats have also moved to the right, to the consternation of some of us. The Democratic party was far more liberal during FDR's presidency and also during the sixties than it is today. But thank God that it is nowhere close to today's Republican party, which is becoming increasingly indistinguishable from fascism, rendering its imminent self destruction a great blessing to us all.