He's Breaking America

On some level, I suppose it's not his fault.  On some level, this is a tragic opera playing out in 3 acts - running, Presidenting, the aftermath.

He can't help himself.  His father ruined him and his mother didn't intervene.  Read Mary Trump's analysis of his psychology if you want to see it play out.  He watched his older brother crumble under the strain.  He would survive.

If there is a positive piece of his character it is that will to survive.

But underneath, he has no substance.  Winning is the only thing.  There's no love, unless it's salacious (cf how he can't keep his hands off Ivanka).  There is no empathy, because there is no one who matters except himself. There is no honesty, because reality cannot compete with the horror of loss.

And so, the current incumbent is making plans to break America.  

It's because his brain is breaking, unable to conceive of losing, of disappointing his father, of not living up to his gold-plated self image.  There is no way that he can rationalize losing so publicly, so overwhelmingly, so decisively.  

After all, he himself declared that 306 electoral votes was a landslide.

And so he's promoting fraud and conspiracy and magic voting machines that commune with the dead.  Huge numbers of his supporters believe him.  He's tapping with a heavy hammer against the very foundation of our democracy  -  the people rule.

Fortunately, the courts have stood up against this onslaught.  The deciders have used words like laughable and without merit and come on, now!   Those of us on the outside looking in can laugh, along with Neil Katyal.  The schadenfreude is titillating;  I feel it up and down my spine.

But the reality is that much of America believes that the election was rigged, was unfair, that Joe Biden will be sworn in but he won't really be President.  Trump wants to be sure that Biden doesn't get credit for the vaccine - It was ME! - even though Pfizer wanted nothing to do with him, or Operation Warp Speed.

And now Trump is talking about launching his 2024 campaign on Inauguration Day.  

I'm letting that sentence sit there, because it sits in the middle of my heart, in just that way.  On a day when the country is supposed to bind the wounds opened by the election, the orange menace will drive a stake into the soul of the nation.

Competing inaugurations?  Will the networks cover the Trump event?  Will it make it into the newspapers?  Will it be broadcast or streamed?  

I had hoped for a Trump free future, one where America, having been tested and survived, could move on and build back better.  Instead, the bad man  (FlapJilll's term) seems determined to worm his way back into my consciousness, even if his antics are now the third or fourth story on the national news.

I was scared when armed militia were allowed to invade the Michigan State House.  I'm terrified now that Trump's future plans are spilling out onto America's lap.