A Proverb

One who justifies the wicked and one who condemns the righteous

are both alike an abomination to the Lord.

-Proverbs 17: 14

I have not written here for quite some time.  Part of the reason for this is that I have been spending a greater share of my time exercising my body, and less time sitting in front of a computer.  But honestly, I could have found the time if I so chose, I just didn't choose.  The reason for this silence is in part that I just don't know if I have anything of value to say about the events that have dominated the past several months.  I have been following the inquiries and the testimonies, I have been watching the Tweets and posts, and it would seem to me that there is pretty clear evidence that our not-so-beloved leader is a corrupt person, but then again, I knew that in like 1998, this is not new information.

I have some measure of confidence that our Republic will survive the impeachment.  In fact, I have been given confidence in watching William Taylor, Maria Yovanovitch, George Kent, Fiona Hill, Alexander Vindman, and even in a strange way Gordon Sondland.  The thing that became clear to me was that these people, even Sondland, all had a clear sense that something was rotten in Ukraine.  None of them are what you would call liberal, let alone leftist.  Most of them, Sondland being the exception, are career government people, call them bureaucrats if you want, but they are professionals whose training and experience qualify them to deal in international affairs on behalf of our nation.  Even the lone Trump booster, Sondland, seemed to realize that the gig was up, they had been caught doing something that probably has pretty severe consequences and seemed to apprehend that lying to Congress was going to put him in the pokey with Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone (eventually).

What I am not so sanguine about is whether or not our commonweal will ever be what it was four years ago.  Trump has erupted with what George Will colorfully called "a Vesuvius of mendacity." The man just rarely tells the truth.  This is, of course, entirely consistent with who he is and who he has always been.  I spent a good deal of time being angry with people who voted for Trump, which includes some people I actually love very much.  At this point though, I feel sorry for them, because if they have an ounce of perspective and are paying attention to any sources other than Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, they must realize that they were conned.  They were conned the way that all the people who did work for Trump and didn't get paid were conned, they were conned the same way all the students at Trump University were conned, they were conned the same way that apparently the entire Republican Party is being conned.

In the process of duping his way to an electoral victory, Trump has had to up his game from simply sly mendacity to outright demagoguery.  Now that he is out there on that thin ice it is far too dangerous for him to back up or admit that he is a sham.  He simply must continue to erode our common conception of the truth.  And the thing is, he has help.  He has willing co-conspirators in his assault on objective truth.  I feel like history will not be kind to Mitch McConnell, Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes, or even Mike Pence (who might actually be President for a minute before January 2021).  They will be the Spiro Agnew and Gordon Liddy of this debacle.

This is what worries me though, their calculus in allowing themselves to be rolled up in this sewer sandwich is a cynical political decision.  They know that there are still enough MAGA hat folks out there to last them through the next election cycle.  And the worrisome thing is that I suspect they're right, which means that our collective sojourn in the land of lies and half truths is not over.  Even if Trump gets his orange posterior handed to him next November, even if we fire the firer in chief, there are a lot of people who have hitched their wagons to the engine of falsehood that has been pulling this manure wagon through our society.

Our collective sense of trust is going to take time to rebuild.  We can't have another Trump, or another Clinton, we need more politicians like Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter, people whose integrity is not in doubt, even if you disagree with their policy.  We cannot accept con men, even if you think they will get you what you want.  I know, this sounds unrealistic, but it is in fact the supposition upon which our Constitution is founded, that our rule of law would constrain the raw greed and self-interest inherent to our worst impulses and a search after a "more perfect union," would elevate us to be more than just savages who look out for number one.

Jesus said that a bad tree will bear bad fruit and a good tree will bear good fruit.  He was very insightful about such things, even if you're not a person of faith, you can trust him on that one. Look at the fruit: indictments, prison sentences, world leaders (even Boris Johnson) laughing at him, cruel policies towards the poor and the immigrant, and to top it off our modern equivalent of Scribes and Pharisees saying how he might even be the chosen one.  A good economy is not the only measure we should be taking of how things are going.  How does this feel?  To me it doesn't feel good, it feels like, well... an abomination.

I'm going to be quiet again for a while, sanity requires it.