EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG

Fifteen months ago, I was really dumb.  I realize now that I’d unconsciously taken progress for granted.  The world was getting better and would keep getting better.  The improvements often happened more slowly than I liked, and were punctuated by occasional setbacks.  But I assumed the setbacks would be temporary, and we’d keep moving forward. 

I never dreamed that I’d have to worry about Russian espionage, or Nazi and Klan thugs marching proudly in American cities, or the swift destruction of the social safety net, or the realistic prospect of a nuclear war.  Things like that just weren’t supposed to happen.  It’s as if the bubonic plague had suddenly made a comeback, or sabretooth tigers were roaming the streets.

Until 2017, the worst year I’d lived through, strictly in terms of politics, was 1968.  Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, there were riots in major cities, and there was a seemingly endless war in Vietnam.  And the year ended with the election of Richard Nixon as president. 

I never thought any year could top that.  But the awfulness of 1968 seems in retrospect to have been almost normal compared to the insanity of 2017.  Donald Trump is a madman, and his madness has been contagious.  I pay an unhealthy amount of attention to the news, and yet I’m always aware on some level that while I’m focused on Trump Atrocity X, he and his henchmen are working on at least a dozen terrible things that I don’t even know about.  They’re like termites, gnawing away at the Constitution.

Here are a few of 2017’s lowlights.  Two years ago, not even the most pessimistic (or drunk) political commentator would have predicted that:

1.      A major party candidate would conspire with Russia to steal the presidency;

2.      The Republican Party would go completely rogue, abandoning everything they’ve claimed to stand for in the past fifty years (fiscal responsibility, family values, and virtually every other conservative principle);

3.      Police in major American cities would murder Black men with impunity, and get away with it, despite unambiguous video evidence of their crimes;

4.      Nazis and Klansmen would rally openly in American cities, and the president would say that some of them were fine people;

5.      The new president’s closest advisors would be criminals and foreign agents, and all of them would turn out to be bumbling morons;

6.      Republican congressional majorities would choose not to investigate malfeasance in the Executive Branch crimes, and would instead actively work to hamper those investigations;

7.      The president, with the acquiescence of those same Republican congressional majorities, would threaten members of the press, his political opponents, and even branches of the government he’s ostensibly in charge of;

8.      And most importantly, that the president would consistently and relentlessly tells obvious, demonstrable lies in order to persuade his hardcore supporters to believe him rather than the evidence of their own eyes and ears.  And that 30% of the electorate would drink the Kool Aid.

Despite all that, 2017 wasn’t a total loss.  There were also surprising events on the positive side of the ledger. 

1.      Women who were outraged that the Electoral College, an 18th century institution designed to give slave states a bit of an edge in electing presidents, awarded the presidency to a misogynist who got 3 million fewer votes than a highly qualified woman, organized The Resistance.  They rallied the day after Trump’s inauguration and drew larger crowds than he did.  In doing so, they exposed his vanity and insecurity, and punctured his aura of inevitability.

2.      Republicans – the entirety of the leadership, and virtually all of the congressional rank and file – were exposed as frauds.  They lied about having a plan to replace Obamacare.  Their ranks were split between those who were merely venal and those who were outright nihilists.  Collectively, they proved incapable of governing, despite having control of the Executive and Legislative branches of government.

3.      Congressional Democrats, on the other hand, remained unified all year long, and were able to throw sand in the gears of some Republican initiatives.

4.      After a slow start in special elections, Democrats swamped Republicans in all of the important November off year elections.  That’s real evidence that voters are turning on Trump Republicans.

5.      Robert Mueller, long may he wave, has quietly and methodically put the squeeze on Donald Trump, and Trump is clearly frightened.  Trump’s options are limited – pardon his cronies and himself, and/or find a way to fire Mueller – but if he does either, it will likely further erode his base of support.  If Trump believes he can outsmart Mueller, he’s in for a surprise.  I’m confident that Mueller has developed backup plans to counter Trump’s potential moves.  History will convict Trump, even if contemporary Republicans won’t.

6.      And finally, there’s the #MeToo movement.  Women who’ve been ignored or mocked for years are refusing to be shushed, and they’re taking down powerful men in entertainment, the press, and finally in politics.  Democrats have gotten rid of their bad apples, even as Republicans have responded by embracing a child molester in Alabama.  This will not end well for Republicans.  Word on the street is that the Washington Post is preparing to publish a massive expose, identifying 20-30 Congressmen (from both parties) as sexual predators.  I’ll bet that number is low.  Once the Post story comes out, my guess is that many more women will come forward.  In the process, there will be renewed attention on the sexual predator in the White House. 

Remarkably, I find that I’ve circled back to optimism despite all the damage that Trump and his minions have done.  At the end of the yearlong Battle of Britain, when it was clear that Germany’s relentless air attacks had failed to bomb England into submission, Winston Churchill had a message for Adolf Hitler: “We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst and we will do our best." 

If Donald Trump thinks that 2017 was a rough year, he’s really going to hate 2018.