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Charles Pierce:Nation is beginning to realize. . . what it has done
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a21775485/migrant-child-crisis-trump-presidency/Optimism may be illusory, but its all we have at this point, so, when it stirs, anywhere, its worthy of nurture and support. Over the past week, ever since the administration*s crimes against humanity along the southern border were revealed, there became an edge to the political opposition that has not been there through all the marches and the rhetoric that have attended this government since the president* was inaugurated. Up until now, all of the #Resistance has contained a barely acknowledged undercurrent of futility. It was not that the opposition was empty. It was that it generally broke like a wave on a seawall when it collided with the immutable fact that the president*s party controlled every lever of political power at the federal level, as well as a great number of them out in the states, too. The week just passed has changed the calculations. . .
. . .
You can feel the difference in the air. The members of the governing party, uneasy about the prospects for this years midterms anyway, are fairly trembling at the moment, seeing in their minds eyes a hundred 30-second spots of weeping toddlers behind chain-link walls. The president* has gone completely incoherent, standing firm until he doesnt, looking for help in the Congress that hell never get, and reversing himself so swiftly on his one signature issue that hes probably screwed himself up to the ankles in the floor of the Oval Office. By Friday afternoon, he was back on the electric Twitter machine, yapping about the Democrats and their phony stories of sadness and grief. And a hundred Republican candidates dive back behind the couch.
The countrys head is clearing. The countrys vision is coming back into focus and it can see for the first time the length and breadth of the damage it has done to itself. The country is hearing the voices that the cacophony of fear and anger had drowned out for almost three years. The spell, such as it was, and in most places, may be wearing off at last. The hallucinatory effect of a reality-show presidency* is dispersing like a foul, smoky mist over a muddy battlefield.
. . .
Thats the optimism, and it may, in fact, be illusory, but the power balance in our politics seemed to shift this week. Terrible policies are still coming from the various agencies. Scott Pruitt remains a grifter of nearly inhuman proportions, and a vandal besides. Neil Gorsuch continues to prove himself to be the reliable conservative hack for whom the Republicans stole a Supreme Court seat. But the crisis at the border is a leg-hold trap for all of them. Theres no way for them to keep faith with themselves and get out from under the humanitarian disaster they concocted. One day, maybe, brave Guatemalan mothers and their very brave children may be said to have saved the American Republic from slow-motion and giddy suicide. Some even may be our fellow citizens by then, and we should remember to thank them.
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Charles Pierce:Nation is beginning to realize. . . what it has done (Original Post)
MBS
Jun 2018
OP
Arkansas Granny
(31,518 posts)1. K & R
Uncle Joe
(58,366 posts)2. Kicked and recommended.
Thanks for the thread MBS