The End Of [Our] History
The sudden blitz to demolish the East Wing of the White House will forever be an open wound on the American soul.
Anyone who regularly writes knows that it is hard work. Some days, even weeks, you lose your “voice,” a malady that I’ve been dealing with for the past few weeks. Every time I began to write something, I couldn’t complete it. I couldn’t find my way past an introduction or an idea, and I’d give up and walk away.
When it comes to the spraytanned sleazebag in the White House, though, eventually there’s going to be something that helps me rediscover my voice.
It’s not just that I’m angry. I think most people watching this happen are angry. The man of a million broken promises said he wouldn’t touch the current White House at all with his plans to further turn it into Mar-A-Lago North. Then he said a few days ago it would just be the lobby that would be replaced. Now, today, suddenly they have to tear down a structure that was commissioned at America’s 125th birthday and finished two years later. Not renovate, not modify, destroy. It’s an apt metaphor for what this wannabe dictator, El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago (to borrow the name coined by Esquire’s Charles Pierce), is doing to our country.
It also runs a lot deeper than what one would think at first glance.
It’s not just that Donald Trump is destroying America’s stature in the world, its economic strength, its respect, or its reliability. What he’s doing, what he’s inflicted upon this nation since he descended his gold escalator a decade ago, is a deep wound upon our soul. There are many days that I’ve openly said I hate this nation and everything we’ve become, an emotion that springs up from me because I grew up as a child of Reagan’s America, which on its face was about freedom and democracy and welcoming immigrants to this country. I believed, the same way I believed deeply in the Catholic Church as a child, and as a young adult my faith in this country and in that church was forever broken by its deep betrayal of everything I’d been taught as a child.
At least the Church has tried to redeem itself in the last decade.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, has reveled in what he’s been able to accomplish. His poisoned brain coming up with poisonous words to enfeeble the people of America. He has successfully convinced a substantial minority of this country (do not be confused, dear reader, by the difference in winning a majority of those who voted with a majority of everyone) to go along with his every action, to support him even when he’s harming their livelihoods and their families.
From the idiotic ramblings during press conferences when thousands died each day from a pandemic to turning the White House into his convention stage (illegal) to leading a failed insurrection against the legitimate government (very illegal) to stealing classified nuclear weapons documents (so illegal that most people disappear down a black hole for that), to constantly questioning any result where he does not get his way, the man has slashed at the remaining bonds we still had as Americans. He’s turned the presidency into a personal piggy bank, and his base shrugs. The billionaires and oil sheikhs are openly bribing him and they clap for him. He’s now demanding that the government which he leads as head of state pay him $230,000,000 for the “crime” of prosecuting him for the many criminal acts he committed. There is nothing now that is not politicized and divided, and the media has largely given up trying to tell the truth, relying instead of a formula of “everything is the same” when it clearly is not.
Now, with our collective national bonds in tatters, one of the few things remaining that we all believed in, the White House, the People’s House, is being mangled by the manchild who wants to be king. He is destroying property that he does not own, that he did not get permission to change, during a government shutdown in which welfare benefits, Social Security checks, and so many other vital government services are closed. He has shown no interest in reopening the government, preferring, as all wannabe kings do, to rule by fiat. The Congress, and especially the House, refuse to rein him in when a thousandth of a percent of this behavior from Joe Biden or Barack Obama would’ve led to an impeachment vote within hours. Speaker Mike Johnson, a true freak, speaks of how busy he is when all he’s done is go on TV and lie about literally everything. He refuses to bring Congress back into session, which thanks to the Constitution, only he can do. All the parts of that document that his Dear Leader is dumping on, though, Johnson can’t be bothered to pay attention to or comment on.
Republicans, who control every branch of government, who have perverted the country in ways I never thought possible, are bleating that Democrats, who hold no power, are responsible for this shutdown. Very few people are buying it, because math is still math (somehow), and everyone knows what the math is on this. They refuse to hold the mad king to account, are heaping blame on those who can do very little, and continue to give away their constitutional power so they can have a gold star from the gold-obsessed goblin serving as President.
Over seven million people protested on Saturday, the largest since the height of the Vietnam War movement in 1970, and it still has failed to penetrate the thinking of these charlatans cosplaying as Christians that we do not want a king. We, the people of America, do not want the White House to be a gaudy palace (Trump’s “makeover” of the Oval Office with gold leaf everywhere is vomit-inducing) with our history demolished so a wannabe king can have his wannabe Versailles ballroom. America was founded on the principle, above all, that we shall not have a monarch. This week’s actions show the necessity of fighting ever harder against MAGA’s hostile crowning of King Trump before America’s 250th birthday next summer.
We need every voice. Please keep on finding yours.