Justice in America?

 How screwed up is America? A baby faced punk kid who should have been miles away home playing video games instead plays out his violent fantasies with a real AR-15 semi-automatic rifle on real flesh and blood people, killing two of them. Penalty? An "atta boy" from U.S. justice. 

Bush's Words Fall Flat on 20th Anniversary of September 11

Ironic. Insulting. And unsettling to see former President George W. Bush rewrite history as the good guy today in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 — calling out "violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home" for their "disregard for human life."

It’s unsettling of course because we know that after his administration failed to read the myriad, alarming warning signs leading up to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 that killed nearly 3,000 Americans, Bush exploited the unity Americans felt in the wake of the attacks, to fearmonger a lie about weapons of mass destruction and ties to Osama Bin Laden — so the citizenry would swing along with the unprovoked invasion of a Iraq.

An invasion that killed hundreds of thousands of humans and spawned the scourge of ISIS - "violent extremists" that  plague the world today - in unstable regions like Afghanistan, where Bush’s other disastrous and costly war just ended, after 20 long years, leaving tens of thousands of innocents dead, several trillion of dollars spent — and a vacuum for an emboldened enemy to fill.

Bush, who has been out of the limelight for 12 years, on Saturday briefly sounded like that same disingenuous alarmist who gave the fear-mongering State of The Union “axis of evil” speech in January 2002 —  that was the impetus to ensuring America, indeed, would have a blood-thirsty foe to fight abroad for decades to come.

The disastrous eight years under Bush created a lasting sense of desperation -- namely after initiating endless wars and insitigating the 2008 "Great Recession," which bankrupted millions of lives. 

Arguably, that lingering desperation was instrumental in laying the groundwork for the eventual precipitous rise to power of a phony, populous demagogue like Donald Trump.

And, of course, Trump was the culprit who emboldened those same “violent extremists at home” — namely the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrectionists — of which Bush was clearly referencing on Saturday.

So, when the guy who was clearly instrumental in ensuring the manifestation of an “evil” enemy “abroad” — and at “home” attempts to strike a protective, foreboding tone about those same visceral threats, his words fall resoundingly flat.

It's crucial to connect these dots if we earnestly going to learn our lesson from the mistakes of our recent past. And not get fooled again.

Animal Farm in America?

They may be standing on their hind legs and dressed up as humans. But Republicans’ masks have slipped to their chins – and their snouts are showing.

Conservative leaders across these un-United States, in state and federal positions of power, are the pigs of George Orwell's Animal Farm, hypocritically declaring: “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

No “Big Lie” is too ludicrous. No obstruction of justice is out of bounds. No alarmist incite is too inflammatory. And so, no low is too far to go.

It’s never been more acutely clear that the “Party of Trump” considers itself “more equal” than the rest of us – particularly in the wake of Thursday’s Republican-majority U.S. Supreme Court decision endorsing Arizona’s suppression of the minority vote; by virtue of congressional Republicans’ persistent opposition to desperately needed stimulus and voter protections; through the GOP’s obstruction of a bi-partisan probe into the deadly Jan. 6, Capitol coup attempt that nearly ended the Republic; and in the face of Republicans’ exhaustive sycophancy towards a twice-impeached, electorally defeated and disgraced former president facing indictment any day now.

Like the pigs in Animal Farm, Trump and his gluttonous Republican abettors have been playing the American people for a bunch of dim-witted barnyard animals for so long – trashing truths, twisting reality and. trampling justice – that, like Farm’s animals, much of the citizenry appears too bamboozled and numb to give a damn.

But this Independence Day 2021 –perhaps more than any prior Fourth of July celebration in this nation, since our forefathers first declared independence from the oppressive British motherland exactly 245 years ago – we should sincerely pause to treasure and reflect on the bloody hardships colonists endured to gain our treasured freedom from tyranny.

And we should embrace with a renewed fervency the frequently quoted but often-ignored preamble to the 1776 Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Let’s face it, the Republican Party, beholden to the grotesquely rich and powerful, has constituted an authoritarian movement most notably since the turn of the 21st Century.

For years, Republicans have been chomping at the bit to carve up the people’s Medicare and Medicaid and privatize social security so some fat cats can turn a profit.

Only now, after five years under the disingenuous tutelage of their unscrupulous “leader” Donald Trump, is it so abundantly obvious that the alleged “pro-life” party doesn’t give a rat’s rear about “the people.”

George Orwell’s 1945 Animal Farm primarily was a dystopian fable parodying early 20th Century Soviet Communism’s ruthlessness that cost millions of lives.

But Orwell himself indicated that his simplistic foreboding fairytale held “a wider application” about “power-hungry people.”

Oppression is oppression. Greed and abuse of power produce essentially the same result whatever the misanthropic ideology – Communism or Fascism or some other demagogic hybrid  “ism” to which Trump and his plutocratic pigs aspire.

“I meant the moral to be that revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert..” Orwell writes Politics magazine founder Dwight Macdonald in a 1946 letter.

Much of the citizenry who sought a revolutionary change of sorts by casting their lots with a self-promoted populous “outsider” in 2016, weren't so much “alert” as they were desperate.

And certainly, in the devastating aftermath of Donald J. Trump’s hellish, incite-riddled, death-plagued four-year reign, a newly woke citizenry made their druthers clear this past Nov. 3 presidential election –– by casting 8 million more votes for Joe Biden than Trump.

But still, that hasn’t stopped Trump and his loyalists from trying to steal the Republic from us. We must maintain the vigilance of which Orwell speaks.

Pigs Hoarded Milk and Apples; Repubs, Tax Cuts For Rich

Just as Farm‘s pigs reason early on that they need all of the farm’s “milk and apples” to make smart decisions for the rest of the animals, Trump and his complicit Republican chums insisted at the outset of his presidency in 2017, that billionaires’ tax breaks are the key to economic revival for all.

Never mind that Reaganomics trickled down – and out, decades ago. Never mind that corporate profits continue to soar, while workers’ wages stagnate.

Let's not forget that the corporate elite reaped billions of dollars from the Trump-facilitated lethal Covid-19 pandemic that wiped out more than 600,000 American lives while crippling the livelihoods of millions.

Now, predictably, after granting hefty tax cuts for the wealthy and adding nearly $8 trillion to the national debt, Republican leaders like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy suddenly are obsessed with the deficit as they parrot alarmist, right wing think tank talking points warning of Democrats’ march toward “Socialism” or “Communism.”

“The turning-point of the story was supposed to be when the pigs kept the milk and apples for themselves,” Orwell writes in the 1946 letter to Macdonald, published in George Orwell: A Life In Letters, 2013.

“If the other animals had had the sense to put their foot down then,” Orwell continues, “it would have been all right.”

Which begs the question: Is it too late for Americans, as a united whole to finally put heir foot down?

Like the pigs in Animal Farm, today's Republican leadership on Capitol Hill can’t be bothered by facts or justice, but only in contorting reality to conform with their unrelenting lust for absolute autocratic control.

“Napoleon is Always Right”

Trump, of course, is Farm’s ruthless ruling pig, Napoleon, a Berkshire boar who, Orwell writes, has a knack for “getting his own way.”

Napoleon counted on his propagandist pig, Squealer, who “could turn black into white” to brainwash the farm animals with lies about their tyrannical leader’s supposed benevolence.

Even Clover the mare, who notices the changes the pigs sneakily make to Animalism’s “Seven Commandments”, eventually is lulled into a sense of complacency, convincing herself that she must have “remembered it wrong.”

If Washington D.C’s plutocratic pigs had their druthers, Americans will be so dumbed down by the former con-in-chief’s exhaustive hyperbolic lies and incessant grating vitriol, that we'll have about as much say in our Republic’s affairs as Animal Farm‘s befuddled barnyard animals had on the farm under the pigs.

Like Farm’s animals who were deprived of adequate food as they worked harder for less, millions of Americans remain food insecure as they work jobs at slave labor pay.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, some 140 million Americans were living at the cusp of, or in, poverty, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In Farm, the beloved, but dull minded carthorse Boxer declares, “I will work harder” and routinely motivates himself by extolling the pigs’ most controlling lie of all: “Napoleon is always right.”

Despite the animals’ increasingly desperate circumstances on the farm, Squealer’s barrage of untruths ultimately convince the lowly, overworked animals that “things were getting better.”

Yet, at the first sign of feebleness, Boxer, the farm’s hardest worker — instrumental in the farm’s success from which the pigs alone capitalized — is hauled off to the slaughterhouse.

Of course, to advance his assault on truth and civility from the start of his presidency, Trump employed his own tag team versions of Squealer – in imaginative mouthpieces Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Sanders, former White House press secretary, seemed eternally lost in an alternate reality where if President Trump “says it, it must be true” – just as Farm’s animals were programmed to parrot of Napoleon, no matter how absurd the lie.

According to Sanders: Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia probe was a “hoax,” the President wanted to protect pre-existing conditions after all, and, despite her boss’ constant maligning of the media as the “enemy of the people,” Trump actually favored a free press.

And we Americans, like Farm‘s flock of mindless sheep taught by Squealer the pig to obediently bleat “Four legs good, two legs better,” were supposed to believe it all.

In May, a Reuters poll found that a mystifying 56% of Republicans in the country fell for Trump’s big lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, and that Joe Biden is an illegitimate President.

Sadly, that alarming statistic lends credence to the old adage that the more a people are lied to, the more likely they are to believe the lie.

The late famed American writer Gore Vidal said: “We live in the United States of amnesia. We don’t learn anything because we don’t remember anything.”

Perhaps, that explains how folks will believe the biggest lie of all from a guy who told some 30,000 lies during his caustic presidency. They just don’t remember, conveniently or not.

Surely then, the flummoxed masses wouldn’t be familiar with legendary CBS TV broadcaster Edward R. Murrow’s instructive to viewers that we must “remember that accusation is not evidence and hearsay is not proof,” in the midst of his exposing Communist Red Scare ringleader Senator Joseph McCarthy.

“Some are More Equal Than Others”

In Farm, the pigs methodically mangled Animalism’s “Seven Commandments” under the cover of a barrage of lies, dulling the senses of their fellow barnyard animal “comrades” until they settled for one contrived declaration:

“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

We should realize from history and plain Common Sense, (a nod to Thomas Paine’s rallying cry book credited for uniting American colonist revolutionaries to stand up to the British imperialists) that a entity which constantly accuses the opposition of a socialist agenda, while itself is breaking from all democratic norms of a Republic – such as facts, justice and decency – is guilty of bolstering it’s own autocratic ambitions.

“What I was trying to say was,” Orwell continues in the McDonald letter, “‘You can’t have a revolution unless you make it for yourself; there is no such thing as a benevolent dictatorship.’”

Trump may have legitimately lost the election and been banned from Twitter and Facebook. But, his dictator dreams, encouraged his fellow privileged porkers, are alive and well and pose as severe a threat to the Republic as ever.

As Trump desperately resurrects his campaign-style rallies, resuming his mission to insult and connive his way across the American landscape, leaving a destructive path of Reality TV rubble for us to clean up, he’s promoting a seditious fantasy that he will retake the White House come August.

In the meantime, hate crimes have steadily spiked annually since Trump’s disparaging mug first invaded our living rooms nightly five years ago.

Mass shootings up ticked the first quarter of 2021. And white Nationalists were emboldened to the point of attempting to overthrow the government. 

Presently, Republicans in 43 states are peddling legislation designed to  suppress the minority vote.

Let’s set the record straight. Again. Once Trump laughed off the Covid-19 virus for at least a crucial lost six weeks while it was already incubating death in the homeland – declaring “everything is under control,” that it would magically “disappear” and labeling it a Democratic “hoax” – the contagion in America became the Trump Virus.

And through it all – the deception, the seditious cover and the tragic death – Republican head hogs offer nary a snort or squeal of objection.

The same folks who stumbled out of their way to defend Trump’s unrepentant childish outbursts and destructive autocratic impulses for years – the McConnell, McCarthy, Lyndsey Graham, Jim Jordon, Matt Gaetz, Ted Cruz and the like – still embrace Trump as their daddy.

After the Jan. 6, Capitol riot, McCarthy flew down to Trump’s Mar-A-Lago, the site of past Republican party gatherings, to once again kiss up to the most disastrous President in American history.

In an opinion that ran in The Hill shortly before the presidential election in the fall of 2016, I first warned that Donald Trump was “America’s most dangerous home-grown terrorist.”

He’s proved that out ever since.

Obstruction — A Majority Party Privilege?

As if obstructing justice were just another majority party privilege, Senate minority leader McConnell wrangled 35 senators to nix a bi-partisan commission to investigate the machinations behind the Trump-instigated Jan. 6, attempted coup.

McConnell played the same cover-up role when he refused to consider a bi-partisan vote to protect special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia's meddling in the 2016 elections. Similarly, he led the Senate to acquit Trump on two separate impeachments.

For more than a decade, McConnell has run cover for Republican’s suspect agenda –even when it meant stonewalling President Barack Obama's attempts to aid the people during America’s other desperate time amid the ruin of the 2008 Great Recession.

Meanwhile, in America, amid the abject swirl of controversy befitting a crime boss encompassing Trump, the autocratic programming advocated daily by Trump apologist “news” outlets like Fox, even now has so many citizens convinced that if Trump “said it, it must be true.”

Who is the real “enemy of the people”?

The Trump movement smacks of the authoritarianism abuses Orwell called out incessantly in his lifetime and creatively alerts us to with Animal Farm and his later novel, 1984.

Which is Which?

In Farm’s last pages, the pigs have rewritten Animalism’s “Seven Commandments” to suit them, embracing the ways of the animals’ sworn enemy humans.

“Comrade Napoleon” and his fellow privileged porkers have moved into overthrown (Manor Farm) owner Mr. Jones’ farm house, are dressed in his clothes and are walking upright on their two hind legs.

By then, the incoherent sheep under the absolute sway of Napoleon’s propagandist pig Squealer, no longer are sounding off on command: “Four legs good, two legs bad,” but rather, “Four legs good, two legs better.”

Animal Farm leaves us with the animals peering through the farm house dining room window as the pigs inside schmooze and toast mugs of beer with neighboring farmer, Mr. Pilkington and his associates.

The pigs and humans end up squabbling over a card game in which Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington each play an ace of spades.

Who is cheating?

In the novella’s last line, the baffled animals at the window look from face to face, from the humans to the pigs, but: “It was impossible to say which was which.”

Anymore, it’s becoming more difficult to distinguish “which is which” from Trump’s privileged porkers from say, a hostile nation or the likes of Trump’s “comrade” Russian President Vladimir Putin,  who has strived incessantly through social media manipulation, likely cyber attacks and myriad means to compromise America’s democratic foundation.

A seditious tyrannical movement is still a foot. Someone said: “A coup attempt that goes unpunished is practice.”

Will we ever find out what Trump was doing for nearly four hours while the nation’s Capitol was under siege by the red hat lovers he provoked to attempt to assassinate Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi?

Why did Trump order his newly  install puppet Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller to barr the national guard from intervening in the insurrection where Capitol police were brutalized for hours?

Today, this July 4th, as we reclaim  our a sense or normalcy from the chaos inflicted on us by the Trump Virus, and gather to gaze in wonder at fantastic fireworks shows, we best remember what this favorite festive summer holiday is all about.

We should reflect on how close we came to losing our celebrated liberties just six months ago.

And we should heed Orwell’s reflections on the early passage in Animal Farm when the power-hungry, ruling pigs confiscated all the milk and apples for themselves:

“If the other animals had had the sense to put their foot down then it would have been all right.”

We need to finally, forcefully put our foot down. 

Whether we remain a Republic or not, won’t depend on the Democrats who have their hands full on Capitol Hill. And we know now we can’t rely on a right wing packed U.S. Supreme Court.

Our future as “the land of the free and home of the brave” hinges on whether “we the people” finally put our foot down and start  demanding, loud and clear, our fair share of the milk and apples.

Jonah and The Whale All Over Again

This whale of a tale lends credibility to the biblical tale of Jonah and the Whale.

A lobster diver finds himself inside the mouth of a whale for half a minute -- until the whale spits him out like the whale in the Old Testament did to Jonah.

Interestingly, the story also features the biblical name, Josiah - the favored godly king of Judah who restored God's law several hundred years before Jesus Christ.

God speaks?

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/06/11/us/cape-cod-diver-eaten-by-whale/index.html

Authoritarianism Rising

The former "moral majority party" doesn’t give a rat’s back end about the people, just power.

When a political party incessantly fear-mongers “communism” and “socialism” to the masses, while breaking from all democratic norms of a Republic – by suppressing the vote, truth, decency and reality – then authoritarianism already has one clumsy foot in the door.

If no one ever said that before, someone should have.

Five years ago, I concluded an opinion that appeared in the local weekly newspaper, The Herald, with these words:

“Rock bottom line: Obsessive greed and the relentless pursuit of absolute power, is the mad scientist that inadvertently electrified and enlivened this amalgamation of our lesser selves, (Donald) Trump, to run amok, deceive, disparage and ultimately destroy with impunity.”

At this unsettling point five years hence – after so much deception-generated upheaval, degradation and tragic death in these un-United States – what more really is there to say?

In 2016, amid the ugly, unprecedented precipitous rise of an unrepentant demagogue to power, many of us Americans sensed gratingly and forebodingly in our spirit the absurdity and imminent danger of handing the Oval office keys to a man demonstrably bereft of any sense of decency and devoid of any hint of compassion, for even one month, let alone four years.

The writing in bold-faced, capital letters was on the wall.

But the long disenfranchised were blinded by their desperation for a savior. Many of my fellow white Christian evangelicals who have worshipped the Republican Party as an idol for decades, since the days of the alleged the “Morale Majority Party” led by political opportunist Jerry Falwell, were hoodwinked again.

“Donald Trump is what happens, he’s the result, the divine justice administered, in the wake of so much criminal negligence and inexcusable abandonment of the people in their most desperate times of need,” I wrote in that same Herald opinion five years ago.

Decades of tireless hypocritical policy and lies masking our society’s engrained economic disparities and racial inequities which oppressed the “least of these” for so long, finally manifest into the glaringly obvious – Donald Trump.

And now, the destroyer has destroyed. And continues to destroy. And he’ll keep on destroying as long as his sycophantic abetters, in high office and across the American lowlands, give him license.

For the sake of salvaging the Republic, let's drop this “bothsidesing" talk, as if each of the two present day political parties had an equally legitimate argument or agenda. They don’t.

One party is eviscerating truth daily, working feverishly to suppress the minority vote, muddling our nation’s racist history, opposing desperately needed jobs/infrastructure stimulus and obstructing a probe into the machinations behind the Jan. 6, deadly Capitol coup attempt that shook this nation to its core.

The other party is defending the truth, trying to protect the vote, coming to terms with the nation’s systemic racism, striving to pass legislation that fires up the economy and rebuilds America and urgently is seeking answers to how our Republic was nearly overthrown by a bunch of Trump-loving insurrectionists six month ago.

Through all the chaos and pain that Donald Trump exacerbated -- the Covid-19 pandemic that killed nearly 600,000 Americans, the racial unrest sparked by George Floyd's murder, escalation in hate crimes and mass shootings -- it's as if an almighty Creator has been shining a giant LED spotlight on this nation's vast inequities so that we might finally start acting right.

But, still, way too few of us are picking up what God's been putting down.

George Floyd Indeed "Touched The World"

"Jesus Christ, who preached love, truth and forgiveness was crucified on a crude cross, to save man, according to God's plan. God's righteousness demanded such a price.

"George Floyd, who once told a friend 'I want to touch the world' and who mostly spread love and joy during his 46 years on earth, was also killed by hate, it seems, to save the rest of us."

I wrote that on my blog last summer. 

I was reminded of it when ex-cop Derek Chauvin's trial began Holy Week. The irony or perhaps the ordained timing wasn't lost on me -- with images of Floyd's death fresh in our minds come Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified for our sins.

It served as a reminder that perhaps Floyd's murder in broad daylight by a cop seemingly intent to crush the life out of Floyd for more than nine minutes, in essence, was a crucifixion capturing the world's attention.

Floyd's death was a cruel lynching that served to wake us all up, perhaps white Evangelical Christians as much as anyone -- and ultimately save us from our sins.

For decades many white Evangelicals have sat quietly, idily by, embracing an indifferent rightwing agenda, while our society and Republican leaders have effectively abandoned Jesus Christ's command to "love your neighbor as yourself" -- often when that neighbor's skin is a much darker shade than theirs.

So, 12 racially mixed jurors have handed down their verdict. Guilty on all three counts. 

It won't bring George Floyd back. 

But perhaps it will serve, in time, as a vital impetus to wake up those same Christians who too often resemble the hypocritical Pharasees of Jesus Christ's day. 

George Floyd's life -- and death -- indeed mattered more than we may comprehend. 

George Floyd's desire to "touch the world" was, like Christ's, painfully but powerfully fulfilled. 

A Pivotal Point

So much hinges on the trial of George Floyd's killer.

We live at a time where deceivers in the highest offices of the land increasingly insist that we Americans can't trust what we see.

That's an undeniable part of Donald Trump's destructive legacy, through his relentless lies (some 30,000) over four years.

Truth has become a mere inconvenience to so many of Trump's fellow Republican sycophants still insisting their cult leader had no culpability in the Jan. 6, Capitol Hill coup attempt that was clearly orchestrated by Trump and left several Americans dead.

But, that all will be tested as final arguements are heard today and the case is handed off to the jury. 

If former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin, who crushed the life out of Floyd by kneeling on his neck and back for some nine minutes last May, were to get his freedom, all Americans could soon lose ours -- amid the resulting chaos.

A guilty decision lays the groundwork for change. But it will still be a rocky road to healing and enduring justice.

The #TrumpVirus

Let's set the record straight. 

Clearly, once then President Donald Trump ignored, downplayed and mocked Democrats' mounting concern of the Covid-19 for some six weeks, calling it a "hoax," while death incubated in America, the lethal contagion in the United States -- which now has killed nearly 550,000 citizens -- mutated undeniably, irrevocably into the #TrumpVirus.

Period. Trump, emboldened by his political lackie co-conspirators facilitated this death march across the homeland.

Not China. Not WHO. Not Dr. Fauci. And not the Democrats. Once the "invisible enemy," as Trump initially liked to label it even though he saw it coming, encroached on American shores and Trump knew it, but decided to blow it off, it became The Donald's baby.

He was the guy allegedly in charge. 

The CNN special report "COVID WAR – The Pandemic Doctors Speak Out," which points out Trump's glaring failures after the initial March 2020 shutdown, in my view, doesn't spend enough time focusing on the deceiver-in-chief's inexcusable failures to act early on. 

The special gives only passing reference to Trump's arguably criminal negligence from late January to mid March 2020 -- while Trump, admittedly aware of the death toll looming -- golfed at his own properties on the taxpayer's dime, obsessively promoted stock market numbers, held " Keep America Great" rallies and sought vengeance against patriots who testified to his malfeasance in his first impeachment.

That set the tone and explains Trump's half-hearted effort to ever truly attack the virus that would wipe out half a million Americans.

The special effectively gives Trump a pass on the first 100,000 deaths from Covid -19 in this country and questions his role in the other 400,000 lives lost. But the virus wouldn't have taken anywhere near such a tragic death toll if Trump had acted like he gave a damn from the onset of the Coronavirus threat.

Trump's lies, incites and indifference are still festering into bombastic rhetoric. Just yesterday, Trump's former trade adviser, Peter Navarro blamed Dr. Anthony Fauci for the coronavirus. This is sick, twisted trashing of the truth needs to be called out forcefully.

Enough of the Trump-facilitated shirking of blame and baseless lies which has left half a million Americans dead, led to the Capitol Coup attempt and has fed a surge in Asain hate crimes and violent deaths.

Trump did this. If you can't see that, you need to stop watching brainwashing Fox News and their twisted political agenda -- borne out of Rupert Murdoch's supermarket tabloid agenda to deceive the masses heartening back decades. 

We need to admit the truth, mourn, repent and move on. But never forget. Suppressing these dark, unsettling realities only prolongs and exacerbates the pain, virtually guarunteeing a vicious cycle of repeating the same foolish deadly mistakes on an even more catastrophic scale next time.

I Don't Get It

Go ahead. Call me a cupcake. Or a snowflake.

But I'm still trying to grasp how a two-bit con man swindles his way into the Oval Office, lies some 30,000 times in four years to Americans, facilitates the deaths of more than half a million Americans from a plague he helped spread and then in a desperate last ditch ploy to cling to dictatorial power, orchestrates a bloody, deadly coup attempt on the Capitol -- and a mystifying number of white Evangelical enablers still warmly embrace him as some kind of savior.

Equally mystifying is how a man expediting delivery of a urgently needed vaccine (the previous guy necessitated) and championing a rescue package to help suffering fellow Americans, is lambasted as doing the devil's work by those same supposedly God-fearing Christians.

Something's seriously broken. Far too few "eyes to see."

I'm supposed to be one of those Christians. But I'm not so sure anymore that we all actually worship the same God.

White Evangelicals have yet to twig onto the fact that God rose up Trump to expose and destroy the Pharasaichal hypocrisies that have beleaguered, infected the Christian faith ..harkening back decades with the political self-serving manipulations of conniving "Moral Majority" Christian leaders like Jerry Falwell in the 70s, 80s..

Trump's acquitted again. Then McConnell Speaks Up?

Must ask what business does Mitch McConnell have speaking in lofty platitudes about justice and morality as he condemns Trump's admittedly treasonous behavior?

Aside from voting against impeachment, based on a seemingly weak argument, McConnell condoned and fed the Trump monster's destructive impulses for four bloody, painful years.

Americans still deserve answers on President's most damning inaction for two unsettling hours while the Trump-instigated deadly Capitol riot raged on.

Cloud Liftin'

I feel a dark cloud liftin',

A gracious God giftin,'

A welcome second chance,

To take a righteous stance,

For truth and justice,

Let this always define us,

Out of love only, we shall fight,

Defending what we know

deep down, is right.

Impeach Him

If we Americans still stand for truth and justice under the rule of law as a democratic nation where the voters decide our future, then President Donald Trump needs a good crack on the knuckles.

Really, Trump needs to go -- not two weeks hence -- but now. 

A petulant, disobedient brat child will only get bolder and threaten to turn the household upside down, unless he's disciplined. 

More to the point, if a mentally unhinged President is allowed to constitently lie, accuse and stoke lethal violence which led to a coup-like assault on the Capitol, without severe consequences in Congress, all bets are off. 

The President, who just today vowed he'll "never concede" and incited a violent seditious riot at the Capitol, trashing everything "we the people" are supposed to uphold and costing a women her life -- must be impeached (or the 25th Amendment invoked) before he inflicts more pain, destruction and death.

This unprecedented present darkness carried out by fascist-inspired thugs at the Capitol Hill building is what happens after not only tolerating, but encouraging a "leader" with the constitution of a garden slug for more than four tumultuous, disingenuous, divisive, hateful, brazen years.

No one should be surprised at what happened today. So, how were Capitol Hill law enforcement not better prepared to deal with the insurrection that Trump has been fomenting for months?

For the Black Lives Matter protests at the Lincoln Memorial on the Capitol Hill grounds this past summer, police and national guard members were fully outfitted in protective military gear.

Since before the 2016 presidential elections, I warned that Trump is "America's most dangerous home-bred terrorist." 

He's only getting warmed up.

The writing long has been on the wall in bold, glaring, foreboding letters.Trump must answer for his criminal, treasonous actions before it's too late. We've been warned.

As President John F. Kennedy said amidst the civil unrest during the summer of 1963 on the very night Mississippi civil rights activist Medgar Evers was gunned down in his driveway by a racist coward.

"Those who do nothing are inviting shame as well as violence. Those who act boldly are recognizing right as well as reality."

What Else Did You Expect?

This unprecedented present darkness carried out by fascist-inspired thugs at the Capitol Hill building is what happens after not only tolerating, but encouraging a "leader" with the constitution, the moral compass of a garden slug for more than four tumultuous, disingenuous, divisive, hateful, brazen years.

Presidential Fraud

President Donald Trump's inner mob boss is upping his game -- shaking down state officials to steal an election, spitballing a possible coup and stoking violent citizen unrest, while threatening the stability of the American Republic like never before.

This dead horse has been beaten; but, again, this is the kind of stuff ruthless autocrats desperately pull to prolong their power to abuse.

Outside of obscuring his criminal facilitation of Covid-19's death march across America that has killed more than 350,000 Americans, Trump's "election fraud" claims, of course, are his next biggest and corrosive con job.

It's the same old story of Trump projecting his crimes on the other guy, or the other party, as a means to obfuscate his ceaseless, destructive malfeasance.

If anyone should be investigated for fraud in connection with November's presidential election results, it's Trump and his band of abetting congressional Republican loyalists who, on Wednesday, plan to object to Congress' certification of President-elect Joe Biden's victory.

Today's release of Trump's Saturday recorded phone conversation where the President pressures Georgia officials to "find 11,780 votes" in his favor, demonstrates again, unequivocally, that Trump is not only the genuine fraud, but a palpable threat to American democracy as he entertains any means -- a coup, perhaps -- to stay in power, while egging on his bamboozled base towards violent protests in Washington, DC. this Wednesday.

Even at this late date in Trump's presidency, with just weeks to go, Congress can't ignore the fact that Trump's attempt to strong-arm Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to swing the Peach state's vote the President's way, smacks of text book election tampering.

A censure or reprimand in the least is in order, but with such a partisan-divided Congress, unlikely.

In the meantime, a related question still begs -- why did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell repeatedly block, for months, the passing of Democrats' election-security bill, #TheSafeAct, designed to ensure a secure election?

Further, why are Trump and his loyalists doggedly attacking "Dominion" voting machines, which are no where near as controversial as the predominate Election Systems & Software, LLC (ES&S) voting machines employed throughout the nation this past November?

Could it be part of Trump's distracting long game ploy?

Consider: For years, ES&S voting machines were the subject of scrutiny for their vulnerabilities -- involving "bugs," remote access to the internet and disappeared votes. ES&S, the company, also has demonstrable ties to the Republican party.

Jennifer Cohn, attorney, researcher and writer, who has painstakingly documented ES&S's checkered past, describes ES&S as "America's largest and arguably most corrupt voting machine vendor."

This past September, a software "bug" was discovered in ES&S systems in Texas that in theory could have "enabled ES&S or others to install unauthorized software," writes Cohn.

Inexplicably, the Texas Secretary of State waited until December to post the September report about the bug and it remains unclear how, or if, the issue was ever resolved before the Nov. 8 election, reports Cohn.

As Cohn points out: "The GOP’s cherry picking (focusing on Dominion) is dangerous because it could give ES&S even more corrupt control over U.S. elections than it currently has."

After reading Cohn's exhaustively researched and documented report, one can't help speculate whether Trump's phony election fraud claims and unfounded attacks against Dominon were planned from the get-go, in the event he lost - to solidify an ES&S monopoly.

Or take it a step further. Did Trump actually believe the fix was in -- particularly in swing states which used ES&S voting machines -- but the American people, which turned out in record numbers, spoiled the steal?

It's a possibility crying out for consideration.

Trump's Attacks Serve Russia

It's as if President Donald Trump, through his ceaseless and groundless accusations of fraud, is serving as a Russian agent - fulfilling Russia's aim to sow doubt about our Democratic elections and dangerously distracting cyber surveillance security.

Again. It's the 5,000-pound, pink, polka-dotted elephant in our living rooms.

"The hack raises the possibility that Russian intelligence agencies saw an advantage in mounting the attack while American attention — including FireEye’s — was focused on securing the presidential election system."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/technology/fireeye-hacked-russians.html?smid=fb-share

Never Forget: Trump Did This

It remains beyond mystifying how such a significant chunk of America still rallies for a President who, as they say "lies like he breathes," enflames with each accusation he tweets and daily endorses pain, destruction and death.

America absolutely ain't what it's cracked itself up to be.

Until Trump bamboozled his way into the Oval Office, I never really considered how many self-absorbed, deluded, morally bereft and flat out foolish people I share this country with.

It truly, utterly, boggles the mind. How many of the lost existed prior to Trump's Fox News-fueled brainwashing is hard to say. But, it's definitely a cult phenomena, as the aimless who don't seem to know themselves or give a squat about the preciousness of life, have fallen prey to the Trump "cult of personality."

I always had a hard time imagining -- particularly with so much fair warning in Biblical scripture and those heavily commercialized "Left Behind" books and TV series of the 1990's -- how an anti-Christ could rise to power undetected and without getting the boot from a citizenry with the smarts to know a snakeoil salesman when they see one.

Since Trump's precipitous rise to power and popularity, I don't puzzle over that anymore.

Now, before anyone gets their "end times" up, I'm not saying Trump is the son of perdition. I'm simply pointing out that he has all the disingenuous character traits of an anti-Christ: arrogance, dishonesty, divisiveness, vengeance and, as I said earlier, a "personality of cult" that sucks in the gullible. 

As we anxiously await the results to be tallied in yesterday's runoff between Trump and challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, don't ever dare forget -- Trump did this!

We endure daily reminders of the fallout from the Trump deception -- of how he  cataclysmically, and yes, criminally, screwed up his job.

Facemasks. Caravans of pickup trucks flying "Trump" flags, threatening violence.  Business closures. Jobs lost. Evictions. Homelessness. Hate. Lies. Insults. Suffering. Infection. Sickness. Death.

Trump did all this.

The Trump-facilitated damage, heartache and challenges that Americans endure daily are incalcuable and far-reaching into every aspect of life.

We all deal with the frustration of wearing a mask daily as we enter a store or other closed quarters, sometimes forgetting them, sometimes misplacing them.

It's a small discipline to make in order to preserve life. But Trump did that. When your glasses steam up behind the mask as you try to make good time through the store, Trump did that, too.

More consequentially, when a man denied entrance at a convenience store for not wearing a mask, leaves in a fit, returns with a gun, shoots the security guard in the face, killing him -- Trump did that.

More than 8 million people in the United States have been infected with Covid-19, untold numbers suffering lasting debilitations. 

Trump did that.

Nearly, 230,000 people have stopped breathing and died from the virus.

Trump did that.

This country hasn't been so divided since the Civil War.

Trump did that.

Violent hate crimes have rose steadily each year in America since 2016.

Trump did that.

Millions have lost their jobs; many face the prospect of eviction or losing their homes.

Trump did that, too.

There's no need in rehashing Trump's dismissals, misleadings and lies about this past spring's pending pandemic that is soon to wipeout a quarter million lives as it resurges across this nation just in time for the holidays.

Just know -- and never forget -- Trump did this. And he must answer for it.

Where Are Evangelicals' 'Eyes to See'?

My fellow white Evangelical Christians like to talk about how President Donald Trump has been a "wake up call" these painful, past four years.

But way too few appear inclined to answer that call.

An overwhelming majority of white Evangelicals instrumental in Trump's winning the White House in 2016, still insist the President is their man in 2020, according to a Pew Research Center poll earlier this month.

Though the President's support slipped several points among white Evangelicals from a summertime poll, 83% to 78%, a solid majority remained in Trump's camp this fall.

How long will white Evangelical Christians advocate for the leader of the Free World who has all the character traits of an anti-Christ?

In Proverbs 6:16-19 it is written:

"These six things the Lord hates, Yes seven are an abomination to him: A proud look, a lying tongue, Hands that shed innocent blood, A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that are swift in running to evil, A false witness who speaks lies, And one who sows discord among brethren."

Now that Trump's gross indifference and negligence has facilitated the deaths of more than 230,000 people in America from Covid-19, the President arguably qualifies as guilty of each one of those abominations, including shedding “innocent blood.”

The facts are undeniable and well known. While the Coronavirus incubated death across the homeland, President Trump blew it off as inconsequential. He assured that the virus would just "go away," that it was "totally under control" and labeled it a Democratic "hoax.”

Instead of alerting the American citizenry to the lethality of a pending pandemic, which we know from Bob Woodward’s audio-taped conversations with Trump that the President was unequivocally aware, Trump intentionally misled and lied to Americans. No surprise there.

"Let no man deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience," the Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:6.

A few verses later, Paul warned: "And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.”

In allowing Trump to consistently and obviously bamboozle them, do not God’s “very elect" risk the same judgement of the "sons of disobedience"?

Further, how can Christians seriously expect to "win souls for Christ" while again endorsing the devil's advocate for another -- even more hellish -- four years in the Oval Office?

Instead of marshalling all the forces of government to prepare and compassionately warning the citizenry of Covid’s indiscriminate death march across the nation, Trump instead, served as a deadly conspiring agent of the disease by picking political fights, sowing discord, shirking blame, actually bragging about the “great” job his administration was doing while lying the whole time about testing, personal protective equipment and contact tracing.

While Americans became infected, their lungs slowly ravaged, Trump focused on touting the stock market numbers, golfing at his own properties on the taxpayer’s dime, holding “Keep America Great” campaign rallies and seeking vengeance against patriots who testified to the President’s malfeasance during his impeachment.

Consider: In Hebrew, “Satan” is translated as “liar” or “adversary.” And Jesus Christ described the Devil as the “father of lies.”

A recent study by a group of disaster preparedness experts found that between 130,000 and 210,00 lives could have been saved in America if President Trump had acted with more urgency in dealing with the virus.

But still, criminally, President Trump won’t take the deadly contagion seriously. Even now, as Covid-19 cases surge in many states across the country foreboding a dark winter, on the eve of a monumental presidential election – which the President (as any despotic leader would) suggests he won't acknowledge if he loses – Trump delusionally declares that we are “rounding the bend” in the fight against the Coronavirus and again insists “it will go away.”

In Matthew 10:16-17, Jesus instructed his Apostles to "be as wise as serpents, and harmless as doves" and to "beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves."

So, where's the wisdom among Evangelicals who should be calling out Trump's blatant carnival barker act?

In Proverbs 17:15, it is written:

"He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the just, both of them alike are an abomination to the LORD."

Trump and his abetting congressional Republican loyalists have become the ruthless ruling pigs in George Orwell's Animal Farm -- disingenuously declaring equality for all, while hoarding all the “milk and apples” (like tax breaks for the wealthiest) for themselves and treating the American people like a bunch of dim-witted barnyard animals.

Yet, a strong majority of white Evangelicals remain firmly rooted in Trump’s camp.

Trump is the 5,000-lb., pink-polka-dotted elephant sitting in the church pew, cracking wise, snacking on peanuts and tossing his peanut shells at the pastor while a complacent congregation sits silently by, pretending nothing's amiss.

Sure Jesus said “judge not lest, you be judged.” But he went on to say: “Judge with righteous judgement.”

Where is Evangelicals “righteous judgement” – their basic sense of right and wrong, of justice?

When will we all get the "eyes to see," -- as Isaiah and Jesus referenced -- the vast, long-engrained economic inequalities and racial disparities in our country -- which Republican policy has long exacerbated and which the Covid-19 pandemic and George Floyd's merciless killing excruciatingly has laid bare?

Jesus Christ, in Matthew, commanded his followers to look out for the "least of these" -- the hungry, the thirsty, the foreigner and the imprisoned, the oppressed. For when we do, we look out for Jesus, himself.

In the Gospels, Jesus instructed us that the “greatest gift” is love (or “charity.”) Where is the Christian love in Republican policy?

Christians have been bribed, in effect, to ignore the desperation in America that Republican policy has long fueled, based predominantly on the single issue of abortion.

While the Christian right champions itself as "pro-life," it ignores the plight of literally millions of children who go to bed hungry in this nation, or the tens of thousands of poor citizens, mostly of color, who die prematurely because they lack adequate healthcare, or the millions more who are without jobs and healthcare due to the fallout from the Coronavirus epidemic. And on it goes.

Even before the pandemic hit and racial tensions were stoked in the wake of Floyd's death, an estimated 140 million Americans were living in or near the cusp of poverty, according to The Southern Poverty Law Center, an American nonprofit legal advocacy organization.

Meanwhile, congressional hardliners from that same "pro-life" party rush through billions of dollars in tax cuts for the richest, while opposing universal healthcare, maternity care and the raising of the national minimum wage so that a single mother wouldn't have to work two or three jobs at slave labor.

In Isaiah 5:20, it is written:

"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."

For decades, Christians have lacked the “eyes to see” the hypocrisy of endorsing indifferent, cruel Conservative policy that exacerbates dire living conditions for tens of millions of Americans and arguably increases the instances of unplanned pregnancies and abortions.

Pro-lifers impulsively have long opposed easy, widespread access to contraception and frown on sex education – the former of which, studies have shown, is primarily responsible for the fortunate steady decline in the annual number of abortions in America since the 1990’s.

Additionally, once a woman is contending with the formidable life choice of raising a child, typical Republican “pro-life” policy historically has done little to ease that life choice, by vehemently opposing affordable healthcare and a decent living wage that a new mother desperately needs.

Over the decades, one of the consistent reasons women give for choosing to have an abortion is that they can’t afford to raise a child. 

In 2014, some 75% of abortion patients, the majority in their 20’s, were classified as poor (with an income below the federal poverty level of $15,730 for a family of two) or low income, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Yet, while states in recent years have raised their minimum wages, U.S. Congressional Republicans led by the likes of sheer political animal and present Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, steadily have opposed raising the national minimum wage from a pathetic $7.25 an hour.

In the meantime, the Trump administration is still chomping at the bit to carve up Medicaid and privatize social security, just as the Tea Party Republicans, led by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, pushed for earlier this decade while the country was still struggling to rebound from the George W. Bush-instigated Great Depression of 2008. 

The Trump administration presently has designs to cut food stamps from nearly 700,000 American at this year’s end.

Studies suggest that women will seek and have an abortion whether it’s legal or not. If Christian Republicans truly want to further diminish unwanted pregnancies that lead to abortion why don’t they back widely accessible contraception, sex education, as well as, abstaining from sexual relations?

Hypocritical congressional Republicans may proclaim themselves defenders of the unborn. 

But as soon as that precious life makes it through the birth canal, Conservative policy virtually dictates that it's on its own. Time to lift itself up by the booty straps and get a job.

Christians should show some Christian love and fight for universal healthcare as a right, for fully funded maternity care if they really want to lower the number of abortions. They should get behind a mandated $15/hr national minimum wage, to bolster that “family life” they purport to care so much about.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has orphaned some 545 immigrant children, separating them from their parents after they crossed the Mexican border.

Excusing, endorsing and re-electing Trump is the very last thing this nation needs if it's going survive, let alone thrive again.

Christians should finally heed the father of modern day Evangelicalism, Revered Billy Graham's words from a 1981 Parade Magazine article.

"I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form," said Graham in 1981. "It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it."

Four decades later, Evangelicals remain hoodwinked in a cult-like relationship with a manipulative, money-grubbing, power-hungry Republican Party.

And it's all come to a head under the leadership of a President with the moral compass of a garden snake. God's been calling, indeed. But far too few Evangelicals seem to be home.

(Kevin McKinney is a Christian and former daily newspaper journalist whose political essays have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Hill, Counter Punch and McClatchy Newspapers.)

* A shorter version of this essay appeared online in the Cape May County Herald last week: 

https://www.capemaycountyherald.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/article_b6f9a9d8-19f3-11eb-9399-6f4431ededbe.html

Recalling Trump's Boardwalk Hustle - Funhouse Floor, No More

(A version of this essay was published in the Cape May Star and Wave on Wed. Oct. 7, 2020)

The daddy of all boardwalk hustles on a surreal, cold night in the dead of winter in a boarded-up, barrier island, boardwalk town, beckons.

A carnival barker President takes center stage inside the 7,400-seat capacity Wildwood Convention Center this evening, Jan. 28, 2020, to an amusement-park roar from thousands of fevered fans.

Something’s amiss. Wildwood boardwalk’s famous, sequence-lighted, giant Ferris wheel – which on summer nights, lures thrill seekers from miles away – is ominously dark.

There's no rumble and "clickety, clickety, clack" of the Great White roller coaster, eliciting screams from daring riders. No mic-upped barkers beckoning from either side of “the boards.” 

And there’s no creepy, sideshow illusion of a giant snake with a man's head, attracting gawkers. (Yes, I’ve witnessed this.)

There is only the brash, inciting spectacle of impeached President Donald J. Trump.

And boy, does he draw a crowd.

  
The grand illusionist President and his traveling “Keep America Great” circus sideshow act, with a snap of Trump’s fingers, has turned the boardwalk convention center into one huge, jam-packed, mirrored funhouse.

In this masterful magical trick, the warped, contorting effect of the shifting funhouse mirrors flatteringly work in reverse – reflecting the unrepentant con man as a genuine Superman, fighting for truth, justice and the American way.

It’s smoke and mirrors on a twisted, Twitter-fueled, in-your-Facebook, insult-driven, black ops-level scale.

Yet, it's all so fitting.

Reality is always askew, deceptively grander, amidst the glitzy allure of Wildwood’s renowned two-mile long, sprawling boardwalk, where suckers drop big coin for long odds.

And at a rowdy Trump rally, truth and sensibility are just hostile bubble busters. Trump is his rabid believers’ ticket to shirk reality, sneer at justice, decry the righteous and disparage the less fortunate with impunity.

"While we are creating jobs and killing terrorists, congressional Democrats are obsessed with demented hoaxes, crazy witch hunts .." decried Trump to loud cheers. ""Which is worse? The impeachment hoax or the witch hunt from Russia?"

Watching it all up on the Jumbotron outside the boardwalk convention center with a few thousand uproarious Trump lovers, I’m reminded of the “World’s Greatest Showman” P.T. Barnum’s famous quote:

“The public appears disposed to be amused even when they are conscious of being deceived.”

Trump's raucous fans seem oblivious to the fact that the funhouse floor could drop out from under them at any time.

Death Incubates In The Homeland

Back to reality. 

While Trump deluded and distracted both himself, as well as his impressionable fans that night at the Jersey Shore, the Coronavirus had already invaded other American shores – and was incubating death.

More than a week earlier, the first case of Covid-19 infection was reported in Washington State. And studies now suggest that New York's 32,000 Covid-19 deaths can be traced to infected travelers arriving from Europe "as early as January."

It wasn't like Trump was in the dark.

Earlier that day of the Wildwood rally, Jan. 28, according Bob Woodward's book "Rage," Trump was briefed by his national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien on the looming threat of the virus.

"This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency," O'Brien told President Trump. “This is going to be the roughest thing you face.”

Also, at the meeting, Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, concurred with O'Brien. He told the President that "it was evident that the world faced a health emergency on par with the flu pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide."

On Jan. 23,  the World Health Organization had already confirmed that Covid-19 was a contagion that spread from “human to human."

The President also had been briefed by intelligence officials on the deadly virus originating from Wuhan, China, as early as the first week in January.

Trump was fully informed. He knew a disastrous lethal pandemic, threatening to afflict millions of Americans, was looming just over the horizon.

But the President had other priorities: touting the stock market numbers; playing golf at one of his properties on the taxpayer's dime; seeking vengeance against patriots who testified to Trump's malfeasance during his impeachment; and yes, holding campaign rallies.

President Trump wasn't going to allow such alarming reports about a plaque poised to wipe out untold numbers of American lives, sour that night's planned boardwalk hustle in Wildwood.

Newly minted U.S. congressional Republican turncoat Jeff Van Drew was counting on Trump's hucksterism to gin up support for his upcoming face off with his old party come November.

As Barnum, one of Trump's mentors would declare -- the show must go on. And as Bobby Rydell sang in his famous song of the summertime beach resort "Wildwood Days": "Every day's a holiday, and every night is a Saturday night." 

Apparently, even in the dead of winter.

To hell with reality. Let's just party, man. Of course, Trump failed to utter even a peep of precaution to the people about the Coronavirus encroaching chaos on their lives that night at the rally. 

Funhouse Floor Starts To Give

It wouldn’t be for another grueling six weeks of inexcusable denial on Trump’s behalf before he was forced to publicly recognize the virus menace in mid-March, and only then go through the motions of taking the virus seriously.

The funhouse floor was starting to give.

Even so, Trump has yet to take the Covid-19 virus seriously -- even as the virus has claimed more than 208,000 American lives.

The President called the virus a "hoax," claimed it was “totally under control” and suggested it will simply disappear come April – in essence, the way truth evaporates at one of his ugly, demagogic rallies.

By shirking blame, playing politics and stoking the racial divide, the President has served more as a complicit, facilitating, destructive agent of the Covid-19 virus, than anything remotely resembling a commander-in-chief.

Turns out, Trump's boardwalk hustle carnival act rally is the perfect metaphor for his entire presidency, which, for four chaotic years has lacked anything redeeming, genuine or good.

The Trump presidency literally has been one giant, caustic, distracting sideshow -- playing the citizenry for a bunch of thoughtless fools.

Featured Freak Running Sideshow

And now, the featured sideshow freak has escaped the red-and-yellow circus tent, hi-jacked the barker's box and is peddling discount tickets for a peep inside an empty tent.

And the suckers are still lining up. Trump's cult-like believers are still guzzling down the snakeoil. Will they ever snap out of it?

Nine months since Trump's wild Wildwood rally, the Covid-19 pandemic is on pace to have killed at least a quarter million Americans by the year's end. More than 7 million people -- including the President himself, his wife, White House staff and campaign officials, have been infected. 

And just as troubling, millions of Americans have lost their jobs and health insurance.

If Trump had acted just a couple weeks earlier, experts and common sense tell us,  instead of waiting until the middle of March to alert Americans of the immediate danger and implement nation-wide social distancing, the overwhelming majority of American lives lost to the Coronavirus, would have been saved. 

Trump did this. Again and again, he did this.

The repercussions from President Trump's disastrous and criminal failures to take the pandemic seriously, are seemingly endless and ever painful.

Whether Trump believers allow themselves to see it or not, the show is over. The funhouse floor has finally given way.

(Kevin McKinney is a freelance writer and former daily newspaper journalist, living at the Jersey Shore. He traveled with a small circus in the mid 90's and for a strange, few days filled in as a sideshow barker. His essays have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Hill, Counter Punch and McClatchy Newspapers.)

What "Pivot"?

What didn't sit so well with me in the just-released audio from Bob Woodward's new book "Rage", is how Woodward sounds more like a public relations man for the President, trying to coax the best PR storyline for public consumption.

Not to detract from the author's past exemplary investigative work, primarily during the Watergate scandal that exposed President Richard Nixon's foul play.

But, from the tape alone, Woodward sounds as if he's feeding into President Donald Trump mania, assuming Trump had a wake up call "pivot" in his realization of the Coronavirus' deadly potential.

We knew Trump knew. And the President never demonstrated any kind of "pivot" to take heroic action on behalf of the people. He was forced to finally warn the public after the stock market numbers dived.

Trump blew off the virus and he's still blowing it off because he's never taken his duties as President to the American people, seriously.

The President's admission to knowing the virus' lethality, but doing nothing to alert the citizenry, and even intentionally play it down, is damning and his actions are criminal. In a matter of months, Trump facilitated the deaths of nearly 200,000 human beings in America. He should be charged with manslaughter.

However, in a queer way, the interview gives Trump an opportunity to insert his alibi into the public record -- that he was simply thinking of the people all along. 

It leaves wiggle room for the likes of White House mouthpiece Kayleigh McEnany to contrivedly portray Trump as some kind of compassionate leader who "didn't want to panic" his constituents -- with the truth they urgently needed to hear.

When was the last time Trump ever tread gently on the hearts and minds of the American people? 

Instilling "panic" is Trump's lifeblood. Stirring uncertainty and civil unrest is the only thing the President does exceedingly well.

Fear-mongering about "the other" while encouraging white supremisct violence and snuggling up to dictators while subbing our allies is the President's forte.

Like all Trump Loyalist defenses, the propagandist proffering of compassion on Trump's part is absurd and isn't a defense at all.

Still, it's virtually guaranteed that pro-Trumpers of all walks will seize on this pathetic narrative that the President was simply looking out for the people's best interests.

Words matter. Those who haven't buried their heads in the sand, or hid behind a false God to excuse Trump's criminal behavior, know that the President's words can be as caustic as they are empty. And yes, Trump's words often are unsettlingly revealing.

But, they are distracting, too.

The President is sabotaging the vote. He's ignoring the desperate cries for racial and economic equality. He's squashing intelligence warnings of Russia's persistent efforts to manipulate the presidential elections -- again. 

And nearly 200,000 Americans are dead from the Covid-19 pandemic, the President simply blew off and lied to the American people about.

The President is exacerbating death, stoking extremism and threatening to destroy this nation. Regardless of what Trump uncredibly utters, he must answer to these and the rest of his crimes.

How Does A Citizenry Thrive With A President It Can't Trust?

So, I'm thinking that it's not so healthy for the American people or a democracy, if the citizenry must constantly wonder whether its President's words are serious, a joke or simply insane.

Anyone?

https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/06/23/trump-joking-slowing-coronavirus-testing-335459?__twitter_impression=true