Moral Accomplices

Original post written by author David Gerrold. I take no credit.

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I was able to block over a dozen people instead of giving in to the temptation to ask them why if they are not racists, homophobes, or sexual predators they voted to put one in the White House.

You cannot claim you are not any of those things if you voted for one -- because if you voted for one, you are a moral accomplice to the tragedy that follows.

I remember (yes, I am this old) the year of Nixon's resignation. (And see, this is why you should listen to people with experience, you could learn something.) By July of '74, I was actually feeling sorry for the republicans who had voted to put Nixon in the White House. Because they were the ones he had truly betrayed. They had trusted him, they had believed in him, they had endorsed him with their voices, their dollars, their votes, their time, and their spirits. And when he was revealed as a vile and venal little putz, unfit for the office, they were the ones whose faith was shattered.

But when Trump's administration unravels -- and it will, because whatever Donald Trump might be, he is not a competent leader -- I will not feel sorry for the people who voted for him. We had a year-long campaign, the primaries and the general, in which Trump revealed himself as a liar, a con man, a swindler, a cheat, a bigot, a bully, and a sexual predator. If you voted for him, you cannot pretend you did not know what he was.

Referring back to Nixon again ... The political vacuum created by Nixon's resignation was an opportunity for the neo-fascist wing of the republican party to start building its strength -- a 40 year process that has resulted in what historians will eventually call "the American coup".

I do not believe we will have to wait long for the inevitable disintegration of this administration. The resistance movement is still an amorphous mass of fear, grief, despair, and a few sparks of anger that will eventually ignite a political firestorm.  It's a law of physics that when energy flows through a system, it tends to organize that system.  The energy that was pumped into the teapublicans gave us Trump.  But it looks like even more energy is going to be pumped into the resistance, and the resistance will likely organize itself into some very powerful movements and if the past is any guide to the future, it could happen very quickly.

What seems likely to me is that the resistance is going to create a new generation of leaders -- people who can speak to the realities of American politics in a way that a majority of voters can respond to. It's not impossible -- we saw FDR energize the nation in 1932. It is possible that our next progressive president is already organizing for 2020 -- but first, he or she will have to be a major force for 2018's midterm elections. And to accomplish that, he or she will have to establish serious credibility among a very angry and impatient electorate -- on both sides of the aisle.

It is possible -- notice how careful I'm being with these speculations, they're possibilities more than predictions -- it is possible that Trump will unite the country the same way Nixon did, by creating a massive backlash against himself.

If and when that happens, it will be a Shakespearean event. But where Nixon's fall from grace was a Shakespearean tragedy, Trump's will be a Shakespearean comedy, with the Karma fairy laughing her ass off at the inevitable unraveling of this Emperor's tattered pretense of clothing.

But along the way, the real tragedy will be all the lives that are hurt, damaged, or even ended, by the rampaging rabid rhinoceri, crashing their way through the china shop of government.