I remember when Trump ‘won’ the GOP nomination and how crazy that felt. Then I remember when he ‘won’ the election and how scary and disorienting and crazy THAT felt.

I remember watching his inauguration at work and how surreal it felt. Remember how he talked about ‘American carnage’? Well, it’s absolutely here, now, thanks to this President.

For those of us who didn’t quite recognize the shattered ruins of a once-great country that the president described at the time, it’s now arrived on our doorsteps. Even without the juddering trauma of a coronavirus that has closed streets and schools, and asphyxiated the economy, and killed thousands, the world he painted then ended up becoming our world now, but with his response to this crisis, it’s grown ever worse.

Dahlia Lithwick in Slate — April 2020

At every turn in the road during this #deplorable debacle called the Trump Administration norms that seemed well-established have been trampled. The process had gotten started before Trump’s arrival (thank you Mitch), but since 2016 it’s accelerated, well, like a POTUS on steroids. Every single time I have thought, “It can’t get worse than this,” it has. Every single time I have thought, “Someone will stand up and say no to this. Someone in the GOP will put country above party,” they have not.

It reminds me of a rather insightful if garbled thought that Dubya shared some years ago:

There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.

George W. Bush

Yes, the guy whose standing has been shored up significantly by the orange clown has actually taken some principled stands when it comes to Donnie. But one has to wonder what he would do if he were still in politics. Apparently for everyone in office in the GOP, hanging onto their jobs is job #1. Power is what matters, not governing, and certainly not the Constitution..or, god forbid, the people.

So anyway…

…now Donnie has conquered COVID and masks are absolutely off the table. Forget those rumors about Adderol, now he actually is on ‘roids from his White House doc! His tweets are in all caps, mostly, and his son Eric recently announced that POTUS saved Christianity. (If you listen to the snippet of an interview, there’s also mention of peace in the Middle East. Wonder how Jared feels about that?)

Poor Eric is just trying in his poor Eric way to make his daddy happy. I’m guessing that he went to college somewhere, but I’d be surprised if he gets a lot of mention in the alumni bulletin. Not something you’d probably want to advertise if you were involved in higher education. Unless maybe you were Liberty University.

Anyway, when you live in unreality and things are going bad, really bad, you have to balance it out with things that are really good. So it must be a measure of how very, very bad things actually are if saving Christianity is now on the table. So kudos to you, Eric, because you probably did right the ship for a moment or two.

Bottom line…

Despite the balcony pose, Donald ain’t Evita, as Patti Lupone so wonderfully opined on Twitter yesterday:

We absolutely can’t let this horrible sociopath continue in a position of power. Oh wait, did I just hear that Susan Collins thinks he’s learned his lesson now that he’s had COVID?

NOPE. It’s clear that no one will stop him except us voters. So let’s close this revival by slamming down the curtain HARD on November 3rd!

Vote, folks — and not ‘like’ our lives depend on it.

It can’t get any clearer — all of our lives actually do depend on it.