Abiding Shame -- the Inception

At this moment when I have started writing what I hope will be a series of blog posts on the current elections, after such a long but characteristic period when I didn’t post anything here, today, on the 21st of October, 2016, I am included in all the other 230,000,000 Americans who are going through by far the most shameful period in American history, BAR NONE!  (That is, short of the day long ago in 1620 when the first slaves were brought onto the soil of the place that eventually became the “Commonwealth of Virginia.”)

Though of course he had collaborators, and lots of them, this shame is principally the work of just one man – an individual named Donald J for “Jackass” Trump.  And the occasion is the current election cycle for state and national government offices.

Fourteen months ago, this person jumped into view by offering himself to the Republican party as a candidate for the post of nothing less than the top job of U.S. President.

Though he was not exactly welcomed, Donald J for Jackass was nevertheless permitted to enter the fray under the auspices of that hapless and unprincipled party whose constant deceit is embodied in its very name – the so-called “Grand Old Party,”  the Republicans, when actually that group is neither grand nor old, and they shouldn’t be called “Republicans” either.

When a party called the “Republicans” first came onto the American political scene, back in 1860 or so, they campaigned against the long-enduring atrocity of slavery, while the already existing Democratic Party was the party of the slave-owners and their supporters, and despite certain anomalies, that distinction in philosophies generally held through the next 100 years.

But then, in the 1960’s, a complete turnaround occurred.  Suddenly the Republicans, buoyed by taking into their ranks the Dixiecrats, became the party of would-be slave-owners, while the Democrats who were left behind happily found themselves in a party with a much more liberal and therefore more reasonable and charitable bent, and they became the party of Lincoln, despite the fervor with which the Repubs try hard to this day to hang on to that appellation for themselves, laughable  as that claim might be, as if Lincoln, were he still alive, would want to have anything to do with that bunch as it is presently constituted.

These days “The Nasties” is the far more appropriate name for the Republicans, and the reigning irony is that they have gone so far in earning that handle that they inadvertently set themselves up for having to admit into their tent this walking, talking disaster named “Trump,” though even they had misgivings about him from the start.  That includes the latest group of thugs that had followed the ex-Dixiecrats in taking over Republican thought, the Tea Party, because, like everyone else, they already had a fairly accurate picture of what Donald J for Jackass had been all through the most recent decades. and it was clear that he had shown up entirely to take advantage of what he saw as a golden opportunity to embark on yet another ego trip.

I myself had paid not the slightest attention to this bounder, and I am glad to see that that was with good reason, for, according to what has been revealed about him since he made his announcement, he was known for tall buildings and other real estate ventures, some of them financial disasters, casinos, golf courses, beauty pageants, multiple marriages to women who have all the appearance of not having been acquired solely because of his charm, and a reality show called “The Apprentices” about which I do not recall ever hearing anything.

None of those strike me as having been activities that were in any way contributory to the general good, and they certainly did not qualify him to be President.  Yet, against what he saw as a weak field in the primaries and in the final stage, I am certain that he viewed this election as promising to be his biggest romp of all  –- except that it has been somewhat different from that, as shown by comparing remarks he made at the beginning of his candidacy with an outburst that he was unable to hold in near the end of the third and final debate that took place two days ago between himself and Hillary Clinton.

He was so inspired by the response of the malcontents that he quickly picked up soon after he declared, that he immediately questioned the necessity of holding any election at all, and he said that instead he should be inaugurated as the new U.S. President then and there, and he seemed to be nothing if not quite serious about that.

I wouldn’t be surprised if very few people remember that he said that at the very beginning, but they couldn’t have missed how in the just concluded final debate with Ms. Clinton, and overcome with frustration at having been obviously and easily bested by her in all three of the debates – as was only to be expected -- he was unable to avoid blurting from out of the blue the very ungentlemanly and incredibly nasty remark, “You are a nasty woman!”

That latest attempt of his to drive up the nation's temperature was just the latest instance of how every damn second of his efforts has been to the detriment of everyone in the country, and that includes Donald J. himself, though, like his rabid followers, he is being a trifle slow to see that.   But that, too, was only to be expected – again, I’m sure, by all his Republican contemporaries as well, no matter how much they might wriggle like snakes caught in a rat trap, to keep from showing it.