It's Not Funny

Well, maybe it is funny - if "funny" is whatever makes me laugh.

I mean if someday we might all be able to look back and laugh on trimp, W, and Reagan, why not get a head start right now?

I suppose some of those unable to laugh right now NEVER thought Regan was a "great president", W was a "strong leader", and trimp is a legitimate expression of the popular will.  Maybe such people worked so hard to prevent these catastrophes?  Maybe they are still struggling so desperately to resist the incoming onslaught of depredations and depravities?  Maybe their courageous exertions have depleted any capacity to find humor?

Maybe laughter is a luxury their morality will not permit them to indulge in?

Maybe they are, in addition to their exhaustion, overcome with terror and compassion at what's likely to happen if the only lasting legacy of trimpulism is Associate Justice Gorsuck on the Supreme Court for a generation to come.

They would be right.

It's not really funny.


But maybe, someday?

Where Have All the Grown-Ups Gone?

Not long ago there was an "establishment" able enough to stabilize a rogue administration.  This happened much more recently than Watergate, though impeachment is once again a thinkable outcome for our current scandalous presidency.

When national security elements (not just Oliver North and Fawn Hall) were selling arms to Iran for the finance of terror, torture, rape, and murder in Nicaragua, they had the collusion of a senescent, disengaged President Reagan.

With solid support from Democrats, a Republican "establishment" moved in.  Among other (informal) measures, they installed Howard Baker (his credentials well burnished by the Watergate hearings) as White House Chief of Staff.  The "grown-ups" were back in control, and torture, rape, murder, and terror in Central America could continue as they had at least since Truman and on through the Carter administration.  But, at least, the "grown-ups" were back in control.

The current shambles is just as likely to provoke an invocation of Article 4 of the 25th Amendment as it is to "climax" with an impeachment trial.  But this time the "grown-ups" will have re-exerted their "control" over a society that's crackling apart like an attenuated glacier perched on a seething lava flow.  

The system is not working.

Is there a way to decapitate this administration and then provide strong moorings to "noose canons" like Pense and Ryan?   It's pretty hard to see.  And it's mostly dependent on the next Congressional elections which have had a pathetic record in terms of democratic participation and citizen engagement. 

It's easier to "reign in" an illegitimate administration than an idiot elite (0.1%).