WAKING UP -- POLITICAL TRIAGE IN THE AGE OF TRUMP

WAKING UP -- POLITICAL TRIAGE IN THE AGE OF TRUMP

I was tired.

For seven months I'd been waiting for the pivot.

That magic moment when the guy who is President stops acting like the guy who never thought he'd be President . . .

When our man-child in chief, the narcissist with nukes, grows up . . .

When he does something else between 4 and 9 in the morning -- hugs his wife, says hello to his kid, eats breakfast even -- besides tweeting.

Oh well.

Not gonna happen.

I took a hiatus from Trump for the past two months.  I didn't write about him and I tried not to think about him.  I thought this approach functional for a least two reasons.  The first was that, as Thomas Friedman has put it, "Trump is a brain-eating disease." "[H]e sucks up all the oxygen in the room," said Friedman, but we get nothing for it.  Friedman again: We're "not really learning anything."

This is spot-on. 

Trump is an existential no exit.  He never changes.  He doesn't surprise anymore.  Even the outrageous is expected.  This week he announced that he was "discouraged" and "frustrated" that he couldn't order the Justice Department and the FBI to "go after Hillary Clinton" on "her emails" and the Steele "dossier."  Wholly apart from there being nothing to go after on either account, and an elaborate investigation already having concluded in Clinton's favor on the first, we now have a President openly lamenting his legal inability to abuse power by ordering up phony investigations of his political opponents.  When Nixon did this, he covered it up and tried to keep it secret.  When we found out, he was impeached.  With Trump . . .

We're yawning.

Or at least a lot of us are.

This is not the best approach.  We need to be vigilant.  We need to resist.  We cannot afford to turn that which should be impeachable into something now deemed normal.

But we can't all do this at once.

We'll exhaust ourselves.

In the past two months, Trump told the courts to kill a terrorist-suspect before he's even been convicted, told Sen. Schumer that an old immigration law made Schumer responsible for that terrorist attack, told Sen. Corker he couldn't get elected "dog catcher" in Tennessee, told hurricane victims in Puerto Rico they weren't doing enough to recover,  told an Army widow that her husband knew what he'd signed up for, told NFL owners to fire any National Anthem kneelers, told Secretary of State Tillerson he was wasting his time trying to negotiate with North Korea, told Tillerson not to worry about this because Trump himself was on it, and told all of us those Facebook ads paid for in rubles were just another part of the "Russian hoax."  

In response, Tillerson said Trump was a "moron",  Corker said Trump was "debasing" the US with his "lies", "name-calling" and "bullying", and Republican Sen. Flake pointed out that Chuck Schumer actually would have rescinded that immigration provision long ago.  Lots of football players remain kneeling and 70% of the power is still out in Puerto Rico. North Korea will reportedly do another missile or nuclear test during Trump's upcoming Asia visit, and Facebook rebutted the hoax claim  -- the Russian ads were real and targeted and probably made a difference.  Meanwhile, House Republicans just announced that their version of "tax reform" means enormous cuts for the super-rich along with increases for middle and upper middle incomers in the form of eliminating deductions for state and local taxes and capping the deduction on mortgage interest.  Their proposal will also increase the deficit.

All of this follows Trump's summer swoon with Charlottesville's white supremacists, the spring firing of James Comey for investigating Russian collusion,  and the winter of our discontent highlighted by Trump's demonic Inaugural Address.

Our plate is and has been more than full.

And I haven't even mentioned the Special Counsel's investigation.

Political triage is required.

Here's mine.

Defeat the tax bill first.  

The fundamental problem that generated Trump's improbable victory is economic inequality.  For the victims, it saps the will and creates the fertile ground in which racism, xenophobia and nativism can take root.  This is not to say that any poor, rural, white guy (or gal) in Appalachia who voted for Trump is a racist who hates Mexicans.  But some -- maybe many --are, and Trump's excuse for inequality always fingered trade deals and immigrants as the responsible culprits when, in fact, it's our inability to do any New Deal-like redistribution that is and remains the real cause.  The last thing this country needs is a tax cut that depletes federal revenue while loading the pockets of the super-rich and depositing cash in the accounts of corporations that already have plenty.  Far better to kill the tax bill and use the revenue to solve the opioid crisis.

Or raise the minimum wage.

In the meantime, Trump will tweet and we will continue to learn nothing we do not already know.

Which brings me to the second reason it was functional to ignore him for the last sixty days.

I'm rested.

And . . .

Instead of being depressed by Trump, I'm inspired by Corker and Flake. 

And McCain 

In the past month, they've all taken on Trump.  

Here's McCain just this past Monday: "We are asleep in our echo chambers, where our views are always affirmed, and information that contradicts them is always fake." Though he had more than Trump in mind, Trump was clearly on his mind. "We have to fight isolationism, protectionism and nativism.  We have to defeat those who would worsen our divisions. We have to remind our sons and daughters that we became the most powerful nation on earth by tearing down walls, not building them."

John McCain is dying from brain cancer.  But as he moves toward whatever form of eternal rest awaits us all, his message last Monday is part of a last act that makes this his finest hour.

"It's time to wake up," said Sen. McCain to this year's Naval Academy. 

And so it is.