The Nation in Peril: "A Unique and Present Danger"

I suppose you fellas have already seen and read the unprecedented editorial that the Washington Post published yesterday, condemning the Republican nominee as "uniquely unqualified" to be President, and a direct threat to the Constitution.  But in case you haven't, go read it, now, right here.

The Nation, our republic and democracy, is in grave peril, and we must all do what we can to defend it - or watch it dissolve into a perverted Orwellian monstrosity, infernal, putrid, and wretched beyond imagination - so says your Head Trucker, but I think I am merely putting into words what every decent, intelligent person (a particularly articulate one being the writer Joyce Carol Oates) already thinks, and has thought for the past year, ever since that braggart, bully, and charlatan threw his hat into the political ring.

It occurs to your Head Trucker that the word hubris might have been invented just to describe him, the perfect exemplar of what those old Greek boys called a tyrant.  Of course, he will meet his nemesis eventually, as such characters always do, bearing within themselves the seeds of their own destruction - Oedipus, Napoleon, and Hitler are names that spring to mind here, not to mention Faust and even Lucifer himself - but perhaps not until the tyrant has caused incalculable damage and suffering in all directions.  (Now aren't you sorry you slept through Western Civ and World Lit?)

So I will add nothing here to the mountains of commentary already flooding the airwaves and intertubes - but I also recommend that you all read this article, based on a New York Times report this week, which seems to reveal Trump's "business plan" for the Presidency:  namely, that he will let his running mate be "the most powerful Vice-President in history," handling all foreign and domestic policy, and all the other tedious daily details of the Executive Office - in other words, doing the President's job for him - while Trump loafs around in comfort like a chairman of the board and simply "makes America great again," pulling the strings from behind the throne and issuing imperial decrees at his pleasure.

In other words, at a stroke, Trump would break apart the constitutional checks and balances on which our system has depended since its founding, and run it like one of his megabusinesses - a casino, perhaps.  Utterly revolting to the mind and chilling to the spirit.  As are all his other nebulous, infantile, utterly irresponsible ideas and self-serving proposals.

Some of you, at least, are old enough to remember the well-worn phrase used for practice by generations of student typists:

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.

Though in need of a small edit or two, never has it been truer than now.  The prime springs of History often turn not upon great events, but upon small ones:  for want of a nail, the shoe was lost, and so on.  The choice between renewal and ruin, utter ruin, is ours - but only while democracy lasts.  And the clock is tick-tick-ticking louder all the time.

I am old and rather weary now, circumscribed in action and limited in resources; this slight blog post is about the extent of what I can do: a pebble thrown into a pond. But some of you can do a little more, perhaps, thereby encouraging yet others downstream, as it were, who can do even more than that, and so good luck to you.

 I close by simply saying, as so many patriots have said before me: May God bless the United States of America.  We certainly need all the help we can get.


Addendum, 9:45 p.m., 7/24: Yes, Hillary is well past her sell-by date, and fails to inspire for several reasons. But she is hardly the fiend that the foaming right has made her out to be, and for all her faults, she is, as the Washington Post observed in its editorial, not a threat to constitutional government.

The choice is between a flawed, ambitious leader who is experienced and capable of high office - or a bloated, preening, ignorant toad who with the help of his fawning lackeys would turn this country into the biggest personality cult the world has ever seen. To my mind, there is no question here.