How has it come to this?

My father and I had many political discussions.  His views, at least initially, had a profound impact on me.  Although Republican he did not hide his love for Franklin Roosevelt and his love of Roosevelt's proclivity for verbal eloquence.  When FDR spoke my father listened.  I was born well after Roosevelt's death but I felt like I knew him.  I visited his grave, Eleanor's grave and his dog Fala's grave at Hyde Park, New York.  I stood there and cried yearning for that moment in time when he lived to be repeated in my era.  I have never known what it would be like to love a president like my father loved Roosevelt. 

I wonder, too, what he would think of our current classless and brash 1000 lies narcissistic president who loves himself more than anyone else and because he does perpetrated the greatest con of the century upon an electorate who believed the lies he told.  He was going to give big tax breaks to everyone but did so permanently only for the top 2% wealthiest telling his friends at his Mar A Lago Estate that they were going to love him come tax time.  He told his supporters during the campaign that he was going to repeal Obamacare but that he was going to replace it with something better than before, moreover, he was not going to let insurance companies get away with not paying for preexisting conditions.  He did neither.  He told them he was going to solve illegal immigration but said nothing about a Holocaustesque separation of children from their parents made worse by failing to include a way to reunite them with the parents who brought them into this world in the first place leaving them alone and afraid stuck in cages or tents.  How did it come to this?

Trump told his fans he was extraordinarily wealthy, a fabulous businessman and smart.  They did not care he refused to show his taxes even though every other modern-day president has proclaiming ad infinitum they were under audit.  What was he hiding?   They did not care that he refused to show a copy of his grades and threatened a lawsuit if any of the institutions he attended revealed them.   When the Access Hollywood tape came out as he proudly declared because he was rich women let him do most anything to them.  Even that did not bother his so called moral Evangelical supporters.  He is the first American president to fall in love with authoritarian dictators and eschew the democracies of Europe even threatening NATO, America's premier defense of Europe.  I have read and it has been alleged that he keeps on his night table a copy of Mein Kampf, Hitler's autobiography written in Landsberg prison where he was held for an attempted overthrow of the German Weimer state.  Trump, by his own admission, has fallen in love with Kim Jong Un, the brutal executioner of the innocent of N. Korea.  Then there is always Putin, the man he loves the most; a man whom he believes did not subvert the 2016 election because Putin told him emphatically he did not and Trump believes him over the truth tellers of his own national security administration.  How did it come to this?

By far the most subversive element in which he is now engaged is threatening our nation's greatest 1789 foundational legacy -- The Constitutional separation of powers.  Our Founders formed this government so that each coequal branch of government would protect against totalitarian usurpation of power the Founders knew human flesh to be heir to.  They wanted a Republic we could keep.  Trump's hand has been caught in the cookie jar stealing all the benefits democracy has to offer, siding with dictators and denying all that our first branch of government, the legislative branch, is requesting from its second Executive branch.  Sure, Trump thinks, let it play out in the courts.  By that time he would have won a second term.  Donald J. Trump is a liar, he is a con man, he is a racist,  a self dealer, a criminal, a lousy deal maker we now know lost 1 billion bucks from from 1985 to 1994 paying zero taxes.  We now know he would be indicted, convicted and sent to jail for his myriad of crimes too numerous to mention here if only he were not president of a nation which does not indict a sitting president.  How has it come to this?

In one of my many discussions with my father I asked him about the 1933 southern Populist Governor of Louisiana, Huey Long.  My father said that he was a bad man who wanted to be a king.  Huey Long was ultimately assassinated on the steps of the Louisiana state capitol.   It reminds me of the Lord Acton quotes:

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

“Despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality.”

“Authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force.”

“Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance.”

“Absolute power demoralizes.”  

Will our Republic stand against this would be dictator Trump or will it succumb to an authoritarian corrupt executive who in his heart wants to be a king?  We must ask ourselves how it has come to this and, if we survive it, how will we never let it happen again.