A new era must begin
There are 77 days until Election Day, and the Democratic National Convention that will nominate Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz for president and vice president is open for business.
This convention will be markedly different than the MAGA gathering of a month ago. It will not venerate a cult of personality, celebrate D-list porn stars and wrestlers from the 1980s when The Art of the Deal was first hawked in gaudy retail spaces that would one day sell Trump steaks, grotesque wine and fake university degrees.
The Democratic National Convention will highlight our common bonds and shared destiny. It will be a celebration of freedom and possibility — and also a warning because the chaos outside the convention hall and the fascists in Mar-a -Lago are very real. The stakes in this election are astronomically high for the American people and the peace and prosperity of the world. All of that will come into focus during the next few days.
This convention also marks a deeply important milestone. The proverbial torch is being passed to a new generation of Americans leaders. There are no words that can overstate how essential this is for the health and continuity of the American republic. Sclerotic politics produced Trump, and cynicism keeps him around. Better keeps him away. Idealism is a more powerful force than cynicism, though it is much rarer. When it is seen, there is a magic that flows from it.
On the matter of MAGA, the plain truth is that the best disinfectant is a reminder about this nation’s ideas, ideals, struggles, triumphs and failures. The United States of America is a great nation, while MAGA is a small, vile and un-American cause. Someday, it will have the same emotional resonance that my invoking the Bund of 1938 does, which is none whatsoever, outside of a small group of historically literate Americans who can see connections between past threats and the next one.
The Trump era has been a huge waste of national energy, time, focus and opportunity. These have been America’s lost years, and they are ending. A new era is beginning so long as the American people complete the task at hand, which is finishing off MAGA and helping the surviving elected Republicans that amnesia about their sordid participation is the only realistic path ahead for career survival. Have no doubt before he leaves office that Lindsey Graham will give a speech about the Trump disaster and say, “ I told you so.” When it happens the incredible thing is that most people will have forgotten his buddy schtick with Trump. It’s just the way America works, but history never forgets.
This has been an era of shame, abuse, lies, idiocy and nonsense that is utterly disgusting. Every decent American understands this. Most of us hoped it would end on its own. It hasn’t. We must end it, and we will.
We wish peace, but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and because we are not afraid.
— Theodore Roosevelt
You are so right about Lindsey Graham, and so right that people will totally forget what he did. What a pathetic and revolting human being, yet he will pay zero personal or political price for his embarrassing, dangerous and creepy "Trump period." What a weak , gutless and transparently shallow person he is. Our complete ability to forget (Covid 2020 anyone?), is a terrible flaw in the American, and I guess human, character. It really is. For tribal America in particular, I know that is true, but it still infuriates and saddens me.