MANY THINGS CONSIDERED: America’s Awful Mistake

“Everyone makes mistakes, but if you make the same mistake twice, it’s no longer a mistake, it’s a choice.”  – said everyone at least once

 

 

By Marc C. Johnson

Two years ago – almost to the day – I wrote with considerable misery about the awful mistake America made in 2024 by returning Donald Trump to power:

As the historian Timothy Snyder writes: “It was predictable that Trump would deny the results of the 2020 election. It was predictable that his Big Lie would change American politics. It is predictable, today, that he will give free rein to the oligarchs who, he knows, will continue to generate the social and digital bases of a politics of us and them. It is predictable that, in returning to power, he will seek to change the system so that he can remain in power until death. It is predictable that he will use deportations to divide us, to accustom us to violence, and to make accomplices of us. It is predictable that he will create a cult out of the martyrs of January 6th. It is predictable that he will cooperate with similarly minded rulers abroad.”

We knew all this. Many warned us, especially people – many now in danger – who worked with him at close range. They aren’t traitors or partisans, but military leaders and elected officials and Americans. And yet we chose to ignore and embrace all this.

The ultimate collapse attendant to our enormous mistake will appear to come slowly, but then it will immediately be all around us. It is as predictable as his corruption and his revenge and his hate.

And we did it to ourselves.

The most gratifying thing to come in the last week is the realization that the country can and did make an incredible corrective move.

The original awful mistake will live on and more damage is sure to be done, but we still moved from intensive care to the recovery room.

What will become of the Grand Old Party?

A rational political movement would never have embraced Donald Trump in the first place, so it should be a default position for most of us to avoid entertaining any thought that the Republican Party will change in any meaningful way.

Ain’t gonna happen.

What is also not going to happen is a post-election drubbing epiphany that moves Donald Trump and his cloddish cronies in the direction of actually trying to address the nation’s challenges.

A demented old man, a malignant narcissist, a serial liar, a racist, a convicted sex offender, an ethically unencumbered con man – Will. Not. Change.

Which is why the new Democratic majority in Congress should assume – as I suspect the smartest among them already does – that they are in the final two years of political trench war that will be won only by further exposure of this historically malevolent administration. ¹

So Democrats can begin by calling the new White House chief of staff what he is, as the French daily Le Monde did without flinching:

“Stephen Miller, reactionary ideologue and white supremacist, promoted head of Trump administration.” ²

“Stephen has been with me from the beginning,” Trump told the press. “He gets it; very good politically. He’ll do a great job. Great manager.” However, the president did not give any real explanation. “Sometimes you change,” he simply said. The change in question is a headlong rush, a retreat into the inner circle of loyalists without qualms, ready to do anything for their leader. It shows just how much Trump sees the final two years of his term as the fortification of a bunker against the attacks of a Democratic-controlled Congress and the continuation of a unilateral presidency, without consultation.

Attack the bunker

And for all the possible reasons – for God’s sakes don’t let the political narrative become that the Democratic Party is at war with itself.

Don’t do it.

• Make Republicans defend the stupid war and the even stupider Secretary of Defense.
• Cut off funding for the stupid war in any way possible.
• Find out why the Epstein files were never completely released by this administration. We know, don’t we, but lay it out.
• Get Jared Kushner under oath.
• And seize on the Nvidia scandal. My God. Here’s Charlie Sykes today:

Even amidst the whirling and burbling scandals of our Age of Grift, this one stands out, because it connects all the dots.

The Nvidia scandal is a nesting doll of sex, espionage, AI fears, oligarchy, bribery, incompetence, cover-ups, and treason.

Jensen Huang, the CEO of the $5 trillion chipmaker, Nvidia,” is variously described as “the most feared man in Silicon Valley,” the “central banker for AI,” and “the linchpin of the company that is arguably the linchpin of the American economy,” which means that he is simply “too big to fail.” He is also a Trump crony, adviser, and lavish patron of Trump’s grasping narcissism. (See: “How Trump and Nvidia’s C.E.O. Became Partners on the International Stage” – The New York Times)

Huang is now caught in a “high-tech honey trap” that Tina Brown describes as “one of the most explosive national security scandals since the Cold War.”

And then there is Trump.

It may be worth recalling that Huang’s company contributed $25 million to Trump’s ballroom; cut a deal with Trump to share 15% of the company’s revenue from AI chip sales to China with the US government. And, as Brown notes: “It was Jensen who successfully convinced Trump to reverse the Biden ban on selling Nvidia’s premium H200 chips to China, overriding national security concerns.”

All that time Huang was having an affair with a Chinese spy.

This is the plot of a lurid spy novel, but it is very real and it should claim a lot of guilty parties, and it will, if pursued aggressively.

Of course Democrats must also address the disastrous Republican cuts to Medicaid, they should increase the minimum wage, they should end where they can the idiotic Trump tariff wars, and more …

But most of all, and for the sake of the country, Democrats must make a continuing spectacle of the congressional cult followers of this abysmally incompetent and uniformly destructive president.

Let these spineless toadies defend Trump and his tech bro cronies. And then shove this Gallup Poll in their faces:

Eighty-nine percent of respondents said they believe government corruption is “widespread,” a 10 percent jump from last year and up from 73 percent in 2024. That increase was driven by Democrats, 91 percent of whom believe there is grift in the government, up from 57 percent in 2024. Ninety percent of independents agree, up from 78 percent two years ago.

Anyone who believes that this vile, corrupt party and the weak weasel at its head will do anything but more of the same old, same old needs to stretch out and apply a cold compress to their forehead.

The congressional Republicans now in the minority will not change to meet the existential threat they face. They could, but won’t, decide to salvage what is left of their party by impeaching and removing Trump. But …

They. Will. Not. Do. That.

The GOP is held hostage by Trump and the MAGA base voters. They will not change. Don’t waste a minute thinking they will. ³

I truly believe the country needs two healthy political parties, but we have only one at the moment. The other party needs to exposed, shamed and shunned.

So, Democrats, a simple message: Don’t Blow It.

And remember, with regard to the historic scandal that is the Republican Party and its cult leader, the words of World War II-era British diplomat Owen O’Malley who lamented that his government actively covered up Soviet atrocities during the war simply because it was expedient to do so.

“What is … morally indefensible usually generally turns out, in the long run, to have been politically inept.”

That is where the Grand Old Party sits today.

Turn the screws on the whole bunch. That is what moving on should look like.