The morning after

I imagine that the GOP collectively woke up to the worse hangover of its life. And also that finally daring to open its eyes after hoping the bad dream is over, that party let out a yelp upon finding itself in bed with a repugnant mound of flab, pretension and nastiness topped by a god-awful blondish something that in all decency cannot be called hair. “We did what last night? Can you just leave now and we’ll pretend nothing happened? That we don’t even know you?”

Well, something has happened, has been happening for years. Like most reasonable Americans, which still means half the country and more, I dread the grotesque idea of a Trump presidency, yet can’t help but think of what we humans know but will never ever learn: We reap what we sow. Our actions have consequences. The Republican party—the party of Lincoln, for crying out loud, it bears repeating—lost its soul the day it became the party of NO. No to everything. Common good does not matter any longer, neither does any of that so last-century vocabulary, obsolete concepts such as the greater good, vision, public service, decency etc. Not that these words were ever sacred or always respected, but they were at least acknowledged, on occasion sincerely. A moral compass, even when not used well, still gives a sense of direction. Not that the Bush mafia, with ghoul-in-chief Cheney and all other assorted egregious liars, didn’t trample upon the very idea of moral compass by having the Republic tear apart countries which, though far from perfect, at least somewhat existed. Which they no longer do—ask the hundreds of thousands of migrants clinging to sinking rafts near the shores of Europe. That brutal administration was fodder to people worldwide who thought that America, for all its talk of democracy, diplomacy and respect was at heart the imperialist power that didn’t consider anything but its own interest. The tumble toward unimaginable lows had started. Or was that before, when Newt Gingrich, snubbed by President Clinton on Air Force One, unbelievably retaliated by orchestrating a government shutdown? Or was that when John McCain, racing for the White House, dredged Sarah Palin out of her primeval bog and put her on the Republican ticket?