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GUEST COMMENTARY FOR INDEPENDENCE DAY--It is truly a confounding time to be alive, to be an American.
We are watching as a president of the United States openly lies, fabricates and exaggerates while two-fifths of the population cheers him for it.
He spurns our allies and embraces our adversaries and people shrug.
He, his congressional allies and his propaganda arm are waging open warfare on the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an effort to tarnish it before its inquiry into connections between the Trump campaign, family and associates and Russia can be made public.
He is a racist who disparages black and brown people, whether they be immigrants, Muslims, people from Haiti and Africa, Barack Obama, the mayor of San Juan or Maxine Waters. People equivocate about it and excuse it.
He is attacking the press in the most aggressive of terms so that what they reveal about him will be viewed with skepticism.
He is attempting to weaken our institutions, our protocols and conventions, our faith in the truth, our sense of honor and our respect for the rule of law.
And somehow, many Americans, even those disgusted by what they see, have resigned themselves to this new reality.
In fact, Trump’s poll numbers had been inching up before he created a humanitarian disaster at the border by separating children from their parents.
I guess this is how empires begin to fall. It isn’t necessarily one dramatic moment, but the incessant monotony of assaults on normalcy that slowly shift the ground beneath you, reorienting what is proper and preferable, what is outrageous and what is acceptable. (Read the rest here.)
-cw