Back from the brink ...

My last post on Nailing Jello was just 109 days into the Trump presidency. It came shortly after Trump, with the aid of then-Speaker Paul Ryan and a horde of Republican enablers passed the "repeal" portion of their assault on the Affordable Care Act. As long suspected, there was not even a hint of an effort to implement the insincere and meaningless "replace" part of that slogan. It appeared at the time that the disgusting and heartless American Health Care Act which had passed the House was on a glide path through the Senate to Trump's desk. I think that was the final blow of many during Trump's first 100 days that broke my determination to constantly record my thoughts and optimism that our democracy could and would survive the madman living in the White House and his court of jesters. Of course, it was not long after that when John McCain gave the ACHA a "thumbs down" on the Senate floor in the middle of the night. That simple act of courage and honor should have brought me back from the brink but, by then, Mitch McConnell had launched his crusade to completely make over the federal judiciary, and I had become little more than a bewildered observer. There were lots of days of despair, and what had begun as a joke of a presidency and an embarrassment had now become a genuine threat. 

Looking back after an almost four-year absence from Nailing Jello, I am sorry that I lost my will to chronicle the sorry history of the Trump presidency. A lot has happened -- much of it predictable but some of it unimaginable. As I write this, we are a little more than 48 hours from the Biden-Harris inauguration ceremony, almost a full year into the Covid-19 pandemic that has taken almost 400,000 American lives with no end in sight, and just eleven days after witnessing the horrific and heart-breaking assault on the U. S. Capitol and our country at large by Trump's army stoked and incited to violence by our outgoing president, his family, his blindly loyal enablers, and a pack of lies. Armed white supremacists, calling themselves "Proud Boys" and "Boogaloo Boys" and every kind of "patriot" they can think of, are gathering at State capitols across the country waiting for a call to arms from their dear leader. QAnon conspiracy cult members are anticipating that Trump will finally pull the trigger on the deep state, declare martial law, and "drain the swamp" by arresting President Elect Biden and Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris and all of the other traitorous satanic pedophiles.

In case anyone is still wondering how dictators gain power while ending a democracy or how something as ghastly as the Third Reich can evolve into Nazi Germany, we have witnessed over the last four years how it can happen. Without a shot fired. It only takes lies and more lies and so-called leaders who begin to believe those lies, or worse, pretend to believe them for reasons of their own because it serves their own purposes.

But, in case anyone is still wondering how you avoid the death of a democracy, we have witnessed that too over the last couple of months since the November election. Despite Trump's unrelenting attack on our democratic institutions and the free press and McConnell's aiding and abetting through the confirmation of three Supreme Court justices and countless appellate and trial court judges, I am finally confident that we are going to survive. The pain is not over, and the challenges will be many. But, as I have said before and as I continue to believe, "Some things are too easy to accomplish and are hardly worth the effort. Others, like nailing jello on the wall, are merely impossible and, therefore, worth every ounce of effort they may take. So it is with justice, fairness, ethics, and democracy and such." It all got a little harder on January 20, 2017 but it is going to get back to being a little easier -- merely impossible and worth the effort -- on January 20, 2021. 

I can't make any promises but maybe I will have the will to be a more diligent chronicler of our path back from the brink.