Readers Write: America’s ignominious end

The Island Now

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be.” – Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey

There are those looking at the storming of the Capitol by Trumpist thugs with surprise and shock. Some of us knew for some time it would end this way. This was growing unchecked for years.

I told you that the GOP had to be burned to a cinder. There was nothing redeeming about it, and it has nothing to offer the country. But it hasn’t happened.

Even as these thugs trashed the home of democracy, the same ones who enabled them made excuses or equivocated. A small cohort in the Senate even egged them on.
Time was the title “United States senator” had some dignity behind it. Mr. Hawley, Mr. Cruz and the laughably bizarre Rand Paul terminated that.

And the D.C. police? Useless. Short of buying the protesters a cup of coffee, they did absolutely nothing to stop the desecration of the Capitol. Halfwits, skells and numbskulls waved Confederate flags under the gaze of statuary of the Founders.

Like they were burning a Torah. And they did this without resistance.

The infiltration of right-wing authoritarian groups is not news to anyone who follows law enforcement. It’s all over the country, with a network of ex-military, gun nuts and wannabes congregating on Facebook.

Look at the Twitter timelines of the NYC PBA or worse yet, the NY Sergeants Benevolent Association. They demonstrate a complete contempt for elected officials, and in language that can’t be repeated here. They comport themselves with less dignity than the people they arrest.

This too is the result of the Trumpist ethos.

And of course, locally, we have officials in the state Assembly and county Legislature who cynically feed into this authoritarian mindset, manipulating every suburban hausfrau’s fear of crime, even as the biggest criminals surround West Street like dung flies.

So the march to authoritarianism was well on its way. The brownshirts entered the Temple without resistance.

Other casualties under Trump? Would anyone care to weigh in on the value of Christian witness in this country when nearly 90 percent of white Evangelicals embraced this repugnant degenerate? I’m not surprised at this either. Modern Zionism has been permanently crippled by this crew as well.

For a moment, there was a small chance Mr. Biden could snatch our dignity back and repair this somewhat as we counted down the days to the inauguration. That’s over. The dam has broken. It just took one day to turn the shining city on a hill into a dungheap.

And a dungheap it shall remain.

The torch of global leadership was already migrating East.

Yesterday, it was practically thrown to them. This is history. The age of American primacy is well and truly dead, and you all had a front-row seat to it. Remember one key point: Trump didn’t create the divisions and moral rot that exist in the country. He merely came along to exploit and cement them.

Nations do not recover from decline. That is the rule of history.

Now let’s get back to getting us that SALT deduction.

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