Every single day we see new stupidities from the Executive Branch of the United States. Maybe it's the fact that Trump's peace deal with Iran is now being shown to leave us in a much weaker position than we were before a war that should never have been. Maybe it's the continued corruption in cryptocurrencies with his kids, or the way we have alienated almost every former ally, or Trump's big beautiful bloodsport UFC fights on the White House lawn, or a thousand other things that we've already forgotten with the flooding of the zone of stupidity. The Trump trainwreck continues leave death and devastation in its wake.
One of the current stupidities involves Donald J Trump, Builder Genius. Because he's decided Washington DC might well be a sh*thole city, he's taken it upon himself to clean it up and recreate it in his own image: giant arches, tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build himself a ballroom, spending millions in no-bid contracts with his buddies to re-do the reflecting pool which turns into a beautiful algae green three days after it opens. In some ways these things on the surface don't actually bug me that much...DC probably did needed to be cleaned up, and run down places like the East Wing probably needed to be replaced. It's just that the way he does everything, without any sense of that he's not the owner, just a current resident of the city, makes it terrible. The next president is going to spend the next four years trying to undo so many of the tacky gold-plated monstrosities that he is building that the things that are actually important as President might be neglected.
As much as I despise Trump, however, part of me still thinks that the Democrats share at least a minority share of the blame. Even now the approval rating for the Democratic party is STILL worse than Trump's; this is not just a mark that a. people are stupid for still supporting Trump, but b. people really, really, REALLY hate the Democrats. Why did it have to be this way?
There are times when I dream of going back in time to early 2023 and seeing a different history being written. Let me set the scene: A fading Joe Biden calls in the (literal) old guard of the Demoratic party into the Oval Office: Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters, Bernie Sanders, and a dozen others who have been holding onto to Congressional control for the last two decades. "Listen", Joe says. "I'm done. It's been an honor and a privilege to be President, but it's time for me to go. And it's time for all of you to go as well. We need to turn over the party to the next generation. Stay in Congress if you want, seek to be influential and mentor a new generation, but we make a rule that none of us will be committee chairmen or will run for president. Maybe we can convince our Republican colleagues to do the same, and so we won't have to ever see Donald Trump again."
That night, President Biden, surrounded by a bunch of these same leaders, goes on national TV and does his best Lyndon Johnson impersonation. The American people realize that, hey, finally we can move on from the past few years: COVID, January 6, and most of all Trump. A new generation of Democratic leaders is empowered to step up, the Democrats win against a visibly diminished Trump, the Republican party begins its road back to repentance and sanity, and nothing of the past 17 months actually becomes history.
Heck, maybe the reflecting pool fix would have been worth it were it a time machine. I'd brave wading through all that algae if I could change the past year and a half. But movies ain't real, even as the current dystopia is.
