New Orleans You know it’s bad when hope comes in tiny capsules of news that some of the more horrific proposals by the President-elect like waterboarding will be harder to resuscitate than the Twitterman-in-Chief might have thought. You know it’s bad when you found yourself momentarily rooting for George Romney for Secretary of State so you didn’t have to live through the horror of a Rudy Giuliani unleashed around the world as the global representative of the United States.
Maybe you had allowed yourself to have a glimmer of hope when President Obama for a hot minute seemed to be having some impact on the President-elect. Maybe for an instance you had allowed yourself a minute of peace thinking the weight and power of the office might have a civilizing effect on the President-elect. Maybe you lingered over every line of reports that there might be some problems the President-elect might have in Congress with some semi-independent thinkers or just plain cranky old men and women within the elected ranks of Republican Party who might slow this train to hell down. Maybe you even wasted some brain power wondering if it might be truly possible that a new “center” might evolve to counter some of the crazy.
Too bad, now, increasingly, there is no maybe about it – you, me, we are all dreaming: this new administration is shaping up to be worse than any might have imagined. This is going to be our worst nightmare!
It starts right at the top with Stephen Bannon, the on-leave CEO of the far right wing, scum stirrer Brietbart News, who having survived a couple of months as chairman of Trump’s campaign crew, is now going to be his senior strategic advisor. Many trees were felled as reporters tried to tighten down exactly how racist and anti-Semitic he might or might not be, but that’s really so yesterday’s news. He’s going to be right there in the White House, whispering his whatever into Trump’s ear.
For Attorney-General we will soon have former Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, an anti-immigrant heavy breather, who we are also reminded couldn’t be appointed as a federal judge for his past racist remarks. No problem seen for his appointment to AG though, because, hey, he’s well-liked in the Senate. You would think he was going to be organizing the high school’s prom, rather than responsible for the nation’s justice system and, you know, little things like enforcing fair elections, civil rights, and whatnot.
Remember hearing that the President-Elect wanted to keep some things intact from Obamacare. Now he’s putting Georgia Republican Congressman Tom Price, an arch opponent of the Affordable Care Act, in charge of the huge Department of Health and Human Services. For Education Secretary he wants a billionaire Republican fundraiser from Michigan who has been a cheerleader for charter schools and privatization of public education. For Commerce it seems he wants to appoint a billionaire vulture investor and turnaround guy.
It just gets worse and worse. A recount won’t save us. There’s only one thing we have going for us right now, and that’s the fact that it is still almost three full months before we stop having the nightmares and start living them on a daily basis. Enjoy it while it lasts, because winter is coming.