The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I heard today our President planned to order troops down to the border, maybe make a human Wall now that Congress won’t fund a concrete or steel one. Yesterday I heard he wanted to force the Washington Post to register as a lobbying group. Two days ago he started a trade war with China. The day before that he called up the Russian president to congratulate him on his Big Win and maybe have him over for a pow-wow at the White House. The week before … well, the list goes on and on, one outrageous act or tweet or threat at a time, each on the heels of the next.

Try to keep up with this guy. You can’t. He’s up in the pre-dawn hours, fingers flying over his device, threatening, bullying, ranting and raving. One day he’s waging war on California, the next he goes ballistic about immigrants, same afternoon he goes after the mainstream media and fake news, a little later he’s attacking somebody or some company he doesn’t like, give him time to catch his breath he’s calling out some Congressman he’s got a derogatory name for, in between he’s firing another cabinet member. It never slows down. It never stops.

Democracy, in order to function properly, demands a bit of respect for opposing opinions. Demonizing the other side, well, that works for creating a dictatorship or a totalitarian regime. We’re right, the others, lock em up! The news media, fake fake fake! Make em register as lobbyists, shut em down, lock them up too!! The political opposition, liars, crooks, lock em up!! The truth, there is no truth other than ours!

Day after day the foundations of our experiment in democracy are under assault, death by a thousand pinpricks and tweets. We get numb to the outrage, we grow weary of what a year or so ago would seem unbelievable, we close our eyes and our ears, overdosed with all these attacks on our institutions. But the water is growing hotter, we just don’t notice the incremental heat being steadily turned up with every lie, with every affront, with every firing, with every personal attack, with every violation of the norms of decency we no longer expect. By the time it’s too late to jump out of the pot, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves. Dictators don’t always come in with a coup, sometimes they come in with the stew.

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