The past seven days have been, arguably, the worst week for the worst president in modern history.
Within the span of seven days, President Trump
thanked a foreign adversary for expelling U.S. diplomats from their country, stoked tensions with North Korea to the point that Kim Jong-un
threatened to attack Guam, and
waited two days to grudgingly condemn a neo-nazi rally even after an anti-racist activist was run over by a white supremacist–and only issued that repudiation after a raft of bipartisan outcry over his weak initial response. Our commander-in-chief achieved all this even as a federal investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia heated up.
These recent events are symptomatic of an America out of control and in decline, its demise hastened by the executive body tasked to strengthen it. This week, the call came from
inside the house–the White House, to be precise–and its message was: “We’re f***ed.”
As more members of the GOP finally issue the condemnation of Trump’s bigotry that they should have made the day he launched his campaign by
denigrating Mexican immigrants, it is possible the U.S. has finally reached a turning point–a pivot, if you will. This is not the presidential pivot longed for by political and media pundits, the ones who proclaim it occurs whenever Trump achieves a miraculous feat, like reading off a
teleprompterwithout being egregiously racist.
Instead, it is the pivot of our citizenry from a naive maybe-he-won’t-be-so-bad optimism to a cold-eyed assessment of our grim reality. Our executive branch not only coddles white supremacists, but
employs them; our president praises dictators and sends “
best regards” to maimed patriotic protesters. Even Trump’s lackeys–
Huckabee,
Ryan,
Sessions— felt compelled to condemn the nazis Trump was so slow to explicitly refute.
It may be possible–albeit tremendously difficult–for the U.S. to rebuild from the destruction of not only Trump’s presidency, but the shift in political culture his campaign catalyzed, if we are willing to acknowledge its severity. But there is one exception to this plausibility: nuclear war. The deployment of nuclear weapons would mark the point of no return. It is an option that Trump embraces with his trademark bravado.
