It is most important in this hour of American crisis to think ahead, to look out over the horizon towards the day when this rancid era has ended, when it becomes the subject of study, when historians evaluate this period and wonder, how is it that America's democracy entered such crisis at a time of relative peace and prosperity? How is it that the demagogue rose? How is it that so many tens of millions became faithless towards American democracy that has been sustained through sacrifices that beggar the imagination? How could it be that so many Americans that stand tall when the flag passes by, they don't take their hats off when the national anthem is sung? How could it be that so many of those people became so disconnected to the idea and ideals of the country that they would lose sight of the fact that everything is sustained by the choice and the birthright of the American people to sustain their leaders? When the moment comes that historians study this era, what they will be drawn to is the billion-dollar conflict industry, towards the media of this era, towards Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson, towards Fox News and Rupert Murdoch, towards the Eric Bollings of the world. Bolling sat down for an interview with Donald Trump. Eric Bolling, of course was fired from Fox News like Trump's soon to be daughter-in- law Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was also fired for sexual misconduct. That seems to be the fate of most of Fox News's hosts over time. At any rate, Eric Bolling sat down with Donald Trump. The Trump performance is predictable, unhinged, deranged. He attacks prosecutor Jack Smith, and he attacks prosecutor Fani Willis, the Atlanta district attorney. With regard to Fani Willis, the attacks are overtly racist. It turns out, at least according to Trump, that Fani Willis' father may have been a Black Panther -- god forbid 40 years ago. It would certainly disqualify her from prosecuting the former president for trying to overthrow the election in the state of Georgia in 2023! Donald Trump is desperate, and the right wing media is frightened. Watching Donald Trump has become tedious, boring. It explains the ratings collapse of so much of the news media. It's simply hard to watch. There's nothing new to be said, yet, there are things that must be said. Donald Trump has dominated America's culture and our society for eight long years. Donald Trump has been ubiquitous in the faces of the American people, smothering them, oppressing them with his presence brought to the American people on a constant, unrelenting basis by America's news media for seven long years. Jake Tapper sat down with Charlie Sykes, and he talked about the coverage of Donald Trump. They talked about Trump manipulating the news media, in essence, and in effect, tricking them into situations where they gave Trump wall-to-wall coverage. A specific example was the instance when Donald Trump called a news conference to hold forth on the question of Barack Obama's birth certificate. The media kept the cameras on his empty podium for hours as they speculated what it is that he might say. And then he came on television said none of those things, attacked some more, and then left satisfied with having manipulated the media. That's how Tapper saw it. The media was manipulated, according to Tapper. The media was not manipulated. The media was there as willing partners, cashing in with their business partner, Donald Trump, making billions in profit for a sick show that would come, over time, to dominate American democracy, to poison it, to hurt it, to harm it. The American people have been on the receiving end of a fun house mirror show, an autocratic freak show, sponsored by and brought to the American people by Donald Trump and the Trump family. And again, with a collaborating media and political class. This crisis has been brought upon the country by Donald Trump. He will not relent and he will not step back. He believes and not without justification, that he has enough votes inside the Republican Party's primary process that he cannot be defeated. He further believes that he can beat Joe Biden in a close election. Donald Trump rightly looks at Joe Biden and thinks that Hillary Clinton was a very, very tough candidate. He doesn't accept the premise that Biden is unbeatable. That is foisted upon the American people by the national media. He understands that what is highly likely to happen is that he will be in a three-person race, not a two-person race. Donald Trump seems to understand that nobody in the Democratic Party will get to make a decision, or have a vote on the question of what it is that No Labels decides to do. Donald Trump on this singular question, oddly enough, seems to be the person most connected to reality in the race. Everybody else is saying he can't win, but Donald Trump remembers. He's heard that before. Even Donald Trump was once convinced that he couldn't win, that he couldn't beat Hillary Clinton -- until he did. And here's the thing: Donald Trump will never be convinced again that he can't win again. Donald Trump understands that winning is his only pathway to avoid spending the rest of his natural life in a federal prison or in home detention. Donald Trump must win so he can pardon himself. That is what the 2024 presidential election is about. The American people have a choice to make. There is no other group anywhere on earth that can make or influence that choice. We, the people of the United States, must decide. There are no John Adams, or Thomas Jeffersons or Frederick Douglass or Martin Luther Kings here to tell us what we should do. All that is left are their words, the examples of their integrity and of their character. All that is left is their heroism. That is what should guide us. We honor our heroes, not cowards, in America.
But it is also not the case that you can say that the cowardice doesn't pay. Cowardice has paid handsomely in the Trump era. This crisis has been brought upon the American people against their will. They had no vote in the matter. In fact, the vote they made was one that fired Donald Trump. His refusal to leave, his refusal to go, and the greed and the selfishness of an economy that sustains this madness, has to be brought to its knees. It must be brought to its end. The country is in crisis because of it. We are on a journey as citizens towards perfecting a union that existed before any of us were born, and will hopefully exist beyond the lifespans of our furthest imagined descendants. Each of us gets to play a small role in the most magnificent experiment in all the broad sweep of human history. We should be grateful for it. We should be thankful for it, and we should take every advantage of it. We owe our children nothing less.
