Trump Will Die and He Will Be Forgotten, Sadly

 I was in Washington, D.C. once in the late 90s, for a medical presentation on a topic that I’ve long forgotten, but I haven’t forgotten visiting several of the Smithsonian Museums, the Washington and Lincoln monuments, and several other incredible memorials to the good and bad moments of this country’s short history.  I have also been to Marble, Colorado several times before and after my Washington visit and I saw where the stone used for many of those sculptures was quarried.  In this depressing and embarrassing moment in the decline of the American empire, I can’t help but believe that, while “this too will pass,” the damage done will last for generations.  In fact, I doubt that the United States will ever again be “great,” united, or even a major world power when Trump has done his damage.  The “sad” part about Trump’s eventual death and the American fascist period’s disappearance from our memories is that forgetting it means it will happen again.  And, probably, it will happen here again.

Just like when Stalin’s statues were torn down in Russia during that pitiful country’s brief moment of marginal sanity, Russians forgot those lessons in less than a generation and are, now, repeating every Stalinist mistake made in Putin’s regime (and creating some really impressively stupid new ones).  Just like that, in a short time the “loved” gullible, uneducated Republican voters will forget how their foolish infatuation with a fake billionaire and a Russian tool caused the end of the American democratic experiment and folded up the nation’s “empire” like a piece of single-ply toilet paper.  That is the only sad part of forgetting about Trump and the Republican/Russian fascist political zeitgeist. 

Other than Chairman Mao Zedong there are no statues proclaiming the brilliance of any of the world’s past fascist, terrorist “leaders” in the world.  The vote is still out on Chairman Mao, since China has staggered into the 21^st Century more capitalist than socialist while remaining centralist and largely a dictatorship.  The rest of the world’s Trump role-models—Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Tiso, Antonescu, Salazar, Stalin and Lenin, Pinochet, Pol Pot, Amin, Hussein, and their historic predecessors Napoleon and that ilk—have all found their rightful disreputable place in history and their statues and portraits and other likenesses have been trashed and hidden from view.  But the followers of tyrants are not good at history and are even worse at observing reality.  It’s hard to imagine what is going on in their tiny minds, but it isn’t hard to see what kind of world they’d like to construct.  Full of fear, hate, ignorance, prejudice, and foolishness, the minions of dictators just keep getting it wrong and learning nothing from the experience. 

At this point, with the Senate and House of Representatives abandoning their Constitutional responsibilities and stuffing their noses as far up Trump’s ass as possible, it isn’t hard to imagine a nightmare abomination like this picture being funded and, even, begun.  Most likely, it would end in the destruction of the entire monument, since no one with talent, taste, or intelligence would be willing to be involved.  Since Native Americans have long disliked the original sculpture, calling it “a giant middle finger to Native Americans,” they wouldn’t object to having the faces “gently” removed from their mountain.  With Trump’s ugly mug plastered up there, too, more than half of the country would be right there with them.  By the time Trump and his Russian handlers have pumped-and-dumped the US stock market until there is nothing left to hype, it’s possible that even Trump’s minions might join them from the unemployment line and homelessness. 

With nothing but a pack of losers, fake news talking heads, mediocre hedge fund mismanagers, and simpering military second-stringers who forgot their oath to the US Constitution so quickly that you’d suspect they weren’t listening when they were sworn in, this latest pack of fascists are unlikely to last long.  They might outlast me, but I’m fortunately-for-me old.  Putting the US back on the pile-on-the-carbon path to accelerating climate change, it’s possible I might last as long as any of you, though.