The last day

January 20th, 2017, marks the last day we will see for a long time -- perhaps ever -- when our nation was worthy of respect. In the coming years our leadership in the world, our moral authority, our economic and military power will all decline under this corrupt, incompetent regime.

Nevertheless, I do not despair. We will have new elections in less than 2 years, another presidential election in four. It may be that the collection of pus known as the Republican party is coming to a head so that it can finally be incised and drained.

We live in a system designed to a great extent with corrupt and incompetent leaders and stupid voters in mind. The coming years will be a race between the implosion of the GOP and its efforts to undermine democracy and free elections to the point that that implosion does not matter. If honest people step to the fight and refuse to cower in fear, I think we are likely to win this race.

The prize, I hope, will not merely be the saving of our democracy but the disgrace and dissolution of what is laughably called the conservative movement in this country, which could bring with it the potential for real substantial policy on climate among other things.

The key principle is resistance. Tyrants dissolve democracies not due their minority of passionate supporters, but due to majorities which are frightened into silence and denied the knowledge of their own strength. Do not be silenced. Do not be afraid. It's time for them to be afraid. They've grabbed a job they can't do by making promises they can't keep and the bills will rapidly come due. Then the people are coming for them.

Say not the Struggle nought Availeth

By Arthur Hugh Clough

Say not the struggle nought availeth,

     The labour and the wounds are vain,

The enemy faints not, nor faileth,

     And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;

     It may be, in yon smoke concealed,

Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,

     And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking

     Seem here no painful inch to gain,

Far back through creeks and inlets making,

     Comes silent, flooding in, the main.

And not by eastern windows only,

     When daylight comes, comes in the light,

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,

     But westward, look, the land is bright.

One way the world could end

It's now evident that Trump will staff the white house with belligerent incompetents, much like himself. We must now seriously contemplate, without hysteria or hyperbole, how bad things could get. Answer: pretty bad. Here's just one way it could unfold:

1. Trump's undisciplined talk on NATO persuades Putin that he can pull a Crimea with the Baltic states.

2. Trump, not strong-willed or stable at the best of times, is humiliated by this and the screaming taunts of his own party and national security apparatus that he is helpless in the face of Russian aggression.

3. The US intervenes in the Baltics, which rapid escalates into an undeclared conventional war.

4. One side or the other becomes convinced the enemy has or is about to launch a nuclear strike.

5. That side launches a nuclear attack, which is quickly reciprocated by the other.

6. The world as we know it ends.

At this point, I'm tempted to revisit the topic of the people who voted for Trump, the people who voted for a third party, or (by far the most numerous group) who didn't vote at all. But I realize that while I could happily spend the next however many years screaming YOU DID THIS, YOU ASSHOLES! YOU OWN THIS DISASTER, YOU HUMAN EQUIVALENTS OF A FRESH DOGSHIT AND HOT GARBAGE CASSEROLE! YOU BUILT THAT! such an approach is not likely to be particularly fruitful in terms of where we go from here. Just be advised that I am always, always thinking it.

If you didn't vote for Clinton: A step-by-step guide

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I imagine there are some people who are already trying to come to grips with the fact that by failing to vote for Hillary Clinton they helped make Donald Trump our president-elect. As it becomes brutally clear what a mistake this was, their numbers will grow. In a spirit of kindness and friendship, I would like to offer some practical suggestions to those nonvoters/third party voters/supporters of write-in candidates who, unlike Trump voters proper, may have some residual capacity for shame, and might even nurse the secret desire of someday doing something for the good of the world that might begin to make up for the death, madness and horror they helped unleash.

1. Lie. No one needs to know the truth about who you voted for. People who know will never look at you the same way again. Every time a journalist is assassinated, every time another hundred thousand jobs are lost, every time the coffins land at Andrews from a war that started due to a Twitter beef, people will remember you helped make it happen.

So lie. As of today, you supported Clinton, you voting for her, despite whatever misgivings you may have had. Learn that story and stick to it. This is not dishonesty but a necessary social fib. Telling people you voted for Jill Stein is the political equivalent of telling your spouse that their ass looks fat. If you want to do something good in this world and maybe start to dab at the dogshit that is smeared across your soul (never to be expunged completely), you will have to cooperate with decent people to achieve anything. Decent people will never trust you if they know what you are. Take the secret to your grave.

2. Don’t try to explain yourself. So maybe you’ve already spilled the beans, and lying is no longer an option. People know what you did. You’ve started to see the little stiffness that comes into your friends’ manner when politics comes up when you’re around. You’ve crossed the point of no return, but there are still things you can do to limit the damage. Chief among them is to keep your rationalizations and excuses to yourself.

3. Seriously, whatever you do, don’t try to explain yourself. Don’t whine about Bernie, don’t complain about Clinton’s e-mails or whatever other non-scandal you used to justify infecting our democracy with the human equivalent of tertiary syphilis. (Hey, remember when he ran a fake charity and used it to buy a $25,000 portrait of himself? That man will be the president. You built that!)

Newsflash: No one cares. No one cares why you enabled a man who talks about American Muslims in 2016 with the same language Nazis used about Jews in 1936.

Remember Star Wars? Remember Darth Vader? What a great character! Remember when George Lucas thought we wanted three movies about how this guy went from an annoying child to a whiny emo bitch to a child-killer? Yeah, how he got that way was never the point. Normal people don’t give a shit why you sided with evil. You did, and nothing you can say will make that better. Just. Stop. Talking.

4. Do not try and play both sides of the street. I would not believed it had I not seen it myself, but there are some people so deranged that they will brag about how terrible Trump will be and the part they played in bringing him to power, and then complain that the democrats did, or didn’t do something or nothing to lose his support and that of others like him (him because let’s be real here, it’s a him.)

Pick a lane. If electing Trump is a bad thing, it is a bad thing you helped bring to pass, and you with direct responsibility for the outcome have no business lecturing the people who voted the right way about what they might have done to gain your support. This is the moral equivalent of a pedophile publishing a guide for six-year-old girls on what not to wear.

5. Do not try to create a moral distinction between you and the people who voted for Trump, based on the fact that you merely did not vote against him. No one cares about the difference between the bank robber who shoots the teller and the one driving the getaway car. If you want to open up a space between you and the people cursing Muslims in the street and assaulting Jews, there is one and only one way to do so;

5. Say you’re sorry. Just that. Say you’re sorry. You were a fool; you made a terrible mistake; now you want to work, humbly, alongside the people who made the right choice, to fight Trump, the GOP, and inbred bigots in general.

I know that some of you are still deep into the process of rationalizing what you’ve done and you may still think you can justify yourselves somehow. Time will ultimately bring many of you to a realization that no justification is possible, only a frank unqualified apology and humble hard work. If that seems unappealing to you, remember #1 and lie for all you're worth. Good luck.