By MIKE MAGEE
I’ve at all times felt a kinship with EJ Dionne. We’re each Boomers, although I’m 4 years his senior. We share related politics, spiritual origins, early Catholic faculty educations, fathers in well being care and moms who have been lecturers, deep New England roots, dependancy to the written phrase, blessings with lengthy marriages and youngsters (they 3, we 4), and deep revulsion with Trump and his enablers and every thing they characterize.
Viewing him as measured and clever, I took particular care in studying his Washington Post column yesterday, “The phrases about Joe Biden I by no means needed to write down.”
For twelve days since that first debate, I’ve labored to stay formally impartial on “what subsequent to do,” and stayed centered on how to make sure a decisive (message-sending) defeat not solely of Trump however Republicans up and down the ticket, in order that there isn’t a confusion that the entire cabal – Project 2025, Leonard Leo et al, the Supreme Court’s “Doomed Crusade”, Bannon-led MAGA insurrectionists – is sufficiently devastated that it can not remerge from the cinders.
There isn’t any doubt that Biden’s bodily and psychological decline was on full view for over 50 million Individuals two weeks in the past. And also you don’t need to be a medical historian or a prize successful journalist to acknowledge that the degenerative processes which might be accountable for his decline are progressive (albeit presumably slowly progressive). That’s to say, his decline will proceed, as predictably as did Ronald Reagan’s.
However as E.J. makes clear in his opinion piece this week, “Biden’s capability to do a ‘good job’ will not be ‘what that is about.’ Donald Trump’s risk to democracy is the overriding query earlier than the nation…”
Whereas Dionne is true that this isn’t “about Biden,” he understates the issue when he suggests as an alternative that it’s about Trump alone. That’s no extra true than to recommend that WWII was solely about Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito, when in truth the problem was far better than that.
Said merely, the human species within the Axis societies had gone off the rails, and channeled themselves right into a dying spiral. “Breaking the spell” required unprecedented pressure and finally the usage of atomic bombs, adopted by multi-decade investments by means of the Marshall Plan to reestablish civilized human societies.
President Biden limping to the end line and repeating slight margin victories in seven swing states is not going to remedy America’s present drawback. We’re too far alongside. As with Hitler’s Germany within the 30’s, the enemy’s course trajectory is by now seen for all to see, and it’ll obtain its’ Project 2025 targets and aims if allowed. These decided radicalized leaders are greater than midway there, fueled with a non secular fervor that can’t be modified by sincere debate or calm logic.
Success breeds success as effectively for evil as for good. Up to now, with Biden nonetheless in energy, political arsonists have achieved an immune Government department; a biased Judiciary with no Code of Ethics; a Home of Representatives directed from Mar-a-Lago; and 14 state houses with absolute management over their residents reproductive rights.
Clearly the issue is larger than Trump. Project 2025’s declaration leaves little room for confusion. It states: “It isn’t sufficient for conservatives to win elections. If we’re going to rescue the nation from the grip of the unconventional Left, we’d like each a governing agenda and the correct folks in place, prepared to hold this agenda out on Day One of many subsequent conservative Administration.”
There shall be no Pearl Harbor to wake us from our sleep, or impress our clear majorities that know of their hearts that one thing has gone very, very unsuitable. That Presidential debate was our last warning. Time’s up. As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) stated this weekend “This can be a actually crucial week. I do suppose the clock is ticking.”
What then is the formulation for an awesome defeat of the Trump Reich? Three pillars: Vitality, Enthusiasm, Ladies-Led.
Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and common THCB contributor. He’s the writer of CODE BLUE: Inside America’s Medical Industrial Complex (Grove/2020)
