Nothing Donald Trump does comes as a complete surprise anymore.  The more odious the things he said on the campaign trail, the more likely it has become that he will, sooner or later, hand down policy edicts as President that make those outrageous statements pale by comparison.  I am convinced that his early quip about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue and getting away with it was not merely a throw-away line.

So, no surprise there…

What still totally takes my breath away are the polls describing a malevolent turn to the Republican party as a whole, and the complicity of its surviving elite.  I call them “surviving elite” because a number of that elite have seen the writing on the border wall, folded their tents and stolen silently into the night.  Some, like John McCain, have not been so silent.

The defections only seem to strengthen Trump’s cult-like hold over the so-called “Grand Old Party.”

Last night, Kate Larose, candidate for the Vermont House from St. Albans held a campaign launch in the Bliss Ballroom of the Franklin County Museum.  Everyone was welcome, including the kids for whom there was a mountain of empty cardboard boxes and an invitation to build their own town.  Pizza, salad and ice cream sundaes were served up on a side-table.

Even though I know that Kate is running as a Democrat/Progressive, there was no specific reference to political party and the theme of the evening was our community: what we like about it and how we hope that it will improve.

I’m sure that this was a deliberate effort to counter the poisonous vapor of national politics wafting our way from the south, and refocus voters on local/regional concerns.

I commend Kate and the other gathered optimists who can see a future of harmony worth fighting for.  I am grateful for their positive fervor.

I once felt exactly as they do and wish I did still.

This year, I will volunteer to man the phones for Democratic/Progressive candidates and contribute what I can to each campaign, as I always have.  Not to do so would be inexcusable, I know.  

But I will do so without much hope for the future of our fragile greater democracy.

I like to think that local Republicans, my neighbors, could not possibly support the Fascistic inclinations and pure mean-spiritedness of Donald Trump, but those polls have forced me to look at them in a troubling new light.  While we always differed on matters of policy, I never doubted that they were good people with whom I shared most overarching values.  

That certain knowledge always made participating in the political process a pleasure.  Win or lose, It felt good to be part of something greater than myself, and I always came away with confidence in the overarching better nature of the “system.”

Not anymore.

Donald Trump has violated nearly every civil and moral norm of American society; has never accepted responsibility for any of the evil he has unleashed on that civil society; lies uncontrollably;  indulges his personal vanity in the most grotesque manner; enriches himself and his family, whenever possible, at everyone else’s expense; and has cynically undertaken a personal assault on the constitution, the like of which we’ve never seen before.

Anyone who excuses or enables this devil is not my neighbor, nor my countryman.  This is what constitutional crisis looks like.

If we survive this period of infamy, somehow reclaiming our democracy from the brink of oblivion,  we must be prepared to eliminate private funding from elections, reign-in influence by lobbyists, clearly define legal parameters to limit the ultimate power of the presidency, and seriously question the legitimacy of the two party system.   We will also have a heap of fence-mending to do with our traditional international allies: “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa…”

Failing rigorous commitment to reform, we will justly assume our place on the dustheap of fallen empires throughout the ages.