We Now Know What America Is

It is plain and beyond dispute.

All the myths about what America is, or perhaps more accurately, what America has long pretended to be, have been permanently extinguished.

For more than four years, we have witnessed a president lie with the ease of an authoritarian who knows that he is immune from accountability because millions of Americans believe - with a euphoric zeal - his spigot of grotesque and dangerous lies.

In doing so, they have revealed the biggest lie of all - not about Trump, but America.

Turns out, the so-called shining city on a hill is, instead, a black hole where hope, optimism, reason and the future go to die.

Last night was not a referendum on Trump's character, but America's character.

Last night, the myth about the wisdom of America was extinguished.

Last night, the myth about the exuberance of America was extinguished.

Last night, the myth about the good sense of America was extinguished.

Remember, millions of Americans are ready to elect a strongman as president - twice.

Remember, millions of Americans are ready to elect a president who has a lot in common - in mind, purpose and spirit - with the "tin-pot dictators" Americans have referenced, again and again, and again, as a symbolic foil to that democracy-loving "shining city on the hill" called, of course, America.

It was not an aberration.

It was a choice of millions of Americans who are happy to vote for a nihilist who has used the presidency to promote his obscene brand and enrich his family and pack of sycophants at the expense of the increasingly phantom "national interest".

I am through listening to or tolerating any more nonsense by liberal Sigmund Freud wannabes who have implored us to understand, please, please, the scarred and delicate psyches of Trump's legion of willing accomplices who have, without fail, offered angry and violent succour to their dear leader.

Last night, they made their lot and they are more than welcome to it.

So, I am not concerned about whether a deadly virus that continues its rampage across America touches their lives in distant or more intimate ways.

I am not concerned that a Trump-made, far-right Supreme Court will continue to erase their supposedly sacrosanct individual rights to assuage the corporate interests these justices were installed to serve and protect.

I am not concerned that that same gallery of Trump-appointed far-right Supreme Court justices are likely to strip these myopic dupes of the protections afforded to them by the Affordable Care Act against bankruptcy when they get ill - as they surely will.

As I said, they made their lot and they are welcome to it.

But I am concerned about the fate and futures of the millions of Americans who have, since Trump's piddling inauguration, resisted every loathsome act of this diseased regime abetted by his equally loathsome followers.

I am concerned for the millions of members of the American resistance who may lose their healthcare; who may lose the right to exercise agency over their bodies; who may lose the right to love and marry who they want to love and marry; and who will lose their livelihoods and lives to a capricious, out-of-control virus.

But I am most concerned about the fates and futures of my two children and countless other children inside and outside of America who will suffer the dark, inevitable consequences if Trump and his millions of accomplices ultimately win.

The world's children have inherited the hard job of confronting the existential threat of climate change because the adults have botched it by failing to do what needed to be done when it needed to be done.

They know the earth is dying. They know that if they do not act quickly, the earth will not be resuscitated. Those are the facts, well-established by scientists.

Trump and his puerile accomplices do not believe in facts produced by hard-working scientists. They believe in wishful thinking that does not tax their lazy synapses.

They believe that since they can still make snowballs, the earth will cool and rising sea levels will not overwhelm coastal cities; that drought will not destroy more people and places; that fires will not spread and consume ever more lands; and that the earth will not, one day, become uninhabitable.

The linguist and political analyst Noam Chomsky - who is not prone to hyperbole - said recently that Trump represents the greatest threat to humanity since Hitler.

"That's a very outrageous statement. And every time I say it, I preface it by saying, here's an outrageous statement, but please ask yourself whether it's true," Chomsky told a British newspaper recently. "We are moving towards cataclysm. There is one country in the world, the United States, that wants to put its foot on the accelerator."

All of what you say is true, Mr Chomsky. And, if Trump and his accomplices prevail, our children are going to pay for it - dearly.