"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. For a traitor appears not a traitor--he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation--he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city--he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared"
----Cicero, Roman Statesman, 42 BCE
Economist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich listed in a podcast posted on Facebook a few days ago the reasons why he judges our Caesar Disgustus to be the worst president in the history of this country. We've had incompetent presidents before, Reich explained, citing James Buchanan and Warren Harding. We've had racist presidents as well, Reich informs us, citing Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johson. He could have added Woodrow Wilson to the list. But never before have we had such a combination, asserted Reich, as he made his case for 45 weighing in at 45.
Reich could have said more. For added to this dubious list of nefarious characteristics one would also have to add more than a measure of corruption as well as mendacity. Our Caesar Disgustus is nothing less than the quintessential "Boomer", the ultimate vandal; the very incarnation of the four horses of the apocalypse: Ignorance, Incompetence, Corruption, and Mendacity, all rolled into one utterly obscene personage masquerading as the president of the United States.
Reich is quite right: never before has the Republic witnessed, in the words of William Bendix in "The Life of Riley" such a "revolting development". Indeed, never before has the republic been presented with such a clear and present danger. While Harding struggled with his self-conscious ignorance, painfully aware of what he didn't know. Buchanan sat quietly as the Union was breaking at the seams but was, nevertheless, operating upon widely held beliefs concerning the limitations then held as to the nature of federal authority. These men were, given their limitations, not at war with the 'norms' of governance as uninformed or wrong-headed they may be. Disgustus is cut from a different cloth. A vandal, a barbarian, destroying willy-nilly the norms of governance calling into question the legitimacy of the very institutions of government itself. In the process, Teapot Dome, Credit Mobilier, Watergate, appear to be mere child's play, a mere prelude to the storm now savaging the republic.
"That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men"… Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence. Wherever one postulates the origin and, therefore, the legitimacy of the 'rights of man', be it providence or the people, such rights can only be exercised and made secure by the establishment of government. Without government, there can be no rights. To make war upon government, republican government is to wage war not only upon the rights of the people—the rights of man in the words of Thomas Paine—but upon the people. This is the threat now posed by the great vandal who, while destroying the legitimacy of the organs of government—be it the press, the intelligence agencies, the courts, the Congress, and law enforcement--threatens the legitimacy of government itself and our rights it was constituted to protect. One has only to witness the assault by Digustus on the first amendment as well as the fourth amendment's guarantee of procedural and substantive due process. One need look no further than the assault upon the 14th amendment's guarantee of equal justice, as Disgustus seeks to delegitimize the investigations into his conduct, his advocacy of police violence, his denigration of the courts, his vandalizing of the regulations.
Disgustus is indeed a clear and present danger, the delineation of which will occupy these columns in the coming months and beyond, for the threat runs wide and it runs deep. It extends well beyond the tRUMP White House and well before the current administration. It is a cancer called conservatism and, should the republic survive, will take decades to expunge.
The Apocalypse is here. The Apocalypse is now. The four horsemen are upon us.
"An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh"
Impeach and Imprison
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