John Rachal's Blog

Trump voters might say this is just a little thing, totally forgettable. But it’s not. In fact it is a single, tiny part of a much bigger enterprise to turn the United States into, say, Viktor Orban’s quasi-dictatorship Hungary. Project 2025 used Hungary as a model.

Last week the Smithsonian Institution took down a part of a display concerning presidential scandals in its National Museum of American History. The parts that remained untouched were Andrew Johnson’s impeachment, Richard Nixon’s Watergate, and Bill Clinton’s impeachment (though neither Johnson nor Clinton was convicted and removed from office). The part that was removed—theoretically temporarily—involved Trump’s two impeachments. Gone. Atomized. This is not whitewashing history, it’s erasing it, like a person airbrushed from a Stalin-era photograph. As David Graham of The Atlantic notes, the current display now has this sentence: “Only three presidents have seriously faced removal.”

Graham mentions this as just one of five “assault[s] on truth” from the administration just last week. He also notes that the Trump administration has been “pressuring the Smithsonian to align its messages with the president’s political priorities” and that J. D. Vance is an ex officio member of the Smithsonian board.

Victor Klemperer (1881-1960) was a Jewish, German World War I veteran who kept one of the most important diaries of World War II as he and his non-Jewish wife sought to survive Hitler’s rise and fall (they did, but barely). In I Shall Bear Witness, the first volume of his journal published posthumously in 1995, Klemperer mentions that he is asked why he did not focus on the large events of the war that seemed more important in charting its course. His reply was that he chose to focus instead on the “mosquito bites” that he and others experienced and that collectively add up to a dictatorship and genocide.

The Smithsonian’s action is one of those mosquito bites—by itself just an itch to be forgotten next week. It is barely making the news. And yet it is emblematic of Trump and his lackeys’ grand mission to transform a democracy into an autocracy one act and a hundred lies at a time, accumulating and gaining momentum, and leading us in a direction no patriotic American should want.

Also posted on Facebook, 8/5/25

Vladimir Lenin had a mantra to give his coming Russian revolution the chaos, grievance, and turmoil it needed to frighten the masses and turn them to his side: “The worse, the better.”

Is this what Donald Trump is doing to attempt to manufacture a crisis in Los Angeles and claim that, as a matter of national security, he must invoke emergency powers to send in the National Guard and U. S. Marines to quell the uprising—when the L.A. police have said that their 9,000 police officers are more than capable of handling the disturbance all by themselves, thank you? Is Trump, who in his first inaugural  considered “American carnage” good for him, instinctively thinking “the worse, the better”?

If you’ve ever wondered if we have the best government money can buy, as Mark Twain may have said, you can quit wondering. The Republican “one big beautiful bill,” in addition to adding at least $2.4 trillion to the national debt over ten years, will distribute its largesse thus:

People making over $1 million per year will have a net 4.3% tax cut, averaging over $89,000

Top 1% income earners: 4.3% cut, $64,000

90-99% income earners: 4.2% cut, $10,960

80-89% income earners, 2.9% cut, $4,500 (mean income for top quintile, 80-100%: $277,300)

60-79% income earners: 2.7% cut, $2,750 (mean income for fourth quintile: $119,900)

40-59% income earners: 1.9% cut, $1,290 (mean income for third quintile: $74,730)

20-39% income earners: 1.5% cut, $640 (mean income for second quintile: $43,850)

Bottom 20% income earners: 0.6% cut, $90 (mean income for bottom quintile: $16,120)

(Percentage tax cut and dollar amount are from Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; mean income per quintile is household income from  Tax Policy Center for 2022)

According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the top 1% of earners would receive about $121 billion in tax cuts, while the bottom 60% would receive about $90 billion. Read that sentence again. The top 5% of earners would receive 43% of the cuts. For working class Americans, Trump-proposed tariffs—effectively a tax on consumers—would have a net effect of actually raising taxes.

The bill barely passed the House 215-214, with two GOP representatives voting against, one voting “present,” and two not voting. One of the two GOP No votes, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, complained that the House rules allow 72 hours for a bill to be read by members, but that was not the case here. He asked, “Shouldn’t we take more than a few hours to read a bill this big and this consequential?”

The regressive aspects of the bill are bad enough; favoring the wealthy and cutting benefits to the less well-off are GOP hallmarks. But we should not overlook what it does to the national debt, already at $36 trillion. When Trump was running in 2016, he promised to totally eliminate the debt within two terms. Instead, he added to it in his first term, especially with his 2017 tax cuts (“my rich friends are going to hate me,” he said with a straight face), and he’s doing it again here. The debt itself may not affect our pocketbooks today or next month or next year, though then again the stock market and IRAs may not like it. But this bill is irresponsible, and there will be a day of reckoning. And it may be our children and grandchildren who will have to face that day—and pay for our spendthrift ways.

On Saturday Val and I drove to Gulfport to participate in the nationwide protest against Trump known as “Hands Off,” presumably referring to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, American freedoms, American pocketbooks, and American democracy. Val and I made our small-ish signs: Hers warned, “Wake Up: Trump Doesn’t Care About You” and mine admonished, “Patriots: Silence Is Submission.” The use of Patriots was a small attempt to re-claim the word for people in the middle or on the left who, like me, hate to see the word co-opted by the right, as it largely has been. In fact a FB friend chided me for its use for exactly that reason, but gave my explanatory reply a “like.” Actual patriots are the folks who are not trying to storm the Capitol, trample the Constitution, deconstruct democracy, and institutionalize authoritarianism. By saying Silence Is Submission, I was also acting on my decision that I will make my views known—no longer simply on my unread blog, but on Facebook and in conversation if my interlocutor is knowingly or unknowingly willing to offend me by taking a Trumpist view—not that I won’t hear him out.

The protest itself was uneventful. We started near Senator Roger Wicker’s office in the Cadence Bank Building and listened to some impassioned anti-Trumpist, anti-Wicker boilerplate. The organizers contrived to overlook the utility of a hand-held megaphone, so much of the boilerplate was lost to the crowd of what I estimated to be nearing 300. We walked two-thirds of a mile to a federal building, with obligatory chants of “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Trump and Musk have got to go” issuing from some of the more inspired. At the end there was another short megaphone-less speech or two, after which there was some mulling around, posing with signs for passing motorists, and heading back singly or in small groups to Cadence Bank or other stops along the way.

I have generally felt that virtue is most credible when it is done when no one is looking, and so doing it will be its own reward. Thus I feel a certain ambivalence about my own participation in such protests. On the one hand there is an uncomfortable feeling of performative self-indulgence, or virtue signaling (“Hey, look how virtuous I am”), or just plain showing off—especially when the prospective dangers are few or almost non-existent. After all, it’s not like we were Russian citizens protesting the war in front of the Kremlin (where even calling it a “war” is a jailable offense), or Chinese students in Tiananmen Square (much less the solitary man blocking the tank), or a young John Lewis and company civilly disobeying the Selma police by marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge—and knowing they would pay for it, as indeed they did. No, ours was not even civil disobedience—we had a permit—nor did we rate a single counter-protester, much less modern brownshirts or menacing police with tear gas and billy clubs. And I’m sure not saying I wish we had.

But on the other hand of my ambivalence, the threat of Trumpism is so profound, and the stakes so high, that making one’s non-violent stand known is, if not an actual act of physical courage, at least a willingness not to acquiesce or meekly, silently, scurry to the safety of what Mencken called “the warm, reassuring smell of the herd.” Participation in the protest was—is—an act of active citizenship, an act of patriotism. So, performative as it may be, even more so is it necessary.

The adulation Donald Trump holds for known murderer and dictator Vladimir Putin, and the contempt he holds for Churchill-esque defender of his country President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, is now all but official. Trump has now called Zelensky a “dictator,” said that Ukraine started the war, and claims that Zelensky’s approval rating is 4%, whereas in fact it is 57% according to a poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology earlier this month, a number Trump can only fantasize about. Trump plans to meet with Putin—Europe and Ukraine itself are not invited—to surrender gritty little Ukraine to his Russian friend. Aside from Trump’s jaw-dropping lies–Zelensky is the dictator? Ukraine started the war? –has America fallen so low that it now abandons a democratic ally and exchanges smiles and handshakes with the former KGB officer who is the first to invade a European neighbor since Adolph Hitler?*

In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain infamously appeased Hitler by surrendering a region of Czechoslovakia known as the Sudetenland to Hitler for a promise of “peace for our time” at Munich. “Munich” is now considered the most shameful act of appeasement—one country debasing itself to another in the hope of some reward—in modern history. (Churchill said to Chamberlain, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor; you chose dishonor, and you will have war.”) The ignominy of Munich and the ignominy of Trump’s plans to dismember and surrender Ukraine to Putin are certainly not perfect analogues, but in one way Trump’s plan, or concept of a plan, is worse. Chamberlain chose dishonor, but he surely knew Hitler was no friend; Trump will choose dishonor by abandoning a friend in need to a despot he admires.

* I must do my homework a little better. After thinking about it more carefully, I remembered the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, looked it up, and was also reminded of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Mea culpa.

Thomas Paine saw “The American Crisis” of his day and warned of “the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot [who] will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country.” Perhaps he glimpsed the Republican summer soldiers and sunshine patriots in the crisis of our day, who have shrunk indeed. They have confirmed Russell Vought, one of the architects of the Project 2025 blueprint for dismantling American democracy, for director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Vought, Trump’s first term budget director and overseer of the Republican platform committee during the recent campaign observed, “what we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them” (Shapiro and Vegh, 2024). Those pockets of independence include the FBI, the CIA, and Inspectors General, the last charged with investigating fraud, ethics violations, and conflicts of interest in the federal government. Trump has already fired seventeen IGs. In goose-step with Elon Musk, Vought will oversee the purging of any federal government employee determined by them to be disloyal—not to the country, not to the Constitution, but to the person of Donald Trump.

Trump claimed during the campaign to know nothing of Project 2025, a 900 page document largely based on Viktor Orban’s takeover of Hungary. He lied, of course. It is unclear whether Trump, Musk, and Vought’s vision for America is merely the pseudo-democracy in Hungary or, in their fondest dream, Vladimir Putin’s rule in Russia. Meanwhile the summer soldiers and sunshine patriots of the GOP bow and scrape.

J. Shapiro and Z. Vegh. “The Orbanisation of America: Hungary’s Lessons for Donald Trump,” European Council on Foreign Relations, October 9, 2024. https://ecfr.eu/publication/the-orbanisation-of-america-hungarys-lessons-for-donald-trump/

We have entrusted the nation to a geriatric Nero who grins as the institutions he has set alight burn. I cannot think of a single area of the political, economic, military, national security, religious, educational, judicial, journalistic, or social landscape of American life that will be improved after another Trump term. I believe that every single major aspect of the America we have known, despite its many failures to achieve a more perfect union, will suffer under the presidency of a man who is a cruel, brutish demagogue focused on retribution against his perceived enemies, achieving near dictatorial power, basking in the adoration of his admirers, and enhancing his own personal wealth.

Healthcare? Medicare and Medicaid will be attacked and probably trimmed or even turned over to private entities, while RFK—totally unqualified—will undermine vaccines and medical research and spread his ignorance; meanwhile Trump has already withdrawn from the World Health Organization, calling it a “rip off.”

Education? Higher education is already being threatened as too “woke,” while k-12 will see further right-wing Christian-izing, taxpayer funds will increasingly flow to private schools, and curricula seen as “woke” (learning about slavery, e.g.) will be shunted to the sidelines and book-banning will increase. Research grants will be increasingly subject to Trump’s political correctness while others, including medical research, dry up altogether. Trump has also promised to eliminate an entire cabinet department: Education.

The economy? No. Income inequality will be greater; second-term Trump tax cuts will benefit primarily the wealthy and corporations. Tariffs will provoke counter-tariffs, destabilizing international trade (as they did with the catastrophic Smoot-Hawley bill in 1930). With his 25% tariffs on our friends Canada and Mexico and 10% on China, coupled with planned deportations of immigrants who pick our crops, build our homes, and clean our hotels, the average American family will see inflation rise and higher prices, potentially hitting $2000 per year. Another four trillion will be added to the national debt, approaching $40 trillion—this from the man who promised in 2016 to eliminate the debt after two terms.

Race, ethnicity, and gender issues? Obviously not. Trump’s recent anti-DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) moves, even including blaming a recent collision of a military helicopter and commercial jet resulting in 67 deaths, on DEI, and his press secretary’s defense of that as “common sense” and her allusion to people of a different skin color in that defense make clear the White House view. As for gender-related matters, Trump, Vance, and Musk have all made their misogyny clear (Musk: “A Republic of high status males is best for decision-making”).

The military? With Hesgeth confirmed as Secretary of Defense, and even three Republican senators (Collins, Murkowski, and McConnell) voting against him requiring VP Vance to break a senate 50-50 tie, the military will be weakened while China outpaces the U.S. technologically. Besides Hesgeth’s alcoholic and sexual escapades, he has no managerial experience. His only qualification is being a Trump toady. Trump’s threats to NATO could be effective in pushing all NATO countries to pay at least 2% of their GDP for national defense, but he could endanger NATO itself, and be perfectly willing to abandon a threatened NATO member he doesn’t like. The country will become more authoritarian, and a complacent Republican congress will let it happen. Seeing Trump’s isolationism and his affection for other authoritarians, China will be sorely tempted to take Taiwan, knowing that Trump will do nothing about it. American arms will cease to flow to Ukraine, and Putin, not satisfied to gobble up the 20% of Ukraine he already has, will continue his war until Ukraine is devoured.

International relations? America’s standing in the democratic world will inevitably suffer, as American democracy itself, even the Constitution, will increasingly come under internal attack, as birthright citizenship in the 14^th amendment already has. American isolationism will further erode democracy worldwide and tempt China, Russia, and possibly others to further crack down internally and rattle their sabers externally. Trump’s world view that international agreements are a winners and losers game rather than a mutually beneficial outcome will alienate allies and make America less secure, as David Frum has pointed out. Meanwhile the government’s hard turn to authoritarianism will follow the Project 2025 playbook, with Victor Orban’s Hungary as a model.

Law enforcement? A less prosperous economy will increase street crime while white collar crime among the political class will be given free rein. Trump is already purging the FBI of agents, potentially thousands, who had anything to do with investigations of him as well as those who raided Mar-a-Lago in search of documents including top secret ones that he had stolen. The Trump rule will echo that attributed to Peruvian strongman Oscar Benavides: “For my friends, everything. For my enemies, the law.” If Kash Patel becomes FBI director, whatever is left of the FBI will become the American equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition.

Corruption at the highest levels? No doubt at all—the man who claimed to drain the swamp will bring corruption to levels not seen since the Gilded Age of the 19^th century, with his own corruption worse than any previous president. Trump has already illegally fired in his first week seventeen Inspectors General, who investigate government ethics violations, mismanagement, fraud, and corruption in his undisguised plan to eliminate any independent investigation into his business and actions. Elon Musk’s businesses will invite major conflict-of-interest situations, another area IGs investigate. Federal judges such as Aileen Cannon will lean away from the law and toward Trump and his agenda. The corruption will not just be of the rewarding-friends-and-punishing-enemies type. The presidency itself, as it did in Trump’s first term, will become Trump’s personal money-making and power-grabbing machine.

Religion? Fissures in Jefferson’s wall of separation between church and state will widen; Christian nationalism will prosper and insert itself further into government, while divorcing itself completely from the central teachings of Jesus; attacks on Muslims and Jews will increase. A majority of evangelicals and Trump himself will continue to pretend to adhere to Christian values, despite calling Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde—who  implored him at the inaugural prayer service to show compassion and mercy to fearful marginalized groups including gays and immigrants—a “so-called bishop” and demanding her apology for her “inappropriate comments,” as if saying what Jesus would have said was inappropriate and offensive.

Political division? Much worse. We will continue to be, as we already are, a house divided. But finding middle ground will become even more difficult. Republicans cannot even agree whether Russia is friend or foe; likely Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who will be in charge of all American intelligence matters, has defended Putin and coddled former Syrian President and mass murderer Bashar al-Assad. Collegiality in congress, especially the House, will further evaporate, and more votes will strictly follow the party line. Friends and families will continue to divide along lines of those who support the Trumpian strongman vision and those who recognize it for the counterfeit of American values that it is. The nation will move closer and closer to oligarchy and plutocracy.

Truth itself? Trump’s daily lies will continue, and we will be numb to them; Fox News will continue to spew its far right propaganda and ignore news unflattering to Trump, even when it knows what it says is untrue as it did about the outcome of the 2020 election, and knowing that feeding rage feeds its coffers; mainstream, unbiased journalism will be under constant assault and will assume a permanent defensive stance and frequently self-censor regarding Trump; trust in institutions will flatline, while belief in absurdities will soar; demagoguery will flourish while truth-speaking Republican politicians will be vilified and disappear; Facebook has already eliminated fact checkers in submission to Trump and his far right supporters bemoaning how they are being censored, while free speech criticizing Trump will increasingly be professionally and even physically dangerous; right wing social media “influencers” will multiply and spread disinformation on a scale previously unseen; artificial intelligence and deepfakes will metastasize to the point that facts and truth will be buried under a mountain of lies, deception, and “conspiracies”; for those not quite consumed by all of this untruth—what Steve Bannon called “flood[ing] the zone with shit”—they will lose faith that anything is true or be overwhelmed in trying to combat it.

The three main components of a democratic society, as identified by Anne Applebaum, are fair elections, a free press, and a fair, politically unbiased judiciary. All will suffer erosion over the next four years. Of course Trump is not the apocalypse, and some good things will happen. Some waste may be avoided, NATO countries will probably increase their defense spending, some Republicans may balk at the worst of Trump’s offenses, Democrats may flip the House in 2026, and some small percentage of Trump voters may come to see Trump and Trumpism for the vengeful and anti-democratic threats they are. But the trend will be downward, perhaps precipitously. The grand scope of American life will be less free and more coarse, harsh, divisive, and expensive for a majority of Americans. We may, just barely, be fortunate enough to emerge in January 2029 still having some of the building blocks of a Republic. The question, as Franklin warned two and a half centuries ago, is whether over the coming four years we can keep it.

So Biden has given a full and total pardon to his son Hunter, both for his actual crimes and for any possible federal crimes (the President cannot pardon for state crimes) he may have committed. There is a firestorm about the pardon’s wrongfulness, even within the Democratic party. And the critics do have a huge point, namely that Trump can now pardon anyone he wants, including the January 6^th “warriors” and “hostages,” and all Republicans will have to do to justify those pardons and any others is to simply say, Well look what Biden did, after all those claims that he wouldn’t pardon his son. So much for the high ground.

Never mind that Trump has already promised those pardons on “Day One,” never mind that Hunter Biden’s sleazy behavior has been a target of congressional Republicans only as a means to smear his father, and especially never mind that Trump himself has threatened to go after the “Biden crime family” and has promised to punish his enemies with hammer and tong as “retribution” for all the attempts to hold him accountable for his actual crimes and for the crime of criticizing him. Presumably he is the only presidential candidate who has overtly made “retribution” against “the enemies within”–i.e., his critics–a central campaign promise. And, for the morally blind, never mind that there is a monumental difference between pardoning hundreds of still dangerous violent and treasonous insurrectionists attempting a coup and a guy who lied on a gun application and who pled guilty to significant tax evasion. There’s no moral equivalence here, irrelevant of what Republicans will claim. (See my “The Necessity of Making Moral Distinctions.”) One might add not only Trump’s own years of consequence-free tax evasion but also that he had previously pardoned his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father who was doing time for the same crime, a punishment that was not the result of a self-satisfying political vendetta.

So yes, once you drop the “never minds,” Joe has cost Democrats the moral high ground, at least on this issue, and his legacy is stained. I concede the point, not being quite willing to argue that the high ground is for chumps—though tempted to do so in this case, given what we know about Trump. If either Romney or McCain were the incoming president, I would even argue that Joe unequivocally did the wrong thing on both the personal and the practical-politics levels. But there is an element of sadism in Trump’s quest for revenge, and Joe Biden was certainly not oblivious to that.

Who, then, among Joe’s critics is willing to sacrifice his own son? You? Me? Sure, only to prison time,* not to death, but for once I’m not inclined to cast stones. For that ultimate sacrifice, if you’re a Jew, only Abraham was willing. If you’re a Christian, only Abraham and God. And God doesn’t exactly get off scot-free here either. It may have been noble of God to sacrifice his son, but it wasn’t at all noble for God, Trump-like, to put Abraham through the exquisite torture of almost having to kill his son, with the knife at Isaac’s neck, just so that God could bask in the self-mortifying submission he has demanded of, and received from, his poor servant.

*Hunter Biden was convicted of lying on a federal gun application, lying to a gun seller, and possessing a firearm as a drug user, with a possible sentence of twenty-five years, according to January 15, 2025 USA Today; he was also convicted of not paying millions in taxes over several years, which could have resulted in a maximum seventeen years. While no jail time at all was a possibility, had he received the maximum sentences to be served consecutively, he would have likely served the rest of his life in prison for non-violent crimes. It should be noted that Trump’s likely tax evasion over multiple years did not even result in a criminal charge, much less a trial and conviction.

(The addressee’s name has been changed and the text slightly revised)

Dear, dear Vicki, 

Thank you for your kind and thoughtful and compassionate words—the very qualities that I have always found to define you. And sure, there is a feeling of disappointment here. But it is not a mere political disappointment like it was for Bush’s Electoral College victory and re-election or as it would have been for a McCain or Romney victory—all three honorable men who did not in any way threaten the very pillars upon which the nation stands. I do not wish to re-litigate any of this with you, and of course my wish is that any reply from you will not do so either; but against all my better judgment, I reluctantly enter the arena with you one last time and will then be silent. 

It is true that I am more politically engaged than I was in my young adulthood or even fifteen years ago. And it is certainly true that a draft-dodger Commander-in-Chief having the temerity to call my father a “sucker” for choosing a career military life in the United States Marine Corps is hardly endearing to me. Nor is calling men of high integrity like John McCain and all service men and women who died in the line of duty “losers” any more so. President-elect Trump’s little caper at Arlington National Cemetery this year, just a month or two after I took my son, daughter, and grandson to visit my father’s grave there and see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, was beyond repugnant. 

But please do not infer that my fierce opposition to this man is merely personal. I will not offer a long bill of particulars, but since I am this far in, I will offer a brief few. First I would note that many of his first term’s inner circle including Milley, Mattis, Kelley (all four star generals), McMaster (three-star), Bolton, Barr, Tillerson, Esper, and even Pence have publicly warned of some variation of Trump’s unfitness for office. I know of no precedent for this almost unified opposition from a president’s former high-level staffers, and their warnings should be heeded. He has made clear that he would abandon a democratic ally to fend for itself in its fight for survival against a man he admires, Vladimir Putin. Notably during his debate with Harris, Trump would not answer the direct question from David Muir of whether he even wanted Ukraine to win its war with the same country (though then called the USSR) that the Republican Party once rightly regarded as our philosophical if not wartime enemy—what Ronald Reagan called an “evil empire.” In fact, he lamented the deaths of Russian soldiers, but did not mention the deaths of Ukrainian civilians. 

Character was once a foundational principle for the GOP, and for that reason among others many conservatives could not support the Republican candidate this year. Some, like Liz Cheney and former Republican presidential speechwriters David Frum and Peter Wehner, consider Trump an enemy of conservatism itself. McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt called Trump “the most dangerous American who has ever lived.” Even his vice-president-elect J. D. Vance, in the days before he sold his soul, called him “cultural heroin.” In response to the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, The Southern Baptist Convention in 1998 issued a “Resolution on the Moral Character of Public Officials” in which it “urge[d] all Americans to embrace and act on the conviction that character does count in public office, and to elect those officials and candidates who, although imperfect, demonstrate consistent honesty, moral purity and the highest character.” Certainly Southern Baptists do not reflect the views of all conservatives, and today’s SBC apparently would not reflect, or at least not state publicly, such a view now. But I hope that even liberals could embrace the SBC’s 1998 sentiment. And if the Resolution were true then, it is even more so now given what we know about Trump. I borrow the quote from Wehner, who wrote a fascinating article which portrayed Trump as an enemy not of liberalism (though presumably that too) but of conservatism. For him, Trumpism is antithetical to conservatism, an abandonment of—indeed an attack on—its fundamental principles. I do wish Fox News could have aired conservatives like him who could make a case against Trump from the conservative side.

Finally I must state clearly that my vote was not just against Trump and Trumpism. It was an enthusiastic vote for a woman who I think is strong, ethical, patriotic, honest, competent, and absolutely supportive of traditional American values. For me not to affirm that would be to suggest that I think that she is merely the lesser of two evils. Not at all. In fact I believe she would have been a very good president, though I might have disagreed with her on this or that policy. But I absolutely know, in the approximate words of conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg speaking of Nikki Haley as compared to Trump, “at least I would still be able to recognize my country at the end of her term.” 

Again, it was not my better judgment to re-litigate any of this with you. A “Thank you, Vicki” should have been my reply. But the devil gets ahold of me every now and then and this is the result. The election is done, over, and you (and Bill) and I (and Val) will no doubt agree to disagree and move on. And again, your thoughtfulness in offering a word of consolation to the losing team is appreciated and wonderfully characteristic of Vicki Smith. 

John