By MIKE MAGEE
I’ve all the time felt a kinship with EJ Dionne. We’re each Boomers, although I’m 4 years his senior. We share related politics, non secular origins, early Catholic college educations, fathers in well being care and moms who had been academics, deep New England roots, habit to the written phrase, blessings with lengthy marriages and youngsters (they 3, we 4), and deep revulsion with Trump and his enablers and the whole lot they symbolize.
Viewing him as measured and sensible, I took particular care in studying his Washington Put up column yesterday, “The phrases about Joe Biden I by no means wished to write down.”
For twelve days since that first debate, I’ve labored to stay formally impartial on “what subsequent to do,” and stayed targeted 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 any confusion that the entire cabal – Undertaking 2025, Leonard Leo et al, the Supreme Court docket’s “Doomed Campaign”, Bannon-led MAGA insurrectionists – is sufficiently devastated that it can not remerge from the cinders.
There is no such thing as a doubt that Biden’s bodily and psychological decline was on full view for over 50 million People two weeks in the past. And also you don’t must be a medical historian or a prize profitable journalist to acknowledge that the degenerative processes which are liable 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’ shouldn’t be ‘what that is about.’ Donald Trump’s menace to democracy is the overriding query earlier than the nation…”
Whereas Dionne is correct that this isn’t “about Biden,” he understates the issue when he suggests as a substitute that it’s about Trump alone. That’s no extra true than to recommend that WWII was solely about Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito, when the truth is 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 power and finally the usage of atomic bombs, adopted by multi-decade investments by 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 downside. 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’ Undertaking 2025 objectives and targets if allowed. These decided radicalized leaders are greater than midway there, fueled with a non secular fervor that can’t be modified by trustworthy debate or calm logic.
Success breeds success as nicely for evil as for good. To date, with Biden nonetheless in energy, political arsonists have achieved an immune Govt department; a biased Judiciary with no Code of Ethics; a Home of Representatives directed from Mar-a-Lago; and 14 state homes with absolute management over their residents reproductive rights.
Clearly the issue is larger than Trump. Undertaking 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 precise individuals in place, prepared to hold this agenda out on Day One of many subsequent conservative Administration.”
There can 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 remaining warning. Time’s up. As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) stated this weekend “This can be a actually vital week. I do assume the clock is ticking.”
What then is the method for an awesome defeat of the Trump Reich? Three pillars: Power, Enthusiasm, Ladies-Led.
Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and common THCB contributor. He’s the creator of CODE BLUE: Inside America’s Medical Industrial Advanced (Grove/2020)