GREATEST IDIOT OF A LIFETIME

By Mickey Skidmore, AMHSW, ACSW, FAASW

The United States has been subject to a sociopath for more than a year and a half — 18+ months of the most loathsome, least competent, and most corrupt person ever to be present of the United States.

The world has watched him take a meat-axe to every major institution of the US democracy, draw the nation into a never-ending war, establish a murderous domestic police state, reject renewable energy in favour of the dirtiest possible fossil fuels, make billions off his presidency, and cause most Americans to become poorer and less economically secure.

He abuses his office. He coopts government departments and agencies into his retributive schemes. He seeks vengeance without regard of the facts, the law, or common decency. So much of US policymaking is based on juvenile emoting of an adult who functions like a petulant pre-teen.

Trump is the Picasso of corruption. He has clearly and completely corrupted the Executive branch of the US government. He has essentially and effectively corrupted both the Senate and Congress of the legislative branch of the US government. And with assistance from Mitch McConnell and the coopted US Senate, has stacked the Judicial branch of the US government (who have granted him extraordinary immunity status) enabling him to operate with near impunity — thinking that any time a lower court strikes his policies down or attempts to hold him in check, he can appeal to the Supreme Court’s “emergency docket.”

Beyond the corruption of the three branches of US government, he has also corrupted the entire GOP (Republican) political party in the US. The partisanship of the GOP has escalated to such a degree that only GOP victories are legitimate and if they lose, the election must have been rigged (despite the fact that many States have already been gerrymandered favouring Republicans anyway). For some time now the GOP has been unsuccessful in winning straight-forward elections based on issues or their platform, thus, they have stacked the deck by gerrymandering. The GOP remains willing, as a monolith, to either look the other way or wholeheartedly embrace Trump’s volcano of corruption — a shameful act of acquiescence, if not an clear attitude of loyal obedience.

Even after Trump’s time has past, at the risk of those who would say the pendulum is merely swinging back in the other direction; there must be a fair and appropriate day of reckoning (based on legitimate legal and constitutional grounds — not Orwellian talking points touting “law fare”) to right the ship and hold these sycophants accountable for the devastation they have allowed. Such a task may require more time than a 4 year election cycle of the subsequent election.

Reflecting back, I recall thinking that Ronald Reagan was the worst president in my (then) lifetime. While many held him in high regard due to his personal (acting) appeal with the public; the dismal failure of his trickle-down economic policies and the blatant corruption of Iran-Contra debacle is how I based my conclusion at the time.

Later, and hopefully a bit wiser, I mused that George W. Bush (the second one) had moved into this position — based largely by his political incompetence and nepotism and engaged perhaps in the greatest foreign policy blunder (Iraq) while essentially charging Medicare D (medication) benefits to the US Treasury credit card and exploding the national debt.

But for all the reasons outlined above — and if the numerous other corrupt grifts, norm-shattering, election-interfering, economic (tariffs) destabilising were not enough — there is always his growing list of vanity projects intended to soothe his insecure ego, and near daily culture war distractions that he engages in to obscure the obvious — that he is without question assumed the mantle of the new King: The Greatest Idiot of a lifetime.