The best of them shrugged

Now they tell us. Now they tell us, Trump was right, hydroxychloroquine is safe and effective against coronavirus, after shrieking that Trump was "killing us" with chloroquine. Now they tell us, Trump was right, we have our vaccine by the end of the year, after calling him a liar and taunting us that no power on earth could produce a working vaccine for a novel virus in a matter of months. And now they tell us, Trump was right, Biden is corrupt and compromised, after assuring us the story was "Russian disinformation". 

So we can only expect that once they've pushed Trump out of power on fake votes they'll tell us, Trump was right, the election was stolen, after rolling their eyes that there was "no evidence of fraud". Once it's safe, after they can't do a blessed thing about it but talk. Maybe they'll hold hearings, maybe they'll even open investigations -- more likely investigations of the sort that run discreetly for two years before being retired without charges -- and surely they'll appear on the talking heads shows, talking about it. But when they might've done something about it, when they might have exposed the fraud and expunged it, the best of them shrugged and the worst of them lied, until not only was the election stolen but the criminals had got clean away, and in the confusion the republic was switched for a one-party state.  

What Trump forgets about his last four years, in a couple hours of talking about it, would itself amount to a great presidency, but that president of whom Egypt's President al-Sisi observed, "This is a man who does the impossible," is to be pushed out into the wilderness on fake votes. And a senile, corrupt, lying old fraud with an unpopular and unworkable Billionaire Bolshevik program, is to be installed on those same fake votes in total power.

 

If the fraud were exposed and expunged, and Trump's rightful victory restored, the Democrats would scream murder, they'd smash up and burn down the cities -- again -- and America would be staring at something like a second civil war. But if the Republicans are robbed of their rightful victory and the republic itself abolished in the process, they only grumble a little and slump away, then "congratulate" the fraud and tell us how "proud" we all are of the "first female vice president", never mind that most of us voted for the man on the ticket. So the legal challenges are dismissed unheard, the witnesses to the fraud are censored by Big Tech, and the Big Press assure us there's "no evidence of fraud", while the clock ticks away to the ratification of that fraud and with it the abolition of the republic. Run out the clock, let the baby have his bottle, and kiss the ring: not a one of which cliches are found in the hearts of great and good men.

"The center cannot hold. ... Everywhere, the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." That was Yeats on Europe between the world wars but it might just as well be America in the terminal two months of this annus horribilis assoluta of 2020. The trouble is, Yeats' observation was followed by rather a bad patch.