Let There Be Light

Like many people I know, I swear a lot at the television. Big, juicy curses that would have embarrassed my mother if she, herself, had not hurled big juicy curses. She detested autocrats as much as I do, and she had choice, ugly words for Donald Trump.

At this point, the pressure is almost unbearable. Thanks to the cancellation of humanitarian aid and our scandalous retreat from global responsibility, parents and children will die of Ebola until the virus burns itself out. That’s no way for a superpower to behave, and it’s just one of the many immoralities of our administration. Listing them all would be a full-time job.

But hope sometimes arrives on little cat feet. Take the four Republican congressmen who voted their immortal souls with the Democrats. I’m not sure it amounts to a sea change in our politics, but it represents a shift in the right direction. The vote was a rebuke to the president’s lawlessness and the catastrophic incoherence of his “policy” on Iran. Are we at war? Is this a ceasefire? Where is the uranium “dust” in Isfahan? Nobody in the universe can answer any of these questions because of the shambolic chaos in our president’s mind.

In the midst of all of this, Congress actually asserted itself with the help of four principled-ish Republicans who found their voices. It will never be enough to expunge the sins of the loyalists who gave us the single worst president in American history. And Trump will sweep away the rebuke with the stroke of his Sharpie. But everything counts when you are swearing at the television, even the murmured disapproval of renegade Republicans.

And there was even more this week from retired judges. According to report, judges sometimes weigh in on questions of doubtful criminal responsibility. But they hardly ever get together to rebuke the administration. This week, that’s precisely what happened, and the presiding judge in Trump-is-a-Fraudster will reopen the issue of his “beautiful” Slush Fund and the accompanying rule that protects him from the IRS. Speaking for America, Glory Be to God.

You may be dejected. I may be dejected. But this is what it means when things are going well. The various entities of civil society—formal, informal, official, and improvised—pull themselves together to throw off tyranny. I can’t be sure, but we may make it after all. If we fail, it won’t be through want of trying.