After the election, but before the deluge, Mr. Trump came to Washington. Sharing a view of the Capitol, the president elect celebrated the magnitude of the moment, the effects of his okey doke, the power of collective amnesia, and the historic importance of peaceful transition.
Looking to the future, only weeks before having to take the stand for fraud, the "billionaire" steered Americans to turn a page and embrace the very con artist who had spent the last fifteen months groping and assaulting core values: our sense of national identity, and our trust in the Constitution.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said on Thursday morning, as Trump headed to meet President Obama, "The only way we are going forward in this country is to come together."
He added, referring to Trump's early Wednesday morning victory speech,"Trump wasn't relitigating old arguments. He went before the American people and delivered a speech...about coming together, working America, making America great again. You can't make America great again without all of us coming together and remembering we are on the same team."
Even the Dow was all kumbaya, giddy, hitting all-time highs. And to think it was only a few days earlier that the Donald was exuding his unique brand of moral and intellectual bankruptcy, a lack of compassion, tolerance, and human decency.
Although the political theater, cordial tone, and symbolic significance of the last 48 hours has been riveting, the recent past augurs the inevitable disappointment and anger to come. Who really believes that the current highly televised nicey nice will not soon be accompanied with crass expressions of racism, misogyny, antisemitism, and xenophobia?
Amplified by his dynamic agents of "change": Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, Chris Christie, Kellyanne Conway, Jeff Sessions, Corey Lewandowski, and Steve Bannon, there is a near-certain expectation of continuing dog whistles of white grievance and nativism. And from Mike Pence, there will surely be a spate of hateful and divisive sermonizing about his "culture of life" and homophobia.
The cheers from the rust belt and the back seat bleachers have been loud and clear. The forgotten "they" wanted their Mexican wall, a Muslim ban, no Syrian, or for that matter, any other immigration, an end to "job-killing" Obamacare, and mass deportation. Yes, they wanted jobs too, but more than anything, they wanted Trump. They needed their Trump! They had to have him! Why? Because he, alone, could make America great again
We will be living with this poisonous rhetoric for the next four years. We must not forget the words with which he accepted the nomination for president: "I alone can fix it. I will restore law and order."
As senior editor, Yoni Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic after the convention, "Trump did not appeal to prayer, or to God. He did not ask Americans to measure him against their values, or to hold him responsible for living up to them. He did not ask for their help. He asked them to place their faith in him."
I am not optimistic, and I'm not buying the "peace in our time" narrative of smooth transition. The election of Donald Trump is a tragedy, an assault on our deeply held beliefs of what it means to be an American, and a victory for demagoguery, at home and around the world.
Now, the work begins, to keep America truly great, while its promise has, for the time, fallen into the hands of a monstrous charlatan and his fellow conspirators.
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November 11,2016
Addendum. Mr. Trump tweeted again last night.
