After all the initial emotion, political and otherwise, related to Charlottesville, there is this specific sadness: the young woman who died there as a victim of political violence while peacefully demonstrating, was buried without a consoling word by the President of the United States.
Her funeral received almost no coverage nationally, because no President was there. That it wasn't covered is a failing of the media, which has a very bad record in remaining so fixated on Homegrown Hitler that other important stories are obscured, but it is much more a failing of the current White House incumbent.
When David Axelrod stated absolutely that President Obama would have given the eulogy for Heather Heyer, no one could contradict him. But the current incumbent is more than absent as president, the un-president. The words he did speak were all but opposite to what all the living presidents would have said and in fact did say. He is the anti-President.
When sailors died on the John McCain, the current incumbent--their ultimate commander as commander-in-chief-- offered no words, said nothing. On other occasions when any other president would have spoken, he has not.
The White House is no longer a welcoming place where artists and scientists feel valued and heard. No longer does it celebrate and demonstrate diversity or inspire children to learn and achieve. It is not even a moral vacuum. It is the ever tightening, shrinking home of lying words and evil deeds.
So we get Frank Bruni's New York Times column entitled The Week When President Trump Resigned:
"Trump resigned the presidency already — if we regard the job as one of moral stewardship, if we assume that an iota of civic concern must joust with self-regard, if we expect a president’s interest in legislation to rise above vacuous theatrics, if we consider a certain baseline of diplomatic etiquette to be part of the equation.
...his presidency ended in the lobby of Trump Tower on Tuesday afternoon, when he chose — yes, chose — to litigate rather than lead, to attend to his wounded pride instead of his wounded nation and to debate the supposed fine points of white supremacy.
He abdicated his responsibilities so thoroughly and recklessly that it amounted to a letter of resignation. Then he whored for his Virginia winery on the way out the door."
And another NYTimes oped by young author Caroline Randall Williams entitled: President Obama, Where Are You? She lamented the loss of Obama's "gravity, good sense and honesty" as President. She spoke for her generation that graduated from college, got their first jobs and became adults during his administration:
" We learned to experience politics through the lens of your eloquent presence in the White House. In this respect, you raised us. So we are unaccustomed to all of this wildness. Just because we’re grown doesn’t mean we don’t need to hear from the man who brought us up."
2. R v R
Controversies rage over our apprentice dictator in the White House. He screams at his most vocal critics, insults them and threatens their jobs. They question his moral judgments, stability, fitness for office and his sanity. Their arguments fill the media space.
Yet they all have one interesting thing in common. They are all Republicans.
I think it was Rachel who pointed this out Wednesday. On Thursday, it didn't stop. For example, The Hill: GOP taken aback by Trump’s verbal bombs and White House calls GOP senator's remark about Trump's competence 'outrageous'
Politico headline: Trump takes potshots at GOP leaders as fiscal crisis looms. Another:Trump clashed with multiple GOP senators over Russia.
The preponderance of coverage was about these intra-party conflicts. So it is perhaps not surprising that the most recent Politico/Morning Consult poll showed that Homegrown Hitler hit a new low in that poll of 39%, a drop of 5 points, and "Much of the decline in Trump’s approval rating appears to have come from self-identified Republican voters."
It's a large one week drop while the overall R support is still 75%. But it could be a harbinger of things to come.
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