Running For Precedent

 How I miss those precedented days. Days went by without another scurrilous headline. Catastrophic storms were rare. Politics were boring. 

You read that right: Boring.

Not that they were not always intrinsically necessary and fascinating to the wonks and the policy fringes. I do, for instance, remember learning about tariffs back in grade school history, and wondering as most elementary students do, "Why do I need to know this?"

Tariffs are taxes imposed on imported goods with the expectation that the increased price will encourage consumers to buy domestic products instead. They are not fines levied on foreign governments directly. The consumers are the ones who end up paying for the difference. Not the foreign governments or manufacturers. 

Good thing I was listening to Mister Conklin that day. 

Which would not be such a big deal in and of itself, but each time the gutter is reached by the convicted felon chosen by his party to run for "president," I believe that we have heard the worst. Oh, but if that were true. This past week found the GOP candidate insisting that his Democratic rival was "mentally impaired," and should be prosecuted. This coming from a former game show host who has stared at a solar eclipse, incited insurrection, and has been convicted himself on thirty-four felony counts. He is also the guy who during his time in the Oval Office, altered a weather map with a Sharpie to show what he imagined was the path of Hurricane Dorian, which never did make landfall on the continental United States. 

This "very stable genius," in his own words, continues to spout invective to anyone willing to sit in front of it and continues to babble about the "concept of a plan" that will Make America Great Again. Given the connections already well known and established, he could just go ahead and lash himself to Project 2025 which would actually give him some sort of platform, he feels more content in announcing the upcoming reckoning of the country he wants to lead again. To get crime under control, the Orange One suggests, "If you had one really violent day.. .. … One rough hour. And I mean real rough. The word will get out and it will end immediately."

There is still a month to go before election day, and I do not believe that we have reached anything close to the bottom of the barrel. Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy month.