The time capsule that ticks suspiciously

Back in the day - back before he got on Twitter, and back before he became a Presidential candidate - I didn't consider Donald Trump much more than a caricature of an especially crass business tycoon.

He's far worse than that, now.

If his recent evocation of "executive privilege" and his need to sacrifice his latest handpicked Attorney General to Contempt of Congress charges are any indication, he will never allow anyone access to information that makes him look like anything less than his own bloated self-image of choice. The unredacted Mueller report, his tax returns, even his unedited yearly Presidential physicals. There isn't a damn thing he doesn't want covered up, and there aren't many things he wouldn't stoop to in order to achieve that. The smell of burnt shredded documents are the least of anyone's worries in that regard.

One of the side effects of democracy is that demagogues can and will get elected. This is less a condemnation of democracy than it is of people getting lazy and stupid in engaging in it; electing crass, self-serving idiots to govern us is a two-way street, especially since you didn't have to vote for said idiot in the first place. The worst example is the stealth demagogue who suckered people into voting for him because he was just that skilled a liar. Donald J. Trump lied repeatedly during his Presidential campaign, but that deception was neither skilled or incapable of being debunked. His supporters just didn't care. Period. And despite all the new lies he uttered or Tweeted after his inauguration, they still don't.

And now he apparently wants to initiate a constitutional crisis. He's long been described as an admirer of Richard Nixon, and that comparison fits him to a tee more than any other. No, he's not Hitler. Not even close. But Tricky Dick? Oh, he'd love to be him - provided that August 1974 never happened. But it did, and that's exactly what Trump fears most - falling from the peak of the mountain and plunging into the ravine below. But he's also inherited Nixon's paranoia, which is why so many employees of his are now ex-employees. Even someone as rank as Jeff Sessions found this out the hard way. 

Regardless of how all of this ultimately turns out, consider this a time capsule. If you come back in five years or a decade and I'm not either dead, locked up as a political prisoner or living abroad as an unwilling expatriate, you can call me an alarmist and tell me that democracy still works even when it elects an authoritarian, narcissistic boob as President. I'm hoping you do. But if the opposite holds true, don't say I didn't warn you.