Aid and comfort to white supremacists. Confederate War statues treated like an oppressed minority group. Steve Bannon, out as Donald Trump’s senior advisor and back in his bunker at Breitbart.com, chortling to his locked-and-loaded comrades on the right: “I’ve got my hands back on my weapons. … We’re about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will.”
Maybe we should all start saying our prayers.
God, if you are listening, send us a sign.
Turn the daylight into darkness, if only for a minute or two.
If politics can’t save us, perhaps the Almighty can. Lately, we’ve been suffering through a total eclipse of decency.
It was another Farewell Friday at the White House as the uber-nationalist Bannon was shown the door. What made Bannon so dangerous was that, unlike his boss the president, he actually had a guiding ideology. His anti-immigrant, anti-trade, anti-alliance worldview was a matter, not just of political expediency, but of deeply held belief. Now, like chief of staff Reince Priebus and press secretary Sean Spicer before him, Bannon was ushered back to civilian life at the end of what was described as the “worst week yet” for the Trump presidency.
Then again, it would be hard to find a recent week that wasn’t. It does make you shudder at the obvious follow-ups: What is coming and who is going by this Friday? What exactly could be worse than this?
Fifty years ago, a much more innocent America celebrated the Summer of Love. Now, 2017 is going down as the Summer of neo-Nazis, Klansmen and Some Very Nice People Who Just Happen to be Marching Along and Didn’t Hear the Angry Chants of “Jews Will Not Replace Us.”
Clearly, all of this is causing deep distress for some Republicans, who don’t want the slogan of their party to be “The South shall rise again.”
This week, Republican senators Jeff Flake, Tim Scott and Bob Corker joined John McCain and Lindsey Graham in the GOP’s small but growing I’m Not So Sure About Trump Caucus. And if others happen to cast their eyes skyward at just the right moment this afternoon, who knows? The ranks of that caucus could swell again.
Metro columnist Ellis Henican is the author of “Trumpitude: The Secret Confessions of Donald’s Brain.” Follow him on Twitter @henican.
