Tuesday, February 11, 2020                                             5:08 AM

We Assumed Victory   (2020Feb11)

Americans have always fought with each other. We fought with (and about) the Native Americans. We fought with those who thought we should be ruled. We fought with those who thought we should accept faith as law. We fought with those who thought we should accept prejudice. We fought with those who thought we should disrespect women. And none of these fights have ended.

Ever since we showed up here and started stealing their home, we have been entirely cold-blooded about slaughtering the indigenous people—and whoever survived the slaughter is treated, even today, as less than a person. Just this week, Traitor Trump decided to dynamite their sacred site to install a section of border wall.

Traitor Trump also demonstrated the flim-flam at the heart of organized religion when, at last week’s prayer breakfast, he questioned the “part about loving your enemies… I don’t know…” I’d quote the full sentence, if he ever talked in full or finished sentences.

The cowardice of the truly prejudiced is evident in the notion that a border, lain open for centuries, suddenly needs a steel barrier to protect us from the brown people. Traitor Trump is manifestly a troubled sicko.

Traitor Trump displays his disrespect for women most incisively by bringing his third wife, an Eastern European émigré, to the White House and somehow convincing her that First Lady isn’t a real job, and she needn’t bother fulfilling that role. But, mind, that’s only the tippy top of a humongously long list of panic attacks our Dear Traitor suffers over the thought of female empowerment.

So America has a new image. The home of the constant battle against ignorance, the land where ignorance is funded by the wealthy. Come the ‘80s, we were so close to winning the culture war (because it was a war against ignorance) that we assumed victory would just amble along. But ignorance is a tool of the wealthy—and Trump has made it a power-tool. And with last week’s Senate vote-of-denial, ignorance has regained the upper hand.