Matt Taibbi: Go Outside

Yeah, I can't recommend this enough. (The course of action, not so much the post, really.) I try to go trail running with my dogs about as much as possible, which ends up being about every other day in the Spring. Quoth Emerson: "In the woods we return to reason and faith."...

   Not to ruin the main message, but this is too much to pass up:

...This aspect of the Trump experience is wild. The man was twice elected on a negative mandate, i.e. just don’t suck as much as the other guy (neither were guys, but still). My house has a “Literally” jar, into which my sons pay a dollar every time they use the oft-unnecessary word, but here it’s appropriate: Trump could literally have sat on his ass and done nothing for four years, and he’d have left office to parades. Americans would pay a cost equivalent to the Apollo missions for history’s biggest Live Model Cam sub collection, if it could keep the president from starting this kind of conflict. His exact mandate was “Not this!” He did it. In every situation where all he has to do to win is not do something, Trump does the thing. It’s uncanny.

I disagree. I mean, Taibbi is right about the "negative mandate" in the sense that: Trump was elected--or at least I voted for him--because, though kinda crazy, he's significantly less insane than the other guys. They completely lost it over the past decade...and the recent return to power of VA Dems proves that they haven't gotten any of it back... 

   But I disagree with the other part: that he could have just done nothing. Do nothing and the crazy guys win. He had to roll back their lunatic policies--which he's done, at least in a sense. We really needed him to get Congress to do its job...but that seems out of the question anymore... Sadly, everything done by EO can be undone by EO...

   Also: he's never exactly going to go out with parades--and he certainly won't if he doesn't roll back the blue team's successes. You know how he's going to go out as well as I do: knowing that the left will never let him--nor his family--rest. They will come after him with lawfare and seek to ruin them economically. They're already openly admitting that they plan to come after him, people in his administration, ICE agents, and his supporters as soon as they're back in power. The cult will never rest until he's dead...and probably not even then. And maybe not until you're dead...

   But anyhoo, two points:

   [1] Yeah, though I'm not really sure what to think...and though it seems to me that we may have had no good options...I'd rather he had not taken us to war. (And, of course, I'm one of those Dinosaurs that think that Congress should have to declare wars...) (And I've not become any more sanguine about all this since Trump said that it was Hegseth who really pushed for it... Dear God...)

   But more importantly:

   [2] Get away from the interwebs.com and out into the woods. Not just outside. But into the woods.