Quote of the Day (Russell Baker, on the ‘Trump Captivity’)

“To the extent that it had any political content at all, the Trump Captivity might be described as a flare-up of reactionary demagoguery. There was obvious racism in the effort to deny Obama’s citizenship and a hint of more in the slogan about making America ‘great again.’ This could not have been easy to swallow for a party one of whose founders was Abraham Lincoln, yet it submits quietly to the more blatant racism still flourishing in Congress with the do-nothing politics of Senate leaders like Mitch McConnell and the reactionary House faction that rules by terrifying two inert parties.”—Russell Baker, “On the Election—I,” The New York Review of Books, Nov. 10, 2016

At the time he wrote this, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Russell Baker was describing how Donald Trump had captured the Republican Party. A year later, following a cataclysmic election that sounds more and more like a mistake with each passing day, it is America as  a whole that the dictator wannabe has captured.

“America Held Hostage.” During the Iranian hostage crisis nearly 40 years ago under Jimmy Carter, TV viewers grew used to watching those words appear on their screens in the late hours of each evening, in the ABC news show that became Nightline.

Now, America is held hostage again, this time by a touchy megalomaniac unable to stand the slightest criticism even from within the party he captured with shocking swiftness, with far greater damage:

*to civility toward opponents;

*to a rational two-party system; 

*to economic and racial equality; 

*to Presidential rhetoric that contributes to the nation's ideals; 

*to the notion that religion can bring authentic moral witness to the public square; 

*to the global environment left to future generations;

* to national security; 

* to the Constitution;

* and to citizens abroad who can no longer look to the promise of the nation that Abraham Lincoln once termed “the last best hope of earth.”