The Necessary, Honorable Thing

Edward R. Murrow

The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear. He merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Cassius was right: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’

“Good night, and good luck.”

I first published the following essay on Medium, on March 23, 2016. Nine months had passed since Trump had announced his presidential candidacy, already offering a surfeit of evidence as to his character. One hadn’t needed those nine months to judge his character, however. There had been, for instance, his earlier, dishonest and wicked, xenophobic campaign of racist delegitimization over Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Before that, the sum of Trump’s career, melding big-money business promotion and the culture of media personality – a subject I reference below, and which had for de…