18 Comments
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Jeffrey Streeter's avatar

A very powerful piece of writing, Jay.

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A. Jay Adler's avatar

Thank you, friend. Whatever power it may have is unfortunately fueled by outrage and grief.

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Jeffrey Streeter's avatar

Yes, I hear both of those things.

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Rivvy Neshama's avatar

Wow. You brilliantly and most sorrowfully listed it all.

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A. Jay Adler's avatar

You included a key word, Rivvy -- sorrowfully.

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<Mary L. Tabor>'s avatar

Isn't the whole shebang that is in fact (double entendre on purpose, thus no commas) true getting more and more discouraging? As Ben Franklin so notably said, "A Republic if you can keep it" -- or something quite like that.

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A. Jay Adler's avatar

It is getting more and more discouraging, Mary. I don’t see much to encourage. I ask myself what most Democratic legislators actually think they’re accomplishing each day. I’m a fellow fan of Franklin quote, many of which, I understand, require some research as to real time, place, and wording. (Everyone’s an editor!) I love yours and am also fond of “"We must all hang together or assuredly we shall all hang separately." For readers who don’t know, that’s known as a syllepsis (or zeugma). I think of the syllepsis as the punning of rhetoric.

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<Mary L. Tabor>'s avatar

Yes, sir. Will we make through? That question faces everyone who has actually read the Constitution!

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Maureen Doallas's avatar

And this is but the beginning after 108 (?) days in office!

I read in an update in the news that at his most recent sit-down with Kennedy Center board members, no one dared touch a morsel of just-served food until he had his first bite.

Has there ever been a more apt idiom than "the emperor has no clothes"?

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A. Jay Adler's avatar

The speed is stunning — yet exactly what some of us warned of all along. I hadn’t heard about the Kennedy center working lunch. I could be wrong but I don’t recall reading anywhere that the Kennedy Center. a cultural and performing arts institution, was any kind of agency or department under the control of the executive (or any) branch — any more than is the Library OF CONGRESS — but people have just, and quickly, given in. It’s what happens.

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Frederick Fullerton's avatar

Will there be a kind of tribunal one day in which not only the wannabe dictator, but also his enablers, pay for the damage they've wreaked?

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A. Jay Adler's avatar

There should be, Frederick, for all of them, as you say. That is, indeed, what I mean to imply by this bill of categories. But I can’t say I feel hopeful.

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Chuck Koton's avatar

maybe on the Day of his big beautiful parade...An opportunity gifted by Heaven!

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<Mary L. Tabor>'s avatar

Wanna be dictator? Aren’t we already there? Agree with everything else you said.

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Chuck Koton's avatar

a monster that should've been aborted in the womb...so despicable IT makes satire useless...may he DIE tonite!

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dr. dean ramser's avatar

Unfortunately, words seem to have failed to convince those who believe in cruelty that trump will turn his wrath on all, even those who lick his golden-plated toilet.

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<Mary L. Tabor>'s avatar

On top of all this, so well laid out, can you believe he fired the head of the Portrait Gallery because he accuses her of being partisan or in other word not voting for him? Does he want to run our museums too?

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A. Jay Adler's avatar

Unfortunately, I can believe it. Trump's instinct with power, and the ideology of his Heritage and Christian nationalist backers, is fully authoritarian, which includes culture.

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