I am glad now that Trump will be gone from the public scene …. 👋

For too long, he was the car-wreck that everybody had to gawk at. I loved checking his Twitter feed, getting my dose of White Trash from the White House. Not because I agreed with much of his politics, but because it was so juicy to see who he was throwing under the bus in some kind of pseudo-conservative fascist rant of the day. I will say he was good on Second Amendment, except when he wasn’t, and you could get .22 ammunition easily for a few years.

But I don’t think he was good for the cause of democracy or fairness. While government has rife with personal ambitious financial and else-wise, patronage, and partisan ideology since the time of the founding fathers, former President Trump amped it up another degree. While no politician can be expected to full untie the personal from the public and professional as we are all human, Donald Trump had not qualms of essentially stealing from the taxpayer to benefit himself personally. Patronage — a central part of power — should not be center stage, nor should patronage ever get to point as it did under Trump that it was explicit and a central part of his administration. The power of contracting can grease the skids, but grease shouldn’t be larger then the public benefit.

Much like the wrecker-rig hauls away the junked car and the ambulance hauls the corpse to the mortuary and ultimate burial, it’s finally time to look away and re-open the lanes on the highway so the world can move on. A little drama can make politics interesting and fun, but it shouldn’t be all consuming as it was under Donald Trump. We can disagree with others over our central priorities and values, but we shouldn’t be disagreeable as much of politics was during the Trump years.