As any parent of a teenager can tell you, the trouble with trouble is that it starts out as fun.
It was fun (for some) when Trump first aired his patently false birther claim about Obama.
It was fun when he got to ride down the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015 and declare his candidacy.
It was fun to rile up the crowds and beat the likes of serious people like John Kasich.
It was fun to devise humiliating nicknames for Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.
It was fun to loom menacingly over Hillary Clinton in a televised “debate.” When you’re a star they let you do it.
It was fun to put the squeeze on Ukraine.
It was a lot of fun to win the election, despite the pesky fact of losing the popular vote by three million people to Hillary (Lock her up!) Clinton.
It was fun to go to Buckingham Palace.
It was fun to fly Marine One to so many golf destinations.
It was fun to fire generals!
It was fun to have tear gas used on peaceful demonstrators on the way to a photo op with an upside down Bible at Saint John’s Church on Lafayette Square.
Twitter was loads of fun; Facebook too!
It was fun to appoint lots of federal judges and to nominate three Supreme Court Justices.
It was fun to tell U.S. Representatives Pressley, Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, and Omar to go back where they came from, even if it was Michigan, Boston, Minneapolis, or Queens.
It was fun to run for reelection and to own the Libs, and to have Kayleigh McEnany lie on command.
It was fun to keep the world in suspense about whether he would leave office willingly.
It was fun to hold rallies!
It was fun to go on Fox and Friends.
Covid-19 wasn’t fun, but it was great to be president of the United States and get US$1.5 million worth of treatment and attend a rally in a sealed car and risk the health of his Secret Service detail.
We knew it would end in tears, and so it has. Here we are.
Vice President Pence needs to invoke the 25th Amendment.
Congress needs to impeach and convict Trump of sedition. Perhaps there is space for him and his cronies at Guantanamo?
Senators Hawley, Cruz, Hyde-Smith, et al., Representative Mo Brooks and his ilk need to be expelled from Congress, if not tried for sedition as well.
Like Germany after World War II had to undergo de-Nazification, our federal and state governments will need thorough de-Trumpification.
The U.S. will need to establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to try to heal the divisions engendered by the president and his myriad enablers, including the media, especially Fox.
Maybe then, only then, can we make a clean start, with liberty and justice for all.
William J. H. Chapman is the chair of Democrats Abroad Mexico.
