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America heads into this year's holiday season with a cheerful discussion of whether or not we've committed war crimes. Just another random week in the Donald Trump era, folks! Sorry for being snide, but it's hard to juxtapose the whole "peace on Earth" holiday sentiment with the revelations coming from Washington this week.
The United States of America is once again committing war crimes. In fact, the recent revelation in the Washington Post that there were two survivors of one of the military's missile attacks on small boats, and that a second missile was launched specifically to kill the survivors, was literally a textbook example of a war crime. The entire operation -- killing people who are in international waters who are not at war with the U.S. -- is probably a war crime as well, but with this particular example there is absolutely no doubt. But I for one am not going to hold my breath waiting for any of the people involved to be held to any sort of account for their actions.
If there's one thing I will be thankful for this year, it is the fact that Republicans are increasingly "in disarray." More and more, the various factions within the party are at each other's throats, which should just prove to make it that much easier for Democrats to wrest back control in next year's midterm elections. For which I am thankful.
The political term for physically-challenged waterfowl has been appearing with increasing regularity in the media this week, to describe the president. But is Donald Trump really a "lame duck" yet? Or is he more of a duck that happened to sprain an ankle or perhaps stub a toe (do ducks technically have ankles... or toes? I must admit, I have no idea...)?
Donald Trump has done an about-face on two big (but completely unrelated) issues, which took place within a few days of each other. While it's impossible to know what he was thinking, the reasons behind these two major reversals can probably be summed up as: (1) he was about to lose, and: (2) he was already losing. Trump has a pathological fear of being on the losing side of anything, so both of these U-turns was pretty obviously intended to put him on the side of winning, at the last possible minute.
So the longest federal government shutdown in American history ended last weekend, not with a bang but a whimper. Seven Democrat senators and one Independent voted with the Republicans to reopen the government without securing the goal that Democrats had been fighting for. This has outraged many other Democrats, since it was seen as "pulling defeat out of the jaws of victory," once again.
Donald Trump has apparently woken up and realized he is getting beaten badly on a big political issue -- and one that he leaned on heavily during his last presidential campaign. So he's been complaining about Democrats hitting him on affordability since last week's election (where Republicans got spanked in pretty much every race they ran in). Trump insists that all prices are way, way down and Democrats are just lying about affordability being a big issue.
This week, a major vibe shift took place in American politics. For the first time in an entire year, Democrats got up off the mat. Or maybe: they now have the wind at their backs. There are plenty of other metaphors to choose from, but the reality is that Democrats emerged stronger from the first major election since Donald Trump started his second term, and both Trump and his Republicans emerged weaker.
I must begin with an apology, because once again I find that I cannot bring myself to write a new Hallowe'en column this year.
Usually, at this time of year, I try to come up with frightful tales of horror for both the left and right sides of the political divide -- which I attempt to make both humorous and also so far-fetched that they're ridiculously unbelievable. The "scare factor" is tempered by the "Oh, that could never actually happen" factor, to put it another way.
These are indeed scary times we live in. And it would be impossible for me to try to construct a nightmarish scenario for those on the left that is any more frightful than what we are living through now.
Next Tuesday is Election Day. No matter what happens in this off-off-year election, this will produce a flurry of speculation about the current state of the political landscape in America, and what it will all mean for the election that is going to happen next year, when all of the House and one-third of the Senate will be on the ballot. As usual, though, drawing sweeping conclusions this far out is likely to prove laughably mistaken, since a year's time in a normal political atmosphere is still an eternity, and an entire year in the Trump era feels like an even longer time than that.