Last Weekend of the Big Wait

 It's the last weekend of America's "big wait." 

We wait for the inauguration of a new president, pretty certain that however many qualms we may have about the next four years, they can't be worse than the last four, right?

Trump is leaving office with his lowest approval rating ever, a metric that took an inelegant swan dive after the attack of Trump-loyal terrorists on the capitol on January 6. I cannot think of another president in my lifetime who left office under such a cloud of shame (Nixon excepted). And like Nixon he brought it all on himself.

It turns out that Trump's little personality quirk--the inability to admit a loss or failing--became the trait that torpedoed his chances of leaving office with any prospect of running a viable future campaign to regain the White House. Having turned the presidency into a performance space for his own self-aggrandizing fantasies in which he self-portrays as a kind of whining Colossus at the center and source of all that is good--striding from victory to victory whilst shaming the libs at every turn--defeat was never going to be admissible. Once you build a fantasy world and base your entire reputation on it, even monetize it, well then reality becomes unacceptable. Truth becomes utterly irrelevant.

Now that he is soon to enter his post-presidential period, a time when other post-presidents committed themselves to charity work or rediscovered their love of art or retired to the farm and tended the garden, Donald will no doubt spend his days in persistent fantasy-maintenance, which will require lots of lying (as usual) and the continued attempt to monetize his feverish outrage. You thought you knew self-justification? You ain't seen nothin' yet!

No, I don't expect the gentling of Donald in his old age. He will rave, and he will retain his loyal following, but he will quickly dwindle to nothing more than an old crank leading a horde of misfits. It will all seem rather sad in the end. But in the meantime, the damage he has done to the very nature of our political debate in America, as well as to the Republican Party and Conservatism generally (which he somehow managed to hijack and redefine), will have repercussions for years to come.