Crying Wolf

One of the myriad problems with this president is that of precedent.

Having elected an idiot, a hateful, divisive bully who can't be bothered to become informed about the issues confronting the country because he's so busy tweeting about his own glory, the question becomes: how low can we go?

How low is the bar being set for residency at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? How much worse will we allow our so-called leaders to behave? When we're used to a daily dose of lunacy, are we even able to recognize just how desensitized to craziness we've become? What other failings will we blithely accept in our commander in chief? Ax murder, arbitrary executions, genocide, nuclear war?

And one of the other many problems with acting like frogs in a cauldron slowly heated to a boil is that we are conditioned to believe, however subconsciously, that what passes for crazy under normal circumstances, isn't crazy anymore.

So, for example, if we're told often enough that our country is under siege by a never-ending caravan of invaders threatening our southern border -- despite the fact that immigration from our southern neighbors is at its lowest level in decades -- we are subtly convinced that indeed, we are under threat of invasion.

And when that Trump Chump declares a state of emergency over the border wall, what's next? Internment camps? Oh wait, we already have those. Summary executions of border jumpers? Not so far-fetched if you listen to the rhetoric of Trump and his band of fellow travelers on the crazy train.

It's sort of like the opposite of crying wolf. Rather than losing credibility to the point of ineffectiveness, the more often the lie is told, the more some people will believe it.

Now, the entire governmental apparatus intended to serve as a check on presidential power is unwilling to call bullshit on a president who has clearly lost the ability to govern from a place of sanity -- if he ever had it.

If we fail to hold power accountable in these times of flagrant disregard of the rule of law and decency, are we getting what we ultimately deserve?