Yesterday, I witnessed the most shocking and yet amazing transformation in political history.  Donald Trump, adjudicated sexual abuser, defamer, and fraudster, convicted felon, indicted for felony espionage and election interference, admitted sexual abuser, prolific liar, and all-round shitbag was invited by the French government to sit on the front row of the reopening ceremony of Notre Dame and placed ONE SEAT AWAY from the First Lady, Jill Biden, and BETWEEN Emanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte.  He dominated NBC News coverage as other world leaders normalized him by kissing his ass before and after the ceremony.  He soaked up the adoration, but about an hour and a half into the Catholic service, he demonstrated his trademark attention span of a 6 year-old boy forced to sit through church on a Sunday morning.  He also made a point of exercising excessive manspread, forcing Macron to sit sideways in his seat.  The entire spectacle made me want to vomit.

This drama from going to jail to global spotlight has been like watching a slow motion train wreck crossed with an old episode of The Sopranos.  You don’t want to see, but you can’t take your eyes away.  Trump’s ever present strategy of continuous lying and denial, character assassination, childish name calling, threats to public officials, perpetual judicial appeals, and public defamation of the DOJ, FBI, District Attorneys, jurists, jurors, and all who spoke ill of him succeeded.  Period.  With the assist from the SCOTUS, he ran out the clock.  Add to that strategy the incompetence, institutional rule following, and foot dragging by Merrick Garland, as well as said abject corruption in the SCOTUS, here we are again, facing an existential threat to US and world peace.  This reinvigorated, disgusting excuse for a human being is once again in the global spotlight, inflicted on decent people the world over.

The one term we need to stop using is “guardrail”.  There ARE NO guardrails.  Period.  All three branches of the US government have utterly failed at maintaining the rule of law.  Worse, there are no laws to keep this from happening.  Centuries-old rules and traditions don’t mean anything to those who don’t give a shit about rules and traditions.  The courts have also bent reality to protect one individual, Trump.  The laws we have that apply to everyone else don’t apply to Trump.

The news media also failed. It failed to accurately report the threat, preferring to only focus on the horse race, and a new ecosystem, funded by billionaire oligarchs, has arisen, choking off the Fourth Estate.  It focused on Trump’s attacks on Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s age while almost completely ignoring Trump’s age, cognitive decline, and the massive corruption that pervades his entire family including Jared Kushner’s multi billion dollar deal with the Saudis and his own daughter’s capitalization on her last name.  Even now, it’s going apeshit over Hunter’s pardon while completely ignoring Trump’s legion of pardons of criminals, shitbags, and personal friends.  Convicted felon Charles Kusher’s nomination as Ambassador to France was given passing coverage before the media returned to Hunter.  You thought Fox Noise was bad?  Spend 30 seconds on Twitter X, and it will shake whatever is left of your belief in humanity.  Owned by Musk, X is a literal open sewer of bullshit, lies, hate, Russian and Chinese propaganda, and advertorials for Dogecoin, SpaceX and Tesla.

We’re in deep shit, and most Americans can’t see it or even care.