THE WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS - By Jim Kent

Sooner or later the valiant President Bonespurs and his crew of crazies, crooks and cronies (my party, in other words) will leave office. How genuine patriotic Americans might help this along and what we might do next is the topic of today’s meditation. Because I am not nearly as smart as I constantly tell people I am, we’ll be checking in with some reliable-old-timers for guidance on this matter.

Looking ahead to the day when the clown car has been emptied, we check in with Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE), whose Meditations point out, “The best kind of revenge is not to become like unto them.” (One does not get to quote Marcus Aurelius often; full citation in the endnote.) Strategy is suggested by Tip O’ Neill (1912-1994) who popularized but did not originate “All politics is local.” The way to keep things on an even keel is usually but attributed erroneously to Thomas Jefferson (1743- 1826), but nobody is quite sure who said it instead: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

Reacting. Eventually Littlefingers and his swarm of jellyfish will leave office or see their powers diminished—sooner rather than later if the other team can manage to win the ’26 and ‘28 elections -- and the temptation will arise among the Democrats to wreak vengeance on the lot of them. After all, the Twit Parade have done much damage so far and will doubtless do as much more as the courts and the Congress will let them. This is likely to be substantial, appalling and even occasionally terrifying.

So the Democrats will feel compelled to impeach and convict every elected R officeholder within a fifty-mile radius of Washington. Marcus Aurelius, it seems, would not approve. I do like to think he’d be okay with proper due process, though. So don’t bother to impeach unless you have the votes to convict in the Senate. Everybody is tired of that form of theatre.

If you feel you must impeach somebody and do have the votes to convict, don’t bother with The Current Incumbent. He becomes every day older, more impaired, and more irrelevant.

Instead, impeach and convict the current Attorney General, former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi the Dogslayer, and Secretary of Defense Hairhelmet Hegseth or some subset of them. Use charges that include “disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States,” to quash their future political ambitions, not forgetting that this same Constitutional provision (Article I, Section 3) says these worthies will still be “liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law,” and that Article II, Section 2, helpfully points out that presidential reprieves and pardons don’t work for impeachment.

The idea is to cut off their political careers and perhaps to dissuade others from This Sort Of Thing for a decade or so. Don’t feel sorry for any of them, though. They will make plenty on book deals and media gigs. These will also keep them from spending more time with their families, who will almost certainly be very appreciative.

If impeachment is too much trouble or you don’t have the votes, the new feds or some state can arrest them for whatever crimes they will have committed. There are already plenty to choose from.  Do not, though, “become like unto them.” Stick to people of any party or faction whose violation of serious laws can be proved in a real court. In other words, model the behaviour of a grown-up government: accountability, but not retribution.

(You can and should arrest, convict and punish people who have broken laws because he told them to. The contractors who tore down the east wing of the White House without proper paperwork should be made to put it back together at their own expense. The folks who defaced the Kennedy Center should be arrested for that act of vandalism. You get the idea. Keep the Nuremberg defence unavailable.)

And that, my children, points to how The Great And Powerful Ozymandias should be punished:  Wipe him off the record. Put the Rose Garden back. Change the official designation of every structure, program and statute that carries his name or any hint of his existence: the big beautiful budget bill, the gulf of ammurica, the non-existent department of war, stuff like that.

Erasing what he thinks of as his eternal legacy will cause him more pain than anything the courts or the Congress might do to him. He’d love to be arrested or impeached, but he’ll hate having his name struck from his mighty works. (Again, this is not to say that some state attorney-general shouldn’t take a whack at him, of course. He might not love to be arrested and incarcerated quite as much as he thinks, and a simple statute change would remove his Secret Service protection while he’s inside.)

Terminate contracts with any firms that are enriching him and his family, putting the contracts out for bid and awarding them on the basis of merit even if the same firms get to keep the gigs. Repeal virtually all of his childish executive orders. There may be some actual good ideas buried in some of them—if you do enough things, some of them are almost certain to be okay—so keep those bits  Then you amend the order but do not in any circumstances give him any credit.

(It will be okay with me if you name all the women’s restrooms in federal prisons after him or his wife. Also the sewer systems in the national parks. One should have some fun, after all.)

Rebuilding. After a disaster, consideration is usually given to rebuilding. Do we rebuild pretty much what was lost, or do we rethink the project based on what we now know about the vulnerabilities? This is as true of political and social institutions as it is of physical structures. Rebuilding may involve just reconstruction, but it also provides an opportunity for redesign.

The lifelong business model of the Trump enterprise has been to borrow the money to build something gaudy and useless, and then to declare bankruptcy. The contractors and labourers are stiffed, but the family gets richer. For some reason, there are those who think this makes him a good businessperson rather than a sleazy criminal, but there it is. This time, though, he will not be bankrupting some a fake shell company, but the United States—and not just its physical structures, but its more precious cultural and institutional intangibles.

One model of rebuilding is to put everything back as it was, or at least as it appeared, allowing for changes to bring everything up to modern standards. The Soviets did a pretty good job of this in Budapest after the second world war. On the other hand, there are many folks who after a flood or wildfire build their houses just as they were before. This does not often end well. The key question is whose vision will guide the process, and whose resources will be used for it.

In terms of physical rebuilding, President Peaceprize has overseen the demolition of broad swathes of several countries and no doubt has grandiose and appalling visions for how to replace the ruins with extravagantly tasteless edifices named after him. As this effort is likely to require attention, he will probably lose interest pretty soon, leaving everyone else to clean up after him.

The same is true of intangible assets, ours and those of others. If enough of us are repelled by what he has turned those into, we may have a chance to get in some fundamental changes as we rebuild the rubble of our collective life. We have often taken advantage of similar moments to improve our Constitution and laws, so what the hell? Let’s see if we can make the electoral college more reasonable; there is no real chance of eliminating it, but the states’ winner-takes-all rules can be overridden. Without any federal legislation at all, political parties can repeal their catastrophic binding-primary systems. A lot of the gaping loopholes and outdated ambiguities that the Supremes gifted to this and future presidents can be closed. Any of the more preposterous Senate rules that subvert democracy can be fixed immediately.

Most of this will not happen, but some of it can. The last time we started from scratch was when the Congress tore up the Articles of Confederation and pushed through a completely new constitution. We got real lucky that time, and ought not to try it again. We have historically been better at tinkering—we are fundamentally a society of engineers, not philosophers—so let’s not miss an opportunity to tinker if we are granted one.

Rethinking. Over the next couple of generations, there is a lot to do, and we will all get heartily tired of the effort. Because much has been wrecked, much must be repaired. Every decent American will want to fix everything all at once. This will not work. Instead. pick one or two problems and concentrate on them in whatever way you can. None of this will get dramatically better in your lifetime no matter how young you are now, but let’s all try to start today and keep at it. A short to-do list:

Restore the authority of education, science and scholarly endeavour, especially in public policy. Education and research are not supposed to make us comfortable, but rather the opposite, and opponents are not necessarily enemies. Getting this wrong has been endemic on both ends of the political spectrum and is profoundly unhelpful.

Bring back common decency, respect and courtesy. People who disagree with us are probably not evil, crazy or stupid, and maybe not even ill-informed. Ask questions instead of flinging epithets; practice listening; don’t try to solve problems with bumper-stick slogans.

Honour the tradition of negotiation and compromise, in personal dealings as well as public policy. We don’t have to fight about every goddam thing. This means giving up insistence on ideological purity, which too many folks of all persuasions seem to find difficult.

See if we can bring back appreciation for sacrifice. The Republicans—and even occasionally the Aged Incumbent, who has referred to members of the armed services as suckers and worse—mouth pieties about this, but their votes have not reflected any desire to do anything real. “Thank you for your service” carries just as much meaning and provides just as much useful support as “have a nice day.”

The need to honour sacrifice for the public good is also compelling in the case of civilian public servants, a great many of whom could make more money and have easier lives doing something else. Very few politicians are crooks, no matter what you think, and a great many serve on school boards and zoning boards and volunteer fire departments and such for little or no compensation. At the very least, it would help if so many of those who benefit from their hard work didn’t so obviously hold them in contempt.

Remember that local officials are the farm teams for the major parties. Vote for city councilors and district attorneys and library trustees as carefully as if you were voting for senators and presidents. Some day the only candidates on your Senate ballot may be the knuckledragging mouthbreathers you and your neighbors unthinkingly helped elect as county comptrollers or school board presidents.

Tip O’Neill was right: All politics really is local. This is not only because the price on the gas pumps in your neighborhood influences your town’s votes more than all the national statistics anyone can muster. It’s also because everybody you ever voted for or against came from somewhere, and learned about politics and government from the values and practices of there. So whatever you can do to promote a healthy local political culture is worth a try.

This sounds like a lot of trouble, and it is. Any time spent following the careers of athletes and celebrities is not available for keeping track of stuff that is more likely to affect your real life. You and your local government can have a lot more impact on each other than can you and the Steelers or the Mets or Taylor Swift or Bad Bunny. Go for the real payoff, maybe even run for office yourself.

Eternal vigilance really is the price of liberty. We are learning that the hard way every day, so do like it says on the posters: If you see something, say something. Don’t let ignorant or hateful comments go unquestioned. You don’t have to pick a fight; often you can just ask a question. You can’t change everyone’s mind and maybe you can’t change anyone’s. Probably the best you can hope for is to spur someone to thinking. Do remember, though, that the objective is to win elections, not arguments. We all need to learn to regard a disagreement as a joint quest for understanding rather than a competition.

ENDNOTE:

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6 th book, V; Meric Casaubon, trans., Ermest Rhys, ed., E.P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1906, p. 57