On Jan. 6, 2021, Donald Trump finally ended up where he has always belonged — on the trash heap of history. His inciting of the attack on the Capitol by his legion of willfully ignorant goons will be his lasting legacy, such as it is.
Trump is over.
Of course, he will have tens of millions of dollars that he has bilked from the faithful since the election in November, but a lot of that will be consumed by legal fees. He will have no life, no friends, no place to live where he isn’t reviled by his neighbors, no membership in the “Former Presidents Club,” endless blame from the Republican lawmakers whose careers he has trashed (although many of them did a great job of that themselves), a Republican Party that has become a cruel joke, endless lawsuits and litigation, no relaxing foreign travel except to those countries run by equally corrupt despots — in short, life as a pariah, maybe with an ankle bracelet.
He will have time to write his memoirs, which will basically be a collection of all his tweets.
He won’t have to sit for the traditional presidential portrait. I envision a mug shot.
“Trump 2024”? Please. It’s over.
Trumpism is now seen, more than ever, for what it has always been: an empty ideology of corruption and greed. David Remnick, of The New Yorker, put it best a few years ago in an opinion piece about Trump, whom he had known for years: “He believed in nothing.” As did Rick Wilson, of The Lincoln Project, in the title of his book, Everything Trump Touches Dies.
Trump should take himself, his family of grifters and his fawning enablers and go away.
We, the rest of America, have work to do — and it will get done.
CURT ALBEE
South Strafford
It is now time to remove Donald Trump from the presidency. He has gone too far in his attempt to remain in power.
How can one individual wreak so much havoc on our democracy for his, and his family’s, own personal gain?
Stand up to this monster who has all the elements of psychology’s “dark triad.”
JOHN M. FARRELL
Norwich
We have seen what Donald Trump can do. This is a dangerous period. What can he do before noon on Jan. 20?
He can pardon those who invaded the Capitol.
He can create another attack on our government.
He can blow up the world.
He must be removed from office now.
MARTHA S. SOLOW
Lebanon
It is my belief that Vice President Mike Pence needs to be president for the next two weeks if we are to survive as a country.
BARRY WENIG
Lebanon
Several years ago, my writer son John Vaillant introduced me to the history of the “Ghost Dance” — a late-19th-century Native American spiritual movement, initiated in response to a growing fear of European invasion into their territories.
The practice began with the powerful visions of a Paiute elder who yearned for a renewal of their sacred Earth and help — from somewhere — for the Paiute people, as promised by their ancestors.
The movement evolved into huge, intense, elaborately costumed dances, along with mass trances and songs from the dead, the main goal being to oust the oncoming white people through reenactments of earlier tribal might, and with the hope of restoring their ancient cultures.
Watching the increasingly frantic antics of President Donald Trump and his supporters as they try to obscure the facts of the recent election with a relentless barrage of lies, culminating with Wednesday’s storming of the U.S. Capitol, brings the Ghost Dance to mind again. The Native American Ghost Dances were complex, elaborate and impressive displays, designed to fend off awareness of what they knew, if not fully consciously, was their demise as a powerful and cohesive culture. The theatrical quality of the Trump supporters’ ritual behavior is eerily similar.
Blatant, performance-oriented denial of what’s actually happening is the central feature of both responses.
Both these conflicts could be seen as thumbnail sketches of periods in American history: the familiar 19th century cultural clash between white people and people of color, and the current fight between that bifurcated, hierarchal view and an emerging ethic of a more inclusive nation. With this vision to inspire us, nobody can deny that we live in pivotal times.
NAN BOURNE
Woodstock
More than 100 years ago, my grandparents traveled from their small towns in Poland to the United States, leaving behind everything familiar, with little money, not speaking English. The rumor was that here they would find streets paved with gold, but they knew that was not true in the literal sense.
What compelled them was the promise of living in a country where the streets are paved with an abiding faith in democracy and the rule of law, bound by a Constitution that has been tested too often in recent days.
Imagine what our grandparents would think of what happened in our nation’s capital on Wednesday — grandparents like yours and mine whose children went to war to defend our country from those who would destroy that freedom.
As the fortunate descendants of these brave people, we must never forget what brought them here and what keeps our country golden.
BEVERLY MARSHALL
Grantham
Donald Trump’s life is about to change and so is ours, thank heavens.
Soon he will be a one-term chief executive, impeached during that one term, and beaten soundly at the ballot box. His full legacy is yet to be determined, but you can bet that high on the list will be “superspreader” and “liar.”
Not long from now, he’ll be nothing more than a washed-up has-been, a burned-out, low-grade entertainer whose highest level of performance never rose above destructive. Laughable but dangerous.
Certain parts of his legacy are predictable. Trump encouraged the normalcy of lawlessness. He aided and abetted the disintegration of democracy, eroding our values and our system of checks and balances. He tried to sour our constitutional democratic republic into his version of a dictatorship.
He attempted to overturn a legitimate election and forced a shoddy and hazardous transition. For years he acted an autocrat, an authoritarian. And he had a lot of help from weak-minded people around him, all part of a Republican conspiracy to maintain power in order to serve their own selfish needs. Some of them are still around, in Congress, still refusing to tell truth to power, because they are cowards.
What damage Trump did to America and how long it will last we don’t yet know. People in this great land are resilient, with attitudes and abilities tough enough to bounce back from massive problems. It is also true that never in this nation’s history have we been so poisoned and undermined as we have been by Trump’s level of dishonesty and avarice.
Trump’s way madness lies. What’s left to salvage for new days to come? Tomorrow’s another day, life regenerates. Bad experience teaches us what not to do next time. We just elected a good man and a good woman for next time.
ROBERT ROUDEBUSH
North Haverhill