About nine months ago, I posted the following concerning the possibility of accountability finally coming to Donald Trump for all his horrible actions, although I also state at the end that I only believe true accountability will come when the grim reaper visits him.
Still, I reread it to see what may have changed in those intervening months and was both gladdened and saddened.
At the time, Ron DeSantis was the GOP candidate expected to pose a possible challenge to Trump. As it turned out, he, along with all the other men who entered the race have dropped out, most, only to endorse Trump. Of course, other than Chris Christie, those other male candidates were obviously not serious about challenging Trump, rarely, if ever, attacking Trump on any of the many topics available to them. Can you say gutless?
Also, we didn't know just how many felony indictments would be forthcoming, ninety-one, as it turned out. I am old enough to remember when a politician could be forced out of a presidential race for admitting having mental health therapy in the past, or having extra-marital affairs. And when a candidate who may have smoked pot in his past, had to explain it away.
But now we have a candidate with millions of supporters who (among many other things) stoked a mob to ransack the Capitol building in the attempt to thwart the peaceful transition of power (and perhaps kill or hang a few in the process), stole national secrets, then lied about having them and about returning them all, and has continued to lie about the results of the 2020 presidential election. Oh, and believes that as president he should have complete immunity from prosecution even if he should order the assassination of a political rival. Can you say cult?
History is a curious thing. In hindsight, there are often obvious inflection points that historians can cite as the time or place when a sea change had occurred. Perhaps it is a specific battle of a war, or a speech made by an influential person, or an invention.
But in real time, as life is happening, it is rare indeed to identify such a point when everything that comes after is different from everything that came before.
My hope with this post is to predict a possible turning point in the life of Donald Trump, and our country.
A while back I published a post concerning which gender is the weaker sex and how we might redefine masculinity to allow for the social changes that have occurred in the last hundred years, changes which have reduced the dominance of (white) men while providing for an immense increase in opportunities in education, business, politics, etc for women and minorities.
Which brings me back to accountability for Trump.
I would like to think that in 5 years, perhaps even less, the events of 2024 will be designated as the beginning of the end for Trump's influence. Not perhaps the end of such influence, but the beginning of the waning of such influence.
And, as indicated in The Weaker Sex post, should that be true it will be women who have demonstrates their strength, specific women and the gender as a whole who were able to create that slow slide towards irrelevance.
As mentioned before, a lot has changed in nine months. While we already knew about Cassidy and Liz, we now have other women leading the charge to shine light on the Donald.
Two women prosecutors, Fani Willis and Tish James are leading strong cases against Trump which demonstrate his past lies about his finances to obtain preferential loans, and the conspiracy he led to subvert the will of the American electorate to disenfranchise Georgia's voters.
E Jean Carroll, and her female lawyers, Roberta Kaplan and Shawn Crowley, have successfully won a jury verdict which not only found Trump guilty of sexual assault and libel in the first trial, but won additional monetary awards for defamation, injury to her reputation and punitive damages to the tune of $83.3, that second jury trial which resulted from Trump's inability to keep his mouth shut. Can you say lack of self control?
And then there is Nikki Haley. Now, I was very disappointed in Nikki's early debate performance, especially her willingness to pardon Trump should she win the presidency, not because I would not be opposed to such a move should he admit to wrong doing, but we all know he won't admit to doing anything wrong, so Nikki should have prefaced her decision to pardon him with the caveat that he admit wrongdoing, and ask for a pardon.
But, now that it is mano e mano (so to speak), she is pulling out all the stops and is beginning to point out, not just the obvious, that other than 2016, he (and the GOP in his image) has lost every other election; 2018 midterms when the GOP lost the house, 2020 presidential election when they lost the White House and Senate, and even in 2022 when the red wave was more like a trickle, but also his lack of clarity, his penchant for dictators and bully tactics, and his obvious misogyny.
Can she win the nomination? She has survived the primary to date, besting all the other male candidates, so anything can happen as the trials begin and those republicans who are paying attention see his childish behavior, continued all caps temper tantrums, and the testimony of those who previously voted for and served in his administration. As I said in my last post, I believe it is more likely that she could beat Biden in the November general election than Trump, a prospect that I do not embrace, but one which I can't for the life of me understand why the republican party doesn't realize.
So then, will women be the ultimate force behind Trump's fading away? Specific women, as I have mentioned in past posts, and women voters in general?
If there is still irony left in the universe, that would certainly be the purest example, for a misogynist, women private parts grabber, thrice married philanderer, to be relegated to the trash bin of American history by the very gender which he treated with disdain and contempt.
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