I've never seen it get this bad. Have you? Like I've said before, I vaguely remember Watergate, and this is nothing remotely like Watergate. At least Nixon was in control and the scope of his criminal activity was limited. Watergate was a trickle; this is a flood.

It'd be easier if Trump himself were the only problem. Removing him from office would solve the problem and everything would go back to something resembling normal. Unfortunately, his complete inability to lead and govern* has created a vacuum of power that has allowed other bad actors to operate unchecked and sometimes unnoticed because of all the noise the White House is generating.

One of the many, many things that bugs me about people who have "the answer" is that they will say "X is just a distraction from the big problem. While you're worrying about X, then Y is going unchecked!" First of all, by some strange coincidence, "X" is a social justice issue that doesn't directly affect this person, and "Y" is something that does. Every. damn. time.

And you know what? There are a LOT of legitimate, big problems that need to be addressed. We don't have the luxury of fighting this war on one front. The President is sympathetic to Nazis. Congress is trying to gut health care to give their donors tax breaks**. Many states have taken the emptiness of the office of the President as an opportunity to gut women's rights, LGBT rights, rights for people of color, as well as the programs that assist the poor of all demographics. The Russians have attempted to co-opt our elections for their own benefit, as well as to undermine NATO. The police are killing people of color without any apparent reason without any consequences. Oh, and dumbass is still rattling nuclear sabers.

My point is, don't tell me that the focus needs to be on one of these problems and the others will be addressed later. We don't have a single hole in the dam; we have a whole batch of them, and each of them will hurt and kill people. This ALL needs to be fixed, and saying we should only focus on your pet issue is not helpful and really patronizing.

-RK

* I understand that if he were even slightly effective as a leader, he would create a whole different and possibly worse set of problems, but at least the source of the trouble would have a single address.

** OK, I could do a whole post on this, but the real reason for the panicked rush to repeal Obamacare is a lot simpler and more evil than tax breaks. One of our two political parties has hitched their wagon to the premise that the government can't do anything right and everything should be privatized. A successful, popular health care program is a threat to their very existence in the same way social security is. That's why repeal-without-replace was on the table.