Mitt Romney: the reckoning
author: annie trussler | op-ed editor
He’s vain, shallow, superficial, and hardly presidential – but hey, at least it’s uphill from there, right?
Picture it: it’s 2012, and the American election is fast approaching. Anyone with a semblance of dignity is begging for Barack to go back to back; to anyone whose first date was their cousin, Romney was an up-and-coming winner. “Call Me Maybe” is the newest hot track, and all of us have the Gangnam Style dance down to an artform. Our greatest fear was a SuperPAC man-child, and we hadn’t a care in the world, save for the impending apocalypse in December.
2012’s moral was that Mitt Romney was as bad as it got. He’s vain, shallow, superficial, and hardly presidential – but hey, at least it’s uphill from there, right? Well, now that we struggled to 2018, we all know that’s unfortunately wrong.
Republicans have seemingly evolved, and now we’re all forced to languish under the clammy thumb of America’s whiniest millionaire. Every waking moment feels like an endless nightmare. Many of us are counting the days until we are liberated from Donny J’s wrath.
Donald’s presence in the Oval Office, then, begs the question: is this as bad as it gets? Surely a genocidal, infantile, overblown gasbag with a bad hairpiece and no sense of direction is the lowest America can sink. Surely. Certainly. But then again, we said something similar about the comparatively harmless Mitt Romney. We thought it ended there, and Republicans proved us wrong.
My general predictions are as follows: Trump will bomb, a Democrat will take office, and Republicans will do something reactionary. I fear that “something reactionary” will outdo the rampant stupidity of Trump with a figurehead more dangerous, more trigger happy, more arrogant than we could fathom.
Republicans have the foresight of a goldfish, and the approximate intelligence, as well. If anything threatens their place of power and wealth, they immediately release a new politician of kaiju-esque grace. Those to the far right never plan for the future, near or far, and we all inevitably end up in an endless pissing contest with North Korea. This is the current state of politics, and frankly, the future seems bleak.
Foreseeably, we will have another democratic president – perhaps even for two terms – but after those eight years, Republicans will release Ultra Fascist 3000, and it will rampage through downtown Washington. The presidency will there onward be determined by armed combat, and Barack Obama will be sent back a la Terminator to put a stop to this two-tiered madness. Also, Hillary murdered Bill. Cold blood.
I’m just saying, this is a slippery slope.
Seriously, though, we have to stop allowing fear mongers to govern us. Extremist politics have no room in a modern democracy (considering extremist policies destroyed a number of other country) always being the outcome of this flawed system) – Donald Trump is a criminal – a criminal without a semblance of political prowess or human decency – but a criminal, nonetheless. A criminal does not necessarily need to be cunning to be effective. Batman always has the hardest time with the brute-force baddies.
Our standards have to be higher. They simply have to. There are children gunned down in their classrooms; poor people freeze to death on the streets; black people are senselessly murdered in their neighborhoods, cars, and homes. This violence is no mere coincidence – we are letting this happen.
Let’s not continue this destructive cycle.