Americans are on the brink of losing it all — and good people know it | Opinion
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Let’s start with some questions today, before we arrive at the answer.
What if Kamala Harris had become president, promptly leveled the historic East Wing of our White House, and then spent each day like a petrified drama queen shrieking that taxpayers should purchase her a new ballroom?
What if Harris had spent her time in office plastering her face and name on inanimate objects, while food prices she promised to lower spiraled out of control, and then belittled the people who dared mention this?
I’m not done.
What if Harris and her administration had spent their time attacking science and vaccines and then did nothing as Measles — MEASLES — made a deadly comeback across America?
What if Harris had become president and picked silly and insulting fights with our NATO partners who have been with us since WWII, while threatening to invade Greenland like some petulant child?
What if after running a campaign on no new wars, Harris appointed a drunken, racist talk show host to be her Secretary of Defense, who then proceeded to commit a series of war crimes, shared top-secret intelligence with God knows who, brazenly blocked military promotions of women and people of color, and then led a moronic war in Iran that has only succeeded in making America a more dangerous and expensive place?
Sorry, I’m not done yet.
What if instead of supporting Ukraine during their heroic fight on the frontline of democracy that benefits America, Harris berated its leader and then rolled out the red carpet for the murdering fascist, Vladimir Putin, on U.S. soil?
What if instead of prosecuting law and order, Harris appointed HER personal lawyer as OUR attorney general and then went about spending billions of taxpayer dollars to reward the traitors who attacked us on January 6, 2021?
Can you imagine?
What if Kamala Harris had become president and leveled idiotic tariffs on every country she could locate on a map that resulted in making things more expensive for Americans?
What would all those sanctimonious MAGA farmers say about that?
What if instead of answering questions from the media, Harris called them names like piggy, and enemies of the people?
What if after becoming president Harris stayed awake at night hate-posting unhinged bilge directed at 70 percent of America?
What if Harris had become president and got into a bitter feud with the Pope?
What if we found out Harris had been mentioned more than 30,000 times in the Epstein Files, and was a longtime friend of the child-rapist?
What if Harris had become president and spent the first 17 months in office spending more time at Walter Reed Medical Hospital than she did with her husband, and then publicly bragged about passing basic cognitive tests while being held up on swollen ankles?
Can you imagine????
What if Kamala Harris had become president and invited thousands of Blacks to immigrate to America from South Africa, after saying she was closing our borders?
What if Kamala Harris had become president and led a government-wide attack on rural white voters by making it as hard as possible for them to vote?
What is Harris had become president and depicted herself as Jesus Christ in a social media posting?
What if Harris had become president and filled her cabinet with unqualified rightwing talk show hosts and billionaires, whose only talents are filling their bottomless pockets with our money?
What if after becoming president, Harris did everything in her power to strip people of their healthcare, and Medicare and Medicaid benefits to benefit corporate raiders?
What if after becoming president, Harris set about putting actions in place that will pollute our air and drinking water …?
OK, I’ll stop there, my friends, because we all have things to do this morning while we carry on through the most insane, destructive timeline in American history.
The truth is none of those things would have happened had Harris — or ANY — Democrat been elected president, because we — Democrats and Left-Leaners — would have never allowed it, nor elected anybody — much less a convicted felon — who even hinted at these appalling attacks on America, Americans, and our standing in the world.
It must be said often, and out loud that in 2026 America, our two major political parties are publicly held to completely different standards.
In fact, one of them is held to absolutely NO standards at all.
Read that again.
This is indisputable, and we simply must get to the point where we accept at least this much, or we are done for good.
Finished.
That this ongoing and brutal numbing of our sensibilities has somehow been normalized to such a truly terrifying degree by our media, as well as the people and institutions who are charged with monitoring the America condition and the threats facing her citizens, is a terrible, terrible tragedy, it really is.
The annihilation of the barriers that used to separate good from evil and right from wrong have transformed America and its insane military might, into the most dangerous country in the world. When anything can be justified — even an attack on OUR OWN CAPITOL — everybody is in deep trouble.
We are spiraling out of control, and on the brink of losing our democracy for good, and the people who dare to pay attention — the blessed woke — know it.
That is most likely you.
This disregard of the truth, and just plain human decency is taking a terrible toll on average, good-hearted people in this country who have watched, jaws dropped, the past decade as millions have been given permission to willingly surrender to their very worst instincts, while following a grotesque man and party that are leading us to our bitter end.
That many of them are friends and family has been almost too much to bear and comprehend. How long have they carried this disease inside them? Can they be cured?
Either way, they and their debilitating weakness, and a busted media that tries to understand and excuse them, are to blame for our demise.
We feel powerless to get through to them to stop their madness, because they have been provided cover and coddled by the people and institutions I mentioned above, who have somehow accepted this as our new normal.
They are weak in mind and heart. They are the lowest among us, and refuse to lift themselves up, or even consider the damage they are doing to a country that they think even less of than themselves.
Well let me tell you something: I have no trouble stepping on them to get to higher places where we can properly survey the damage they have caused and set about repairing it.
I will not get over this or them. I will call them out and our condition in America for what it is: hideous.
The normalization of this ongoing rot inside our White House simply has to stop — or bare minimum be recognized for what it is — if we are to have any hope of carrying ourselves as a half-decent nation making an honest run at once again searching for the common good.
That starts with recognizing the truth, and shouting it out, instead of normalizing chaos and odious behavior.
And if that truth hurts the people who are wrecking our society, then there is still a sliver of hope, because at least we will know they aren’t completely dead inside.
These aren't normal times we are living in unless we just surrender and accept that they are, my friends.
Well, I just can’t let that happen.
Can you?
D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.
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I'm interested in learning just how much more maga is willing to pay to own the libs ...
their entire defense is either "they did it first", or "they were going to do it to us, so we did it to them first ..."
I don't think the old rules apply anymore, Dig, and the new rules have yet to be created.
I think we have to bitch, and bitch loudly, about the issues raised.
But I have been doing that. Mostly, I feel, it has fallen on deaf ears. I had somewhere to take this, but it is late and I have to retire. Things are not always as they present themselves, and hopefully this will be one of those occasions... We shall see.
Only to some who will hopefully be out of power soon, at least in Congress.
It is hard to imagine what goes through the mind of a Trump supporter if they were to actually read an article like this. Would they nuh-uh it? Would they dismiss all the points as irrelevant? Or would they say that all the bad of Trump is worth it to keep a D out of the White House?
No matter what, it is clear that anyone who still tries to defend Trump at this point cannot be reasoned with.
We actually see a lot of that right here on NT. I've lost track of all the times our resident MAGA crowd has tried to claim that Harris would have been worse. It's practically an automatic response.
It just goes to show what a few decades of misinformation and culture war nonsense from propaganda outlets like Fox News and conservative hate radio can do. That crowd has been programmed to hate "libs" so much that they would (and in fact do) vote for the absolute worst among us before pulling the level for a D.
It is even worse than that. They do not have to go to the point of voting for a D. At this point, they can help the nation by simply waking the fuck up and criticizing the psychopath with the powers of the US presidency.
Trump's power comes from those who support/defend him.
After all this time and all the opportunities they've had, I'd say that's simply not going to happen. They're too emotionally and psychologically invested at this point. Pure cult mentality.
And his downfall will come from independents in the middle who aren't feverishly locked in with a party, especially those who have experienced a major case of buyers remorse after voting for the scumbag in 2024. Trump's die-hard MAGA base alone wasn't enough in the swing states, and it still isn't.
They could be in shackles as slaves being forced to watch their own 13-year-old daughters being raped by Donald and his coked-up sons and they'd still swear it would have been worse if Kamala had been elected.
meh, they'd probably welcome that. being raped by brown immigrants or black men would likely get their full attention ...
If Ms. Harris had done all that they would have called for her head on a silver platter.
One distinction tho from the article. She would have fired all the White Men and replaced them with Black Women.
As for "Or would they say that all the bad of Trump is worth it to keep a D out of the White House?" (from Tig's comment in #5, they would shout that from the rooftops. All the horror that comes out of this administration is more acceptable to them than having a Black Woman in the White House.
boo hoo hoo, thoughts and prayers for maga dipshits after november ...
I realize that Kamala Harris was chosen specifically to play the 'race card'. (Democrats must turn every issue into a 'civil rights' issue.) But, dammit, Joe Biden really was the President in the middle of two Trump terms. Democrats cannot tear hair and rend clothes over Jan. 6th while conveniently ignoring Joe Biden. Joe Biden is intimately connected to Jan. 6th, like it or not.
If Joe Biden had done the things listed in the article then Democrats would have defended him. It was Biden who issued stringent pandemic requirements that shut down the economy, who was responsible for managing the surge in inflation, who was responsible for exacerbating problems with immigration, was responsible for imposing EV costs and requirements onto industry and society, was responsible for the escalation of the Ukrainian war. Joe Biden was not a harmless old grandpa napping in the Oval Office. Joe Biden was an autocratic President, just like Donald Trump.
And Democrats, the left leaning media, and liberal voters defended everything Biden did, no matter the harm caused. Biden's sin was a poor debate performance that scared the crap out of Democrat grifters. But Democrats defended Biden's executive actions.
Kamala Harris is a 'what if' way to play the 'race card'. But Joe Biden was a hard reality that allows a real world comparison. Biden took care of 'family business'. Biden wielded executive power for his pet peeves and projects. Biden spent taxpayer money on his beach house instead of the White House. Biden played wartime President. And Democrat voters, donors, and establishment defended everything Biden did.
it's reading delusional bullshit like that which will make me take a special interest in maga thumpers, if/when the shit hits the fan ...
If Shakespeare were still around he would have been inspired by what has happened to America in order to pen his greatest tragedy, but he couldn't call it An American Tragedy, because Theodore Dreiser already used that title. I used to love America, but now I pity it, However, even though America has suffered a fall from grace, it can still recover, because it isn't Humpty Dumpty. Don't lose hope my friends, because I think you have what it takes to weather the storm and recover. Remember what Andy Dufresne said "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things."
"I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying." — Andy Dufresne
Is it okay to wish Donald would dye in prison?
Someone has to work in the laundry and keep all those jumpsuits orange.
It's a great look for Trump, the jumpsuit really brings out the color of his skin.
LOL, I laughed at the colour match. Problem - although the first image opened, the second one didn't.
Trump is breaking everything just like he said he would, using the most unqualified people he can find to make it happen. A single week in the Trump administration generates more turmoil and bad press than any past POTUS generated in a year.
Somebody should speak to him like you would your 4 year old child. "You won't get any new toys if you keep breaking the ones you have!"
he really likes to see himself on TV ...
Came across this quote; seems spot on:
Americans are on the brink of losing it all — and good people know it
One thing that stood out to me in the title, which I believe to be very accurate, is that it also implies that those who continue to live in denial of the destructive nature of Donald are not good people. Trump is a litmus test not unlike his former friend Jeff Epstein. If you're out there defending Epstein and making excuses for the grooming, rape and trafficking of underage girls, then you're not a good person. If you're doing the same for Epstein's friend and co-accused pedophile who said of his friend “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy." "He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”, then you're also not a good person.
And of course, if 'friend of convicted pedophile' and being an accused pedophile wasn't enough, you can add in the mountain of other felonies, ethics violations, tax fraud, sexual assaults, charity fraud, impeachments, abuse of power and attempted insurrection. People who defend that are NOT good people, they are NOT patriots, they are NOT loyal to the constitution and country, they are NOT living up to what it means to be an American. And how do these people NOT see how evil they've become? It's what happens when they follow a populist leader telling them to ignore reality and to blindly follow his 'not see' agenda. Because let's face it, sometimes ignorance is bliss and being a 'Not see' is just easier than standing up for what you believe in, especially when you're surrounded by so many 'not see's. But no one ever said life is easy. It's hard to stand up for what's right, to wake up to the injustice around you and refuse to be a 'not see', especially when the 'not see's ridicule and spit on you for daring to be aware of the injustice the 'not see's are protecting.
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