BY SAMUEL PRESCOTT

Recent off year election results and increasingly incoherent ineptitude are starting to make it feel like the odds of the Age of Trump outliving 2026 are decreasing. But maybe not. I have been wrong about the American electorate before.

Even a broken clock, though, is right twice a day. Let’s wind up this one.

When we gave Joe Biden and the Democrats a trifecta in 2020, our politics had been failing for several decades. Landing us at an inflection point. We want a merit-based society that rewards hard work, keeps us safe, and free.  We understand that requires our leaders to do what we often must do in our own lives; make hard choices. We voted for those values. We voted for American normalcy.

What we got instead was normalcy fashioned by our political elites. The Democrats said what they needed to say to secure power and then divided the electoral spoils among their biggest financial contributors, their loudest ideologues, and their left center base. Yes, some important legislation was passed. But four years passed without once meeting what the moment so desperately required - authentically hearing and directly addressing the profound problems faced by the entire country. That failed opportunity was not owned by Biden alone, but he exemplified it.  He couldn’t be found for fully half of his term, gave relatively few press conferences and virtually no in-depth, hard-hitting, searching interviews. The 2024 Presidential debate revealed why.

We then gave Trump and the Republicans a trifecta. Where that has taken us is well-illustrated by a plaque now under Biden’s portrait. The textual highlights? That Biden, “the worst President in American History” caused “the highest inflation ever recorded,” caused Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, caused the Hamas pogrom in Israel, and  “brought our Nation to the brink of destruction . . . . [b]ut despite it all President Trump would get Re-elected in a landslide and SAVE AMERICA!!!” Biden’s portrait, mind you, and this plaque are not hung in Trump’s house. They are hung in our house – the White House. Making Trump’s grotesque assault on the dignity of that once venerated office in our name.

Trump would be a stable genius if he were a hamster. He instead leads a party of Repuppets that have brought us the War Department, the Gulf of America, the Trump Kennedy Center, desiccated institutions, more inflation, an even higher deficit, less health care, pardons handed out like candy, more fiscal irresponsibility, international isolation, a more dangerous world, a lot of dead Venezuelans (with many more to come), and the staggering misuse of American military power to grab Venezuelan oil reserves without even pretending to restore Venezuelan democracy. While bringing Trump and his family as much as 3 billion dollars. https://time.com/7342470/trump-net-worth-wealth-crypto/.

We speak of billions so often that it is now an unthinking part of our lexicon. It shouldn’t be. A billion is 1,000 million. Meaning that Trump may have made himself a millionaire 3,000 times over in less than one year while President. Another oft repeated, poorly understood phrase – the “rule of law” – is given traction by this plundering. What permits Trump to do so is his cabinet of clowns, which cement Trump’s control over the organs of government that could (but now won’t) challenge Trump’s naked self-enrichment. While acting as President in our name.

We know also now better understand a third oft used term; “transactional.”  Trump says Maduro was deposed because he was flooding the US with narcotics, and Maduro may have been. But weeks before we invaded, Trump pardoned the President of Honduras, who was in an American jail after being convicted beyond a reasonable doubt by an American jury of massive narcotics trafficking into the United States. Trump also says Maduro rigged that country’s election, and he did. Except we have now installed Maduros corrupt running mate and excluded those chosen by Venezuela’s voters. If you think this sounds like Putin, you have a pulse. As understood by Trump, “transactional” is a synonym for immoral. As applied here, it is taking from others because you can. Which will, in short order, inevitably engender resistance that will harm those doing the taking. That is, us. All done in our name.

There are many things one could call this. An America that most Americans can recognize is not one of them.

If the latest trend holds and the Democrats sweep the mid-terms, what will they do with that win? Or rather, what should they do? If the American people reject Repuppetism in the 2026 mid-terms, how do we begin to recapture our vision of America?

Not every epiphany is monumental. Some of them can be mundane. Mine wasn’t an other-worldly revelation. It was just sitting on the ground of human experience.

I am, you see, at the stage of my life where even the actuarial tables say significantly more years are behind than in front of me. Faced with that hard truth, I have sought others. In both the New Testament and the Torah - seeking not only hope for what comes after this, but also an explanation (at least in part) of what this is. Those books address both. They are about faith and about how people have struggled to make sense of the things within us that we have always struggled against.

Think of it this way. Laws are not written prophylactically; neither by God nor by man. So “thou shalt not kill” does not address a hypothetical. It emerged from an ocean of blood. Bearing false witness. Stealing. You get the point. As well as its painfully contemporary relevance. We are what we have been since the moment we became. That is the affliction.

What is the cure? Self-interest. Not the economic kind. It is the kind that speaks to what we can be. Rabbi Hillel told an eager religious student"[t]hat which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow: that is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Go and learn." Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount, told us something very similar; “do unto others what you would have them do unto you.”  So long it done authentically, without hypocrisy.

Embedded in these formulations is a reality; how we live informs what we will and won’t do. When a society authentically embraces the wrongfulness of killing, stealing from, or lying about others, those wrongs are less likely to be inflicted upon us.

We live in a country of some 330,000,000 individuals. Many of whom are frustrated, angry,  exhausted, and hold all manner of opinions. Foolish questions are being asked and foolishly answered. Yet there are wise questions and answers. too. We must consider them all.

Why? Not to be persuaded or become more open-minded. That would be nice, but it is not required. We must do this because only by making ourselves  hear the voices of others – authentically and without hypocrisy - will we earn the right to ourselves be heard. And things earned are things valued and defended. Some call it the necessary condition for compromise. Others call it the foundation of democracy. Both are right.

There is no new wisdom. But there are new problems to apply it to.

In The Republic, Plato recalled Socrates’ saying that birds of a feather flock together in 375 B.C. And they still do. The golden rule is more than 2,000 years old, hard to implement, and usually only observed in the breach. But that does not make it any less true. However aspirational, it gives us a formula for success. A direction to travel. A true north.

Here is another truth. The world is darkening. We are no longer the City on the Hill and will not get there by doing more of what does not work. It can be hard to know when political differences are facilitating transformation, or how to translate that process into policy deliverables. We do, however, know it when we see it. We need to see it now. And we need to support those who aspire to take us there.

The golden rule still lays glittering on the ground for all to see. Over the course of this nation, only a few politicians have picked it up. Those who do now - be they Democrats, Republicans, or Independents - are authentic leaders. Those who don’t are not and never will be.

Character is destiny.