I think it was in a Pogo comic strip from long ago. The comic quote was “We have met the enemy, and it is us”. Which, in turn, got it from someplace else. I like it because it seems to be true so often. You think you’re fighting some other person or thing, some other entity, but really, your biggest obstacle is yourself and/or your supposed allies. I think about the quote a lot in reference to Donald Trump, our so-called president. He gets in these knock-down fights that leave him bruised and battered, but his real enemy is himself. That is good for us Democrats as a party, since Trump’s self-defeating behavior makes it less likely that he will achieve his objectives, and more likely that his party will get shellacked in the mid-terms next year. But it’s bad for us as a country. If the president can’t make peace with himself, how is he ever going to handle a crisis? The Republican party has, for a long time now, put party ahead of country, almost to the point of ridiculousness. It would be funny if it didn’t have such serious consequences.

The most harmful recent example of national self-defeating behavior was regarding the Democrats’ campaign to win the 2016 presidential race. We were running against ourselves more than we were running against the Republicans and, eventually, Republican candidate Trump. The election was ours to lose, and we lost it. Trump led the Republican party to victory. Bernie Sanders led the Democrats to defeat.

The so-called Great Recession had an enormous impact on our national politics. Middle-aged and older workers were afraid of losing their jobs and savings. College students faced uncertain prospects for employment. Well-off people watched their investments tank. So there was a great deal of anger among voters in the 2016 presidential election. The masses divided into Right Pitchforks and Left Pitchforks.

The Right Pitchforks were sick and tired of the Wall Street financiers taking the lion’s share of the money out of the economy, foreclosing on their homes, driving their families to ruin with drug addiction and suicide rampant. They were angry that their standard of living was lower than their parents’, with little hope for improvement. They saw the trade deals crafted by the eggheads, whom they hate, taking their jobs away. They saw the previous president Barack Obama as an insult. A black man AND an egghead, in favor of NAFTA and crafting new trade deals to take away even more of their jobs. And talking down to them like they were stupid or something. They were chickens, ripe for the plucking, and Donald Trump, carnival barker extraordinaire, plucked them good. He lied to them, telling them the trade deals were responsible for their dire straits, and he would fix that situation in a hurry.

The Left Pitchforks were angry too. Many of them were college students drowning in debt, with uncertain job prospects. Many of them were taking McJobs to pay back their student loans while living with their parents, in order to save their credit ratings. There’s nothing like a bankruptcy to pluck your feathers. Supposedly, a bankruptcy only stays on your record for seven years. But on a mortgage or car loan application, they don’t ask you if you have had a bankruptcy in the last seven years. They ask you if you have ever had one. So you end up plucked for life, credit-wise. These Left Pitchforkers saw the party they would normally identify with, the Democrats, associating itself with celebrities, throwing lavish fundraisers. And, not only that, but the Democratic candidate was The Evil Woman, or as I know her, Hillary Clinton. That is the one thing that the Left Pitchforks and the Right Pitchforks had in common: They hated her guts. She had the nerve to be a woman over 50 with political ambition. The right wing slime machine had been sliming her for many years. So, the college kids, male and female, bought into the myth of Evil Hillary. She was the one raising money with the likes of George Clooney and Beyoncé. And she had the nerve to take money for speeches she gave after she left office as Secretary of State. The nerve of her! She took the money they offered her! She should have made them pay her less. After all, that’s what they would have done. Right. She was paid the going rate for somebody of her caliber and knowledge. Nothing more, nothing less. So along comes Grandpa Bernie Sanders. Grampa Sanders is kind of a jerk. He isn’t a nice man. But he gives one heck of a free speech. He will make public college free. Bye bye, student loan! He will make health insurance free. No more worrying about copays and lifetime caps, or anything like that. This man, Grampa Sanders, is going to strong-arm the Freedom Caucus in the Republican House of Representatives. Or more specifically, his millions of followers are going to. Whenever Grampa was asked how he was going to get the Republicans, who refuse to raise taxes under any circumstances, to fund what in effect would have been a New Deal 2.0, he answered that his supporters would collectively force Senate Majority Leader McConnell and House Speaker Ryan and the Freedom Caucus, collectively force them to bend to their will. How? I don’t know. I don’t think that question has ever been honestly answered by Grandpa Sanders or any of his supporters.

The election is old news. Trump won. I know that. The reason that any of this matters is that, unless the Democrats can get their act together, they are going to keep on losing. If enough liberals had voted for the person who would have done what they wanted, Hillary Clinton would be our president, and Trump would be just another rich gadfly. The Republican and Democratic base have another thing in common besides their hatred for Hillary. They both are self-defeating. The left somehow imagines that all those conservative voters could somehow abandon all their opinions and values, and vote for a self-proclaimed Socialist. The lefties don’t want to settle for somebody who will get the job done. They want a hero. So they were ripe for the plucking by Grandpa Sanders. He sold them a bill of goods and got them a president who intends to turn the clock back as far as he and his Republican confederates possibly can. And this is going to keep on happening. Because the right wing votes. They may be self-defeating, but they vote.

Well, this is one heck of a mess we’re in. We are 77 days, one hour, and a number of minutes into the Trump presidency as I am typing this. Mostly, he is trying to rule by executive order. It isn’t going well. Both of his immigration bans have been struck down by the courts, and his one try at working with congress to pass a law ended up in failure. Sad! We have a failing president with the worst approval ratings in recorded history so soon into his term. Last night, Trump had some 60 missiles launched against Syria, on his own, without congressional approval. To me, it’s beyond obvious that, his crocodile tears notwithstanding, the reason he did this was to distract attention from the investigation into meddling by the Russians in our presidential election.

I was watching The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell last Friday, and what he said struck me as being very true. He said that just the fact that it’s possible that Trump could have used the bombing as a distraction is astonishing, a first. We have never had a president who could even conceivably done something as crass, illegal, and heartless. It’s entirely possible that, not only did Trump bomb Syria under false pretenses, he might have caused, knowingly or not, Putin to order to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to use the chemical weapons in the first place. So, possibly, not only are Trump’s tears over the gassed children fake, he may have been responsible for their gassing in the first place. It is inconceivable to me that a man who wants to keep the women and children fleeing Syria out of the U.S. would all of a sudden develop such a sympathetic heart. Not to mention that Trump kicked a baby out of his rally last summer. He loves children! Pardon me if I’m more than a little cynical.

I was originally planning to do a blog about the callous, traitorous leadership of the Republican Congress, but the Syrian bombing intervened. This issue is of more immediate importance. We have a president who is a well-known liar, who lies effortlessly and naturally. He has no credibility at all. Nothing he says or does can be taken at face value. We have never had such moral turpitude in the White House. There is no doubt in my mind that the main, if not the only, reason for the Syrian bombing was to change the subject and to salvage Trump’s low approval rating. That alone would be bad enough. And presidents of both parties have been known to make decisions for political reasons, including foreign policy decisions. What separates Trump from the others is the possibility that Putin might be behind the whole thing. Like Lawrence O’Donnell said on his show, the Russians are Syrian president al-Assad’s primary backers. The Russians were supposed to have gotten rid of all chemical weapons in an agreement with Obama. So what are the chances of al-Assad embarrassing his main sponsor by using chemical weapons that aren’t supposed to be there? It’s possible that Putin ordered a limited chemical weapons strike, enough to get Trump’s attention. Putin may or may not have collaborated with Trump on this. We don’t know. Yet. But Putin put a low-hanging fruit in front of Trump. Do a limited bombing in retaliation for a limited chemical attack. Change the subject in the U.S.

The media is responding as expected. Showering praise on Trump, saying that he did the right thing, that he is behaving like a real man and a real president. See, that was the plan. This is what happens when a minority of deluded voters elect a white-collar criminal and a mental defective to be our chief executive. I didn’t vote for him. I don’t hate Trump voters, but I would say that they deserve whatever befalls them as a result of their bad decision. It is being said that Trump’s policies will hurt his supporters more than anybody else. Good. Maybe they will think before they vote next time. Or maybe not. Let’s just hope that there is a next time.

O