I saw this statement in print the other day. It might have been from a Democratic Congressperson or some pundit on one of the news shows. Anyhow, there will be no limit when it comes to how low Donald Trump will go, when it comes to holding onto power.

I’m beginning to think that one of the worst things about Trump and the time we’ve lost laboring amidst his endless self-promotion and ineptitude is the compromising of values and lowering of standards we’ve been forced to consider.

This becomes most glaring in the degradation and coarseness of our language, and especially of late in matters of electoral maps and voting blocks, as state legislatures try to match what Republicans have been able to get away with in Texas and Florida and now a growing list of other places– especially since the Supreme Court eighty-sixed yet another provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The redistricting and outright gerrymandering has forced the Democrats’ hand and resulted in places like California and other Democratic strongholds resorting to the same tactics.

It’s sickening on the face of it—that Trump and the Heritage Foundation flunkies have forced Democrats to follow suit, to trudge through the mud of foul play and cheap tricks and cheating. Taking the high road is pie-in-the-sky thinking anymore.

Intentions may be different, but the look is one of being muddied and bloodied and rendered no different than the Republican lemmings who apparently prefer a dangerously skewed, selective scriptural stranglehold on religion, maintaining white privilege, and relegating women and black and brown people to the margins.

You know—back to a time when things and people were simpler somehow, more manageable and predictable and the way they should be.

Yikes. Lazy, frightened snakes slithering on their bellies, pining for their good ol’ days. And they’d love nothing more than for the Dems to follow them into the swamp that Trump once promised to drain.

So, what is it? Thirty-eight thousand times or one million times? For a while, the “fake news” folks and some Democrats were claiming, repeatedly, that Trump’s name appeared a million times in the Epstein files, but now I see a significantly lower number being bandied about—38,000 times. It’s still a lot, the most besides Epstein himself, but a long way from one million.

How could such an apparently exaggerated number get so much airtime? Was it intentional from the start, sort of a goose and gander thing, turnabout is fair play? Regardless, it seems no less irresponsible than the manufactured sludge and fear mongering that Fox News and the rest regularly offer the public.

Shame on MS Now and the rest for emulating the dregs of so-called “journalism.” For engaging in their own brand of sensationalism.

Epstein.

I suppose, in some universe far away, one might argue that the Trump administration meets unreasonable resistance at every turn, so how can anyone expect him and the rest to have a real chance to implement their vision, such as it is, for America?

Let me be clear: I do not consider myself to be in this camp, I do not subscribe to this argument or point of view. And of course, a no-longer-silent majority across the country doesn’t, either. Trump and his spineless suck-ups have long lost our trust. When most of what exits his and their pie holes is a Swiss-cheese defense or outright lie, there is little he can expect in the way of confidence or agreement.

It’s a terrible place to be— for a nation’s people to have to entertain the possibility that some enemy is more believable than its own leadership. This is what appears to be happening in the ongoing back and forth between the U.S. and Iran. Trump claims one thing, Iran’s leadership says he’s lying, and we tend to believe Iran’s leadership over our own President. Trump of course has laid the groundwork for this crisis of trust. It’s his own damn fault.

It is unlikely that many of us can anticipate what will be coming next, other than more misdirection, empty promises, off-the-cuff dumbness, and Karoline Leavitt’s perpetually puppy dog, brown-nosed defense of the indefensible.

What’s that? Someone else will be shoveling the BS while she’s off on maternity leave?

Epstein.

There is no change of heart in the offing. Trump and the clown car of ass kissers are going to keep after it, going to pile on the distractions and the insane requests for funding. They will not stop, because that’s the whole plan—keeping everyone guessing and off balance, coming close on occasion to appearing coherent and capable but never quite able to pull that off.

We are so far into the weeds now that we need a beacon, we need someone who can stay on the scent, who can anticipate next moves and not just sit in with the next panel of pundits and offer commentary and conjecture after the fact.

Job 1 at this point is to ensure that the November elections come off without a hitch, that there is nothing based in reality that approaches “National Emergency” status and generates the next ill-advised Executive Order.

It would be great if we could all get to take a trip to the far side of the moon and look back at Earth, just hanging there in the blackness of space. We probably wouldn’t have to go that far to get the lay of the land, so to speak. To be awestruck, maybe humbled.

Astronauts returning from such excursions appear to be changed people. Their perspective has been widened and enriched, most likely changed for the rest of their lives, which is totally understandable. I feel differently after just seeing the pictures the Artemis II crew took, though maybe only slightly more convinced of the fragile, wondrous nature of being alive than after seeing the picture Bill Anders took in December 1968.

Ah, the blue marble, the orb that might have many an alien sojourner thinking, “Ooh, now that’s different. Let’s take a closer look.” The aliens I envision speak excellent English.

I guess my point, if there is one, is that the poignancy of this earthly life, its meaning and significance, its mystery, its raucous, ugly, beautiful reality, might be lost on the universe writ large, and on many of us earthbound beings. As I’ve written in a previous post or two, I won’t be surprised if we someday learn that we’re either alone in the heavens, or that we are relative Neanderthals in comparison to other beings from far-off galaxies, whose existence may never be confirmed.

Point 1a is that I wish certain people who call themselves leaders could find, in their scorched earth quest for notoriety and power and wealth, room for humility and awe and gratitude. I wish they could suddenly realize that, more often than not, no one died and left them king, that no one knowingly gave them permission to be tyrannical, self-important scourges of comparable value and usefulness to the average deer tick.

Maybe Jeff Bezos or Elon could arrange for missions that would take Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, J.D Vance, Stephen Miller, Kevin Roberts, Peter Thiel, Russell Vought, and the whole current Cabinet away for a while, on a trip around the moon, in close quarters, where no deals would be cut, only tasks at hand in service of remaining alive and taking a good long look at the planet and its inhabitants they apparently care next to nothing about—except as it, and they, can serve their agendas. I wonder how many would return alive.

A few may already be so dead inside that not even next-level space tourism would move them. Most of ’em probably wouldn’t go, anyway– I can’t imagine there’d be many steely-eyed missile people among that crew.