“You should have never started it.”

                                                                               Donald Trump, accusing Ukraine of launching the war with Russia

We now find ourselves in a bizarre Black is White, Up is Down world where everything, we’re told, is actually the opposite of what our lying eyes tell us. Thus, the Trump administration, in going after anyone and everyone involved in investigating and prosecuting the January 6 insurrectionists, is supposedly restoring justice after the Biden administration politicized the Justice Department by enforcing the law.

The rioters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, were involved in a “heinous attack,” Trump said at the time. More recently, when he pardoned them all, including confessed and convicted felons, he described them as “patriots” who had done nothing wrong.

Or, the world was laughing at us prior to 2017, but after Donald Trump entered the White House a new era of respect and fear was born. Never mind about all those cartoons and comedians mocking him.

It’s hard to know what’s what, especially if you read the “lame stream media” or watch it on anything but Fox et al. You can’t expect to know what’s really going on that way. You need to wait for the official explanation which will come as soon as they figure out what they’re doing. And don’t be put off if the official explanation changes from day to day. As they say in the Marine Corps, “the word changes”, so don’t get too wedded to one explanation; it may be different tomorrow. You just need to get with the program.

Proclaiming “America First” and declaring that it will make America more powerful than ever while withdrawing American aid around the world, leaving a vacuum for Russia and China to fill, is another Trump policy that may seem contradictory, but that’s only because you fail to see the genius behind it.

And perhaps you remember Project 2025, which Trump repeatedly denied knowledge of before and during the 2024 campaign. Oddly enough, salient parts of it are now being executed, which in an ironic way is the proper verb to describe what’s happening.

Once again it is exhausting to try to dispose of the lies we’re being fed, not just daily, but throughout the day; and they’re repeated until they take on a strange verisimilitude. Trump claims he won in a landslide in 2024. No, actually, he won by the fifth smallest margin since 1960. (Important to remember, however, that the Nazi Party never won more than 44 percent of the vote before taking total power in Germany. Draw your own inference.)

In New York, the Trump administration put on a little farce before a federal judge in an effort to drop corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams. The acting U.S.attorney general, Emil Bove, told the judge that the government wants to drop the charges in return for Adams’s cooperation to deport undocumented aliens. Then, Adams, in an apparent contradiction, told the judge that there was no quid pro quo. This little drama is the kind that makes one’s head hurt, especially with Bove turning aside the judge’s questions about whether a deal had been made. Bove, by the way, was in court because the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, had resigned after refusing to dismiss the charges, and Bove couldn’t get another lawyer to appear in court.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump appears to be making peace by selling Ukraine down the river.  After America has spent billions supporting Ukraine, suddenly Vladimir Putin, universally seen as the aggressor and a threat to democracy and European security, suddenly has become America’s new best friend. Trump, taking a page from Joseph Stalin’s book, has rewritten history, calling the duly elected Ukraine President Zelensky a “dictator” and asserting that he started the war. Statements like these are simply unfathomable, leaving us to to ponder Trump’s state of mind.

In the mirrored world of Donald Trump and Company, he accuses his enemies of behavior that he’s contemplating or actually doing. Thus, after attempting—and perhaps succeeding to a limited degree—to weaponize the Justice Department in his first term of office, Trump accused the Biden White House of doing what he, Trump, in fact had done. In contrast, Attorney General Merritt Garland was prosecuting actual criminals who had brutally attacked police and attempted to overthrow the government. And now, the Trump Justice Department seems primed to go after the men and women who over the past four years investigated his role in that effort.

Trump campaigned in 2016 and to a lesser extent in 2024 about cleaning out the swamp in Washington. In 2024 he continually attacked the Biden Administration for corruption, although no official was forced to resign during Biden’s term, unlike Trump’s where several high-ranking officials were forced out by one scandal or another. Trump himself owned and operated a major hotel in downtown Washington, in violation of the contract he signed with the General Services Administration. Foreign governments and other moochers used the hotel in an effort widely believed to curry favor with the 45th President–a possible violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution. Additionally, when Trump visited his various properties, the Secret Service contributed to Trump’s profit margin by having to stay at those facilities paying full price.

As has been noted often elsewhere, in Trump’s first term he appointed many officials who not only knew the law but were also intent on obeying it. Now we are being reminded that in normal times our institutions are nothing more than the men and women who populate them, who know and respect the Constitution, the law, traditions and norms that have guided our society and governments for centuries. If those institutions are now run by men and women who have neither respect nor regard for those concepts and no inclination to honor court rulings, where can we turn?

To ourselves.

This is not a time to surrender or give in to despair. We have to believe that the majority of us still believe in democracy, the Constitution, the rule of law and the integrity of our courts. We need to remember who we are as a people, our history and our triumphs. Above all, we need to speak up, find ways to protest and stay involved.

Quoting Adam Kinzinger, the former Republican congressman who gave up his seat rather than fall in behind Trump: “…don’t give up. Let this fire burn in you to make a change and take our country back.”