What a week

For a moment there, a thought crossed my mind immediately after former President and pocket insurrectionist Donald Trump was found liable for sexual abuse and defamation in the civil trial brought against him by 79-year-old writer E. Jean Carroll last week.

Trump, of course, is seeking a second term as President of the United States in his continuing effort to wreck American democracy while at the same time enriching himself and trying to stay out of prison. He's not even attempting to hide his arrogant ambition. It's right there in front of our eyes for all to see. 

If you want to see.

Anyway, after he was ordered to pay Ms. Carroll nearly $5 million in damages for an incident that occurred decades ago, I wondered if he would be put through a vetting process by the Republican National Committee as primary season nears and candidates begin to bob to the surface like moldy detritus from a shipwreck.

Surely, I whispered to myself because I didn't want anyone to hear my naivety, no political party would promote a candidate for President of the United States who is a sexual abuser. What woman could actually vote for a person like this knowing how he assaults women (a fact which has now been acknowledged in court by a jury of Trump's peers)? What man who loves and respects the women in his life – his wife, his daughters, his sisters – could vote for such a malignantly flawed person like this?

Then reality hit. Ahhh, those days are gone. Those were the days, weren't they?

Trump won't be vetted, of course. Consequently, the GOP will be as liable for sexual abuse as Trump, if for no other reason than by association. It's mind boggling that Republicans continue to defend this guy.

As if things couldn't get any gloomier, Trump suddenly appeared on my TV screen in a "town hall meeting" later in the week that was hosted by a revamped CNN, now leaning a little more to the right (one CNN shareholder, billionaire John Malone, said he wanted CNN to be more like Fox. Would that be the Fox that just settled a defamation suit by Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million?). It took only 30 seconds in for Trump's lies to start flowing: that the (2020) election was rigged; that he didn't ask Georgia officials to find the votes he needed to win the state (he did ask – it's clearly on audio tape), or that the violence of Jan. 6 was the fault of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The familiar playlist of lies is too extensive to go on.

But even more appalling was the audience, purported to be invited New Hampshire Republicans. They mocked Ms. Carroll and clapped and hooted when Trump defamed her again (he never learns) by calling her a "whack job." They hooted and cheered when he said if elected, he would pardon many of the convicted Jan. 6 rioters now serving time in prison for sedition. They cheered and clapped when he labeled moderator Kaitlin Collins as "nasty." Sheesh.

In my view, this is clearly repulsive behavior from Americans presumably raised with principles of fairness and respect for one's fellow man. Those principles were nowhere to be seen Wednesday night.

The audience reactions to Trump, in a word, were deplorable.

We live in strange times. We live in a country that takes away abortion rights when it has no business interfering with a woman's bodily autonomy (it's called control); we live in a country awash with gunfire, where you have to register for a license if you want to drive a car but where there are no effective regulations for citizens to purchase military-style weapons; we live in a country where gerrymandering and voter suppression passes for Constitutional precedent; we live in a country based on an ideal that all men are created equal, but evidence of racism and religious persecution are increasing exponentially, it seems; we live in a country where even the Supreme Court, influenced by the outrageously wealthy donor class, is ridiculously out of step with the majority of the nation.

We live in a country given Constitutional directions on which way to go by the Founding Fathers, yet we appear to be so incredibly lost. We just can't seem to find our way.