Pelosi rips up Trump’s speech

I wouldn’t have done it. If only because Trumpers would exploit it. I’d have instead held a press conference (a long one) detailing all the outrageous lies in his speech.

Like pledging, with a straight face, to protect “pre-existing conditions” — while his administration is fighting in court to undo those protections.

But it’s doubtful a press conference would have conveyed the message as well as Pelosi’s gesture. Theater now trumps substance in our politics.

Democrats debate over Michelle Obama’s “When they go low, we go high.” Some instead say, fight fire with fire. I’m with Michelle. Democrats should not get in the gutter with Trump. His modus operandi is vicious lies, and his re-election campaign is taking that to new heights (or, rather, lows). We’ve seen it already in his making the State of the Union address a divisive partisan circus, then likewise defiling the National Prayer Breakfast, and his deranged chest-thumping post-impeachment bash-fest.

Democrats should bet the American people have had enough. Or a majority of them anyway.

As for the others — I’m frankly at a loss. My better angel says we must bind up the nation’s wounds; the ordinary citizens backing Trump, at least, really aren’t  bad people. Apart from politics. But, my gosh, the political pathology runs deep, how can we pull these folks back to sanity? (Sanders is not the man for the job.)

Look at the venom unleashed against Pelosi, as if tearing up some papers was a scandalous breach of decorum. As if “grab them by the pussy” was not. Nor anything else in Trump’s mountainous record of vileness and lies, on full display these past few days, throwing our whole civic culture in the toilet. The double standard, the partisan blindness, is insane. Trump supporters quite simply can’t tell right from wrong.

They wrap themselves in the flag, professing love of country, saying Democrats hate America. But it’s Trumpers themselves who seem to hate (or maybe never understood) the principles, values, and ideals America stands for. Which Trump tramples.

Pelosi ripped apart his speech, but he is ripping apart the country, and every good thing it represents.