Brief reflection on the end of Trump's Presidency

 I write now, briefly, having just watched Biden's inauguration.  Donald J. Trump is no longer president.  In all likelihood, he never will be again.  Given how uniquely unfit he was for office-- his sociopathy, his detachment from reality, his stupidity-- it is unlikely that the United States will ever have another president so obviously unfit for office.  The country will likely collapse first.  Entropy is a law of the universe.

In a very real sense, this is a moment of victory for democracy, for honesty, and for basic decency.  Yet there is a moment in stories of war, in which "the good guys" win, and look around that the damage done, and ask, "but at what cost?"  For all the celebration in some circles, all I can ask myself right now is, "but at what cost?"

I shall not recount the costs here, many of which are measured in actual, human lives.  Many of those costs are costs to democracy itself which will be difficult, if not impossible to undo.  We cannot have democracy without truth, and the lies and conspiracy theories that Donald Trump has mainstreamed and mainlined into the body politic are not gone, nor will they stop.

But at what cost?

Donald J. Trump is no longer president, but the damage is done.  So much damage.  Celebrate if you want, but I'm looking around at, in some ways, an actual battlefield and asking the question at the end of that war movie.