Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

–Pogo

Trump warned of the enemy within – unaware that he and his enablers are that enemy. America’s decline was not ushered in by external forces. Rather, it’s Trump – or to be more precise those who voted for him and who continue to support his vendetta-driven attack on the nation – who bear responsibility. Not pro-Palestinian international students. Not American citizens with Spanish surnames. Not fentanyl-exporting Chinese financial institutions, nor Mexican drug traffickers. Not Iranian sleeper cells. No, America created, and then sought protection in, the cellulite-inflected arms of its duly elected, orange-tinted Golem. Now it is paying the price.

In 1998, Bill Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about his technically “consensual,” if scandalous, affair with a White House intern. Clinton’s conduct was denounced, and other aspects of his sex life were scrutinized with salacious abandon by then-independent counsel Ken Starr, whose investigation ultimately led to Clinton’s impeachment. Starr’s moral crusade against Clinton’s indiscretions now reads like projection. The quietly self-righteous Starr – the Jim Jordan of Baylor University – would later have to resign the presidency of that institution amid revelations he had covered up a series of campus sexual assaults, a legacy that sorely undermines his earlier sanctimony. Before his death in 2022, it was also revealed he himself had an affair with one of his advisors during his tenure as independent counsel.

Starr would go on to unsuccessfully defend Trump during his impeachment. Not that it mattered. Today, the twice-impeached prevaricator extraordinaire, 34-count felon, and adjudicated sex offender is back in the White House, turning the Oval Office into a gold-plated, trophy-laden, gilded

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