1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

Analogy for the day: Moby Dick. As we the people mourned the (another) killing of VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis, President Trump spent the night at the WH at a black-tie private screening of a documentary about Melania. Amazon paid $40 million for the rights to the film just weeks after Jeff Bezos dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago following his 2020 reelection. And he’s spending another $35 million to promote the film. But this is just typical corruption. Just a financial example of the willingness of those who know better to follow our own Ahab into hell. No one should be surprised given the quid-pro-quo required these days. It’s the rest of Trump’s folks that are trying desperately to do whatever it is that they think he wants them to do that is the sadder thing. We expect a certain level of moral capacity in our elected officials. At least that’s the hope. Our history has proven that social shunning and shaming has generally worked. To a reasonable degree. Now we have seen that that capacity seems lost in Trump administration officials. They watch the same things we do. Assault against our Constitution. Against our people. Even murder. And they can come to only one conclusion…we deserve it. Ahab had the complete loyalty of his crew. He kept them enthralled by the power of his rhetoric. He convinced them that his mission was their mission. Even though they knew better. And he convinced them to follow him to the bottom of the sea in his quest for revenge and retribution. At least Ahab’s quest was not rooted in false grievance and a desire to punish the world for his own insecurities. Or to become king for life to escape future repercussions for all the damage he caused. History will analyze why we’re watching smart people agree to their own doom. For now it’s just incomprehensible to the rest of us. Even self-preservation seems to have fallen by the wayside. And that’s how you know that the cult has been successful. It’s encouraging that some in the GOP Congress are reluctantly figuring out which way the wind is blowing. It’s about time. Let him go down alone.