Where Trump and his cult go, chaos ensues

Who can forget the chaos? From the moment Donald Trump rode down the escalator of his golden tower in New York City — regardless of the political implications of his announcement and ultimate ascendancy to the White House — there was a new normal in American life. Chaos!

It didn’t matter whether you supported him or despised him or anything in between, his reign over this country was constantly, continuously, minute by minute defined by a feeling that the United States and all of its democratic institutions were out of control.

The normality of American life, which was theretofore defined by the chaotic daily challenges of raising children, creating jobs, enhancing personal finances, paying off mortgages and car loans and all those things that made America what it was, changed. Not forever but, as it turned out, for the four years from 2017 to 2021 as the Trump administration took hold and would not let go of the idea that everything the Founding Fathers had wrought should no longer be wrought.

Every day of the four years produced one form of chaos or another as norms were upended, laws were ended and civility expunged from the daily discourse.

All that ended with the election of Joe Biden. Normalcy was certain to return and the bananas-like blip in the American psyche could subside. Or so we thought.

What the entire world didn’t count on was that Trump and his cult would not do the honorable thing and just go away.

He did the opposite.

On his way out the door he gave us Jan. 6. Once on the outside, he managed to find a complacent GOP inside the House of Representatives to do his bidding. For example, it scuttled a hard-fought compromise on border security that would have made America safer. And it scuttled the speaker of the House, who probably needed some scuttling but not for the first time in American history. And not when America needed stability to do America’s work.

His yes-men and women in Congress have also put Ukraine and most of Europe at grave risk of Vladimir Putin’s ambition to re-create the Soviet Union. His daydream of swallowing up independent, mostly democratic countries like Poland, the Baltics and every other place that was once tethered to Josef Stalin’s dream of the Iron Curtain descending on his neighbors continues unabated.

If and as that happens, the United States will by obligation be dragged into the fight. Our servicemen and women will be fighting “over there.” Imagine the chaos that will come from that!

And just this past week, Trump ordered the crazies in the House to make America far less safe by refusing to reauthorize the FBI’S ability to spy on foreigners intent on harming us here at home. And they succumbed to his demands. Until they didn’t. Remember 9/11. Remember the chaos.