A Tale of Two Americas

It is the worst of times, it is the best of times. The worst of times if you follow American politics. All is turmoil.

The Democrats are threatening to defund and shut down the government unless the president adopts their modest proposals: provide some illegal immigrants with a path to citizenship rather than a path back to Mexico, and bow out of further participation in the negotiations to determine how the government he was elected to lead shall be financed.

The president, no stranger he to the concept of sexual harassment, wants Republicans to back a Senate candidate accused of multiple dalliances, some with young girls, while first daughter Ivanka says “There is a special place in hell for people who prey on children . . . I have no reason to doubt the victims’ accounts.”

Supporters of the president see a dangerous bureaucracy—“a deep state”—determined to undercut the Trump anti-elitist agenda. His opponents see a vulgar, narcissistic, fantasist with a finger on the nuclear button who, with the aid of Vladimir Putin and some archaic rules set by our Founding Fathers, stole the election from Hillary Clinton. Some are calling for Trump’s impeachment.

The president is backing a tax plan that he says will enable him to rev up growth and allow him to play Santa if Congress gets the bill on his desk by Christmas; Democrats say large corporations and the “rich” will be the primary beneficiaries and the predictions that accelerated growth will pay for the cuts and a $4,000 increase in the wages of the average family represent what F. Scott Fitzgerald called “imperviousness to experience.”