I try. Lord knows how I try. I try to maintain a certain equilibrium about all of my fellow citizens. We're all in this great democratic experiment together, after all. I think we have an obligation as a self-governing democratic republic to make government work best for all our people. I believe in the idea of a political commonwealth, and in the political commons to which we all have a right and in which we all have a stake. Economic anxiety in de-industrialized America is very real and it is a real danger to all of what we can achieve together. It is now, and it was in 1980, when I drove from Youngstown to Toledo to Flint to Grand Rapids as we wound into the election that brought us Ronald Reagan.

(So, by the way, is the intractable poverty of people, working class and otherwise, who are not white.)

So, I try. Lord knows how I try.

But what am I supposed to do when so many of my fellow citizens guzzle snake oil by the gallon and call it champagne?

The president* flew himself out to Iowa on Wednesday night to bask in the adulation of yet another rapturous crowd and to deliver yet another speech from the oratorical firm of Hokum, Bunkum, and Con. They didn't even balk when he told them, right to their eager faces, that all his campaign rhetoric about cracking down on the bankster class was the purest moonshine. From Maggie Haberman's subtly snark account in The New York Times:

He toggled back and forth between telling farm-rich Iowa that he had fought for forgotten voters and lauding the wealth of Gary D. Cohn, his top economic adviser and a former executive at Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street giant that Mr. Trump derided in commercials in 2016. "In those particular positions, I just don't want a poor person — does that make sense?" he said of Mr. Cohn's job and that of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, another immensely wealthy man whom Mr. Trump lauded as a "legendary Wall Street genius." "Brilliant business minds" are what the economy needs, he said.

Hey, rubes!

Getty Images

Haberman did herself proud, pushing the envelope of the Gray Lady's customary Olympian detachment.

And the president frequently embellished details during his speech, or told outright falsehoods. He tried to catch himself at one point, saying, "I have to be a little careful, because they'll say, 'He lied!'" But he nonetheless plowed ahead, including misstating whether the Paris climate agreement, from which he plans to withdraw the United States, is binding. While doing so, he also prompted the audience to name the agreement themselves. "P… p… p," he said."Like hell it's nonbinding!" thundered Mr. Trump, who in fact called the accord nonbinding in his Rose Garden speech announcing the withdrawal this month.

That's the real style there.

Then, of course, there was the now-legendary Trumpian science fiction concerning his beloved, big, beautiful wall, which he apparently now has enlisted as a weapon in the war for clean, renewable energy. From the BBC:

"We're thinking of something that's unique, we're talking about the southern border, lots of sun, lots of heat. We're thinking about building the wall as a solar wall, so it creates energy and pays for itself. And this way, Mexico will have to pay much less money, and that's good, right?... Solar wall, panels, beautiful. I mean actually think of it, the higher it goes the more valuable it is. Pretty good imagination right? Good? My idea."

Well, no. And not actually a "wall," either. Plus, if you're going to build a wall of solar panels, it might be better not to do it in one of the most remote parts of the country, thereby requiring a huge expenditure in power lines to get the electricity to actual populated areas. But he's not serious about this anyway, so what the hell?

Iowa has become a leader in wind energy, which has been a boon to its local economy so, naturally, he ridiculed the whole idea: "I don't want to just hope the wind blows to light up your house and your factory as the birds fall to the ground."

If a substantial portion of our fellow citizens are going to cheer wildly at this stuff, and even more wildly at the endless recitation of his personal grievances that always accompanies the vaporous policy proposals, then there is nothing you can do to change their minds. Circumstances will have to do that. The new Republican healthcare bill, for example. But I am not confident that the damage that bill will do can't be successfully spun out in the country as the fault of Democratic "obstructionists" and/or the alleged failure of Barack Obama. I don't mean to be critical but we can't go on like this much longer. A house divided against itself cannot stand, as Abraham Lincoln once said—and he was a Republican, you know. A lot of people don't know that.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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