And if Trump refrains from, or is prevented from, doing his worst, how good is that? We are still left with a country whose president is intent on doing it damage, in just about every policy area you can think of, and our hope is supposed to be that there will be normal people nearby to try to restrain him? What kind of a presidency is that?

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But don’t we have to face facts and accept that he won and try our best to work with him? No, to all of that. Not this time. We’ve been there, done that. You can make this case about Ronald Reagan if you want. He won the popular vote twice and tried out the untested theory that massive tax cuts for the rich would save the economy, benefit everyone and pay for themselves. They didn’t, didn’t and didn’t.

You could almost try to make the case for George W. Bush, who didn’t win the popular vote and would likely have lost the electoral college, too, if a partisan Supreme Court hadn’t interrupted the vote count to hand him the presidency. I, among many, swallowed hard and accepted the verdict, for the sake of the country. Then Bush went and tried the same by-then-discredited tax formula, with predictably the same outcome: deficits and rising wealth inequality, capped off with an economic collapse so severe that it threatened to take the whole world economy down with it.

And then came 2016. A known charlatan tries an even more outrageous version of the same game plan, only this time flavored with and fueled by open racial and religious divisiveness. And at its heart, once again, was the same economic game plan, now twice discredited by trying it. You know what they call doing the same thing over and over and hoping for a different outcome. That’s right: insanity. And here we are.

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So if the plan doesn’t do what it says it does, why do the Republicans keep insisting on it? Because it in fact is working, but it is working to do something different from what they are telling you. The dizzying disparity in wealth isn’t an unfortunate side effect, it is the whole point. The unfortunate side effect is that one of the purposes the rich put their money to is warping the political system to be anti-democratic and feed this anti-democratic death spiral.

And they have just about succeeded. Let us count the ways. We now have our second-out-of-three presidents ushered into office with most voters having voted against them. This is partly a result of ever-increasing amounts of money in our political system. And the victors take very certain care to pack the Supreme Court with known ideologues who will — and do — rule to preserve or extend the amount and impact of money in politics. And then they spend the rest of their time trying to pass regressive policies that Americans do not want and do not support. Americans want affordable health care and for the rich to pay their fair share, and while they are at it, to use their status to work in the national interest, not to line their own pockets.

Americans also want a clean government, not a family business operating for personal gain out of the White House, using evasion, stonewalling and complete lack of transparency as a matter of policy. The American people want action to slow and stop runaway climate change, and an Environmental Protection Agency that acts to protect their environment. They want a government with a basic regard for truth, fairness and competence. Yes, this is what Americans actually do want and try to vote for. And what we got is Trump.

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Trump is not qualified to be president. He wasn’t qualified when he ran, he isn’t qualified now and he will never be qualified. He is intellectually deficient, he is temperamentally unfit, he is ethically beyond salvaging and he is pursuing policies contrary to what Americans actually want, what they voted for and what is in the United States’ best interests. What more does one need to say? No, you do not have to accept this.

The only rational path to take is to not come to terms with this so-called reality. It is not representative of the electorate, and it will be pursuing policies that will further undermine the power of the majority of voters. There is already a long list of likely impeachable offenses piled high around Trump, and it is the proper business of the American voter to insist that this be pursued with at least the same vigor that Republicans vehemently pursue against Democrats.