Let's pretend that Jeff Flake's speech didn't happen on the floor of the Senate of the United States of America. Let's pretend that the squabbles and fights that have been going on have nothing to do with the Republican party or the Democratic party. Let's pretend none of this has anything to do with what the policies of our nation will be going forward.
Let's just talk about people. And the way people are.
Because the interesting thing about October 24, 2017 -- a day which will be marked in history by Senator Bob Corker's scathing public rebukes of sitting president, Donald Trump — a day which witnessed thoughtful, tear-inducing and sublimely eloquent oratory by Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona -- really didn't have anything to do with policy.
Nobody was questioning Trump's stances on immigration. Nobody was talking about the fiscal impact of Trump's tax plan on our economy. Nobody was discussing free trade or what's going on with the healthcare system in this country. Nobody was even talking about the existential threat posed by a lawless dictator in North Korea.
Because yesterday was not about policy. Yesterday was about psychology. Specifically, one man's psychology. And how this one man's woefully unsound temperament and menacing psychological make-up were affecting all of us.
Think about it. What was the actual problem that gripped an entire country yesterday? Was it a bad score from the Congressional Budget Office? Was it a problem pushing tax reform through the Senate? Was it the never-ending debate on healthcare reform? Why is everybody so angry? What are we all fighting about?
And then think back to your own lives — perhaps a problem you’ve had within your family, perhaps a schoolyard bullying session, perhaps an abusive relationship you’ve found yourself in.
No thinking adult with a modicum of life’s experience under their belt need question what went on yesterday. None of us need understand the intricacies and peculiarities of the American political system in order to follow right along with the news events of October 24, 2017. Human beings from any country, any social strata, any collective society on Earth could intuitively grasp what was going on yesterday and not one scintilla of it had anything to do with the direction of public policy-making or the upcoming legislative agenda in the United States.
What gripped us yesterday was a human problem. What is decent and what’s not? What’s acceptable behavior in a person and what is not? What is within the normal range of conduct for a human being and what lies beyond the pale?
When Senators Bob Corker and Jeff Flake stood before microphones and cameras yesterday to address this nation’s ills, they were really only addressing one man’s ills, with all its enabling and encumbering ripple effects.
They were saying that the nature of one man’s sickness was so profound, so precarious, so threatening to this country’s security that nothing else could matter before this issue was openly acknowledged.
In essence, they were trading policy for psychology. They were putting Donald Trump’s perilous emotional state before all other affairs of state. Because it’s that bad, that pressing, that toxic to our national and global security.
Today will no doubt be another another day fraught with fighting and upset, as will all the days to come while this unhinged man occupies an office for which he is pathologically unsuited. It won’t get better because as Senator Flake so aptly stated in his towering, awe-inspiring speech yesterday: “... we have fooled ourselves for long enough that a pivot to governing is right around the corner, a return to civility and stability right behind it. We know better than that. By now, we all know better than that. “
One man’s psychology now lies squarely and indisputably at the forefront of American politics.
There is no other issue which can take precedence over it.
So let’s stop muddying the waters with duplicitous talk of glorious agendas and hackneyed, unctuous proclamations about “doing what’s right for the American people.” We are mired in the noxious stench of one man’s malignant abnormality.
Psychology is now policy.
We don’t get to move on until we address it.