They Failed Us

Now that the twice-impeached convicted felon who incited an insurrection and stole classified intel has been given the Golden Ticket to do it all again, we need to talk.

Democrats are scratching their heads in shock and disbelief. Given the tremendous ground game, turnout, and new voters that Harris inspired, what went wrong? Heck, when Dick Cheney and Taylor Swift agree on something, you knew this was destined to be big.

Until it wasn’t.

The post-mortem on the 2024 presidential election will go on for a while but two big parts of our society failed us.

The first is the Media. It was bad enough in 2016 and 2020 when Donald Trump received scads of free airtime. “Journalists” somberly reported every crazy, hateful, obnoxious action without pushing back or fact-checking him. Plus, they did the old “both sides” thing, making it seem like trying to extort the leader of Ukraine and cozying up to dictators is a “thing” in both parties. It is not.

In this most recent campaign, the media blithely “sane washed” some of the oddest and most inappropriate actions of Trump. He’s clearly failing, but that’s so “Biden June 2024.” Reporters and pundits routinely gave us some version of, “What he meant to say/do….” Meanwhile, Trump became increasingly violent and unhinged in his remarks, increasingly dictatorial in tone. But that’s all totally normal, right?

When it came to accurately framing the sheer insanity of Donald Trump or on the very real and impressive achievements of the Biden administration, the media swapped out Edward R. Murrow for Maury Povich.

And don’t even get me started on the gushing sewer pipe of disinformation that is Fox News, Newsmax, and the like. Apparently, that multi-million-dollar settlement Fox had to shell out over the LAST “Big Lie” was no deterrent.

The other element that failed us is the Justice Department. After inciting a violent insurrection on January 6th, 2021 (with plenty of evidence), AG Merrick Garland should’ve showed up at Mar-a-Lago with a warrant and some tiny handcuffs. Plus, the 14th amendment bars anyone who agitates against their country in insurrection-y fashion from being president.

Instead, Garland stayed buried in his office thinking Very Somber Judicial Thoughts.

Then, there were the stolen classified documents which Trump refused to hand over. We’re still not sure what happened to them all – or if Vladimir has been enjoying a little reading about our nuclear capabilities.

NSA translator Reality Winner was quickly tried and jailed for releasing a single piece of information showing Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. But the dude with literal crates of intel stacked in his gold bathroom? He still walks free.

And so, the candidate with 88 criminal charges against him (and four convictions) has just been re-elected and is making moves to have those remaining cases sent down the Memory Hole. He’s looking at all the new Oval Office goodies available to him like kids used to salivate over the Sears Christmas wish catalog.

I’m not advocating Kangaroo Courts, but boy howdy, there has got to be a better way to expedite serious breaches of justice that threaten our national security. Now, we’re about to have a felon behind the Resolute Desk, emboldened by having gotten away with it and ready to do even more damage and grifting.

“No one is above the law,” says Merrick Garland. To which I reply, “My Aunt Fanny.”

Cindy Grogan is a writer, lover of history and "Star Trek" (TOS), and hardcore politics junkie. There was that one time she campaigned for Gerald Ford (yikes), but ever since, she's been devoted to Democratic and progressive policies.