THE DEATH OF AMERICA IS STEADY ROT

News I'm sure you know already:

A federal judge dismissed in its entirety the classified documents case against former President Donald J. Trump on Monday, ruling that the appointment of the special counsel, Jack Smith, had violated the Constitution.

In a stunning ruling, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, found that because Mr. Smith had not been named to the post of special counsel by the president or confirmed by the Senate, his appointment was in violation of the appointments clause of the Constitution.

The ruling by Judge Cannon, who was put on the bench by Mr. Trump, flew in the face of previous court decisions reaching back to the Watergate era that upheld the legality of the ways in which independent prosecutors have been named.

We think we'll lose democracy and the rule of law suddenly if Donald Trump becomes president again. We think the edifice will be destroyed like the Twin Towers on 9/11: the planes hit the buildings, and without hours they collapsed in on themselves.

But our system is like a house that's rotting room by room. The foundation has cracks. There are termites. The roof leaks. One room after another has become uninhabitable.

We've lost the federal courts. The would-be murderers of America already have the federal bench they need to sustain the horrible America they want. A second Trump presidency won't really worsen the federal bench -- it will only fix it in place in its current form for several more decades. I'm 65, and I'll never live to see a federal bench that isn't an extremist Republican legislature in robes.

Through gerrymandering, we lost democracy in many state legislatures years ago. In states like North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Texas, liberals and moderates add up to more than 45% of the electorate and have exactly none of the legislative power, because of gerrymandering. This happened long before Trump and there were no "Death of Democracy" front-page headlines.

If Trump wins in November, he and the thugs of Project 2025 might take a wrecking ball to what's left of the house. But already several rooms are closed off. It's unsafe to live in them. And even if Trump loses, or wins and doesn't follow through with the worst ideas his backers have proposed, many rooms in the house will continue to rot.