 Aloha, Thanks for your consideration of the views expressed in this Think Tech commentary. The signals are clear, but unfortunately history is not here to help. Trump has unleashed a torrent of destructive time bombs into our government and our national fabric, and has given us a legacy of chaos that operates not for our interest or to improve our lives, but only his. Congress is dysfunctional, and will be worse after the mid-terms. The judiciary has lost it, not only the trainwreck at the Supreme Court, but many of the lower courts too, including our favorite judge Aileen Cannon, who doesn't know up from down. How can we have confidence in these people and thus in our government? Rights are being taken away from us, like the right of choice, and national security, like at Mar-a-Lago. You don't have to be a genius to know that our legal and governmental systems are disintegrating. At some cortical level, even the walking dead cult people know it. They don't admit it, they can't admit it, but certainly they know it. The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government. That's a quote from George Washington inscribed on the courthouse at Foley Square. It means we need to have public confidence in our government, or it will surely fail. Trump's greatest legacy is that he has taken that confidence away from us. Ask anyone, and they will tell you they are not confident. We also have to accept the social compact and find compassion and connection with our fellow citizens, our fellow human beings. For most of our history we've had that, but it seems clear that we don't have it now. Instead, we have visible racism, hatred, bigotry and open divisiveness. Trump exacerbated this at Charlottesville, and it now echoes long-term, across the country. He has politicized everything, from immigration to medicine and personal health, to science and climate change, to poverty and housing, to social and educational programs, to women's rights, to gun control and violence, and to politics in general. He has done this not to serve the public good, but to create chaos and enhance his power. He has flooded our daily discourse with lies, he has enlisted acolytes to repeat those lies. He has demanded that public officials lie for him, and he has created a media that spreads his propaganda. These are out of his autocratic playbook. He has done this not to serve the public good, but to dismember our democracy and representative government. If you watched Trump over his term in office you would have noticed his daily efforts to undermine anyone who criticized him or called him out, in fact anyone who wasn't loyal to him. Shakespeare said the first thing we do is kill all the lawyers, but learning from other autocrats, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Putin, for Trump it's rather about controlling the media. More than anyone who has occupied the office, Trump has damaged the First Amendment, freedom of speech, and separation of church and state too. Those rights are not what they were. Abortion surely is not what it was. Step by step, Trump and his followers have been bent on reducing and corrupting our personal civil and political rights in this country. Clearly, there's more bad news to come. When the GOP takes both houses in November, we will see a further degradation of those rights, a degradation that will be confirmed by the trainwreck in the courts and state legislatures. We think a GOP win this year is worlds away and it will not affect our rights and daily lives, but think again. Think Germany 1933 or Russia 2022. Think what a loss of the rule of law and the protections of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights will mean to you. Think of what a loss of morality, compassionate, responsive, representative government will mean to you. Think instead of what incompetence and corruption, without outrageous pardons and a shameless wealth divide, will mean to you. Yes, pity us all. The stakes are higher than we think and will affect every single one of us. Stay tuned, stay informed, stay concerned. Thanks for your consideration of the views expressed in this Think Tech commentary. Aloha.