Should Trump Be Forgotten?

As a lifelong Republican intellectual, my mom wishes Trump had never happened.  Sadly, it’s too late for that now, so at this point she just wants to move on without him before he can do any more damage and cause any more embarrassment to her beloved party.

Anderson Cooper comes from the opposite end of the political spectrum, but interestingly, he wants to take the same tack with respect to Trump, i.e., remove him from the public discourse.  It’s clear that if the rest of the media followed his example, he’d very soon become completely irrelevant.

The main reason I don’t subscribe to all this is that the damage Trump caused can’t simply be forgotten.  If Trump can walk away from all his criminality, it will prove to the world that the United States really doesn’t care a damn about justice, especially for the rich and powerful.  It will therefore encourage all future presidents to behave this way.

Or perhaps worse.  Keep in mind that as terrible a person as Trump is, he’s incompetent.  If the next guy has the same criminal intent, but a sharper mind, our democracy really will be relegated to our past.

There is another reason to keep him alive in our conversations, related to the first, and that is that some of the harm he’s inflicted can be mitigated if we are able to come to the conclusion that he is, in fact, a horrific person who never should have gotten anywhere near the White House.  Obviously, there will always be people who think he’s a true patriot who did his best to drain the swamp, MAGA, etc.  But there is real hope that most Americans will come to regard Trump as the single worst thing that’s happened to our republic in its 245 year history.  Then–and only then–can we put this behind us.