Is it as bad as you expected - worse?

[alarimer]

72. It's worse.

I expected him to be terrible. I expected never ending scandals of one form or another, but I didn't not expect all the people around him to be so terrible, too. I didn't expect the attack on our very institutions. I thought, well, the people at the top of these agencies will be terrible, but there will be people there who are good and do the work, etc. That's what happened under Bush (and in fact his appointments weren't all people seeking to destroy the very agencies they led, so there is that difference). I didn't expect the wholesale destruction of every single thing.

Most of that is Bannon's and Mulvaney's doing, I am sure. What I don't know is how we come back from this. How do the Democrats, should they ever regain power, restore the budgets of these agencies and also restore our reputation in the world? How do those relationships get repaired? And how to restore the simple norms of behavior for Presidents and officials? Most of those aren't written in law. Maybe they need to be. Also, assuming the massive tax cuts go through, some Democratic politicians are going to have to put their political careers on the line to raise taxes massively to restore everything and I don't see anyone with the guts to do that. But we'll see.

I don't see any end until and unless some Republicans see the writing on the wall and join with the Democrats and others to undo it all. Right now, that is not happening either.

The good thing is that many, many people are very, very angry. That may give the Republicans the push they need (Or likely, the push out of office).