23 August—Yesterday afternoon, as I was searching for what turned out to be the lone container of half-sour pickles among the plethora of assorted dill pickles at the Torrington Aldi, a faithful reader good-naturedly (I think) took me to task for not having mentioned in the daily disquisition about Donald Trump’s harassment of John Bolton that Trump’s non-weaponized justice department had already started its vengeful harassment of California Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James, neither of whom has ever had anything good to say about him. (Talk about Latinate syntax.)

Peccavi. Mea culpa. Guilty as charged. What else can I say? Unlike Donald Trump, of course, who’s never been guilty of anything but being innocent—as well as perfect. In fact, the latest tchotchke he’s using his coin-operated presidency to market is a red baseball cap embroidered with TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING. What a guy.

But WAS? That’s kind of mild and limiting given Trump’s stupendous ego. Grammatically, it’s all in the tense. So what about TRUMP HAS BEEN RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING? Or TRUMP IS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING? Or TRUMP WILL BE RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING? And don’t forget about ALWAYS to drive the point home. As if there could ever be any doubt. Move over, God.

While it’s easy (as well as psychologically gratifying and morally uplifting—if not particularly didactic, simply because it’s common knowledge) to criticize Donald Trump, he has been indisputably right about at least one important aspect of American democracy and democracy in general: He has asserted more than once, “We need free and fair elections.” Who can find fault or disagree with that? Free and fair elections are the sine qua non of the democratic process, after all. And even the world’s most heinous dictators boast of the free and fair elections that keep them in power.

The only problem with Donald Trump’s assertion, then, is that as far as he’s concerned elections can be free and fair ONLY if he, his flunkies and supporters, and/or the things he favors win. QED . . .