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A Dose Of Truth
April 13, 2026
Digby's Hullabaloo
Courage is contagious “The American people are unhappy with Trump. They do not like this war. But they need a dose of truth right now,” Alan Elrod wrote last week at Liberal Currents: The truth is that the American people twice elected Donald Trump over more qualified Democratic women. The first time, Hillary Clinton warned explicitly that he did not have the temperament to be trusted with the nuclear codes.
The second time, they overlooked an insurrection, a deadly pandemic, and a campaign full of bellicose and racist rhetoric, all despite the American economy being in the midst of one of the best post-covid recoveries in the world. In our representative democracy, the people speak to the president, and the president speaks to the people, but, crucially, the president also speaks for the people. That idea is at the heart of the whole enterprise. We cannot pretend that Trump’s monstrous words this week don’t reflect on us. We cannot pretend that we are well as a nation. No morally healthy country would put this man in power twice—the second time after he so clearly showed us and the world who he truly is. Elrod looks back at President Carter’s “malaise” speech, panned at the time, that called out America in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate as suffering “a crisis of confidence.” Carter said (and Elrod quotes): Our people are losing that faith, not only in government itself but in the ability as citizens to serve as the ultimate rulers and shapers of our
Digby's Hullabaloo
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