Anniversary

Not a happy one.  It seems an eternity, but it's been just one year of Malice in Blunderland.  To mark the the passage of those 365 strange days, the New York Times devoted virtually all of it's Sunday Review section to commentary on our national year in hell.  Excerpts:

"In his first year in office, Trump gave himself credit for numerous accomplishments that he had little or nothing to do with.  But one thing he almost certainly managed to do, without effort or notice, is alter our perception of time."  --  It's Been a Year of This?, by Alan Burdick

"While losing, Hillary made it normal for women to run for the most powerful office on the planet.  It's 2018, a big election year, and women are going to be running everywhere.  Hardly anyone will give their gender a second thought.  That's Hillary's gift."  --  Hillary Lost, But the Future Is Hers, by Gail Collins

"It's inadvertent but indisputable.  He doesn't hide his pettiness, bury his petulance or successfully distract us from his vulgarity and bigotry.  He's too needy an exhibitionist to wear a mask, too sloppy a manager to prevent leaks, and his universe is too chaotic for its mess not to spill ceaselessly into public view."  --  Donald Trump's Radical Honesty, by Frank Bruni

"Trump is a dictator on Twitter, a Dear Leader in his own mind, but in the real world there is no Trumpocracy because Trump cannot even rule himself.  And while real tragedy may arrive eventually, in this historical cycle a dismal sort of farce is what comes first."  --  More Farce Than Tragedy, by Ross Douthat

"You cannot keep writing day after day that 'the president is a jerk' without someone else reporting that 'the president is not as big a jerk as some former White House officials have previously suggested, according to White House officials who spoke on the condition that they should not be identified because Trump said he'd cut off their private parts if they were.'"  --  On the Trump Beat, by Michael Kinsley

"Donald Trump prides himself on destruction.  He smashes conceptions and breaks traditions.  In doing so without suffering any significant consequences, he has made it more difficult for Americans to continue to delude ourselves with fairy tales about our collective values and to indulge in comforting fictions about the fundamental decency of our politics."  --  The Political Mythbuster In Chief, by Jamil Smith

"Something terrible, and perhaps irreparable, has happened.  The idea of America has been sullied.  It has fallen victim to Trump's untruth, indecency, racism, and contempt for our values.  His universe is a place of dread, not deals."  -- Year One in Donald Trump's World, by Roger Cohen

"As part of our effort to resist the exhausting and numbing effects of living under a relentlessly abusive and degrading president, we now present, for the third time in nine months, an updated guide to what Republicans now consider acceptable behavior from the commander in chief.  If you're president you may now:
-- Retweet inflammatory and fake anti-Muslim videos from an ultranationalist British group 
-- Call the American justice system a "joke" and a "laughingstock"
-- Praise the delivery to Norway of fighter planes that exist only in a video game   
-- (Plus 41 other defilements of the office)"  --  Presidential Etiquette Guide, Part III, by the NYT editorial board

     "Trump's first year has been an unremitting parade of disgraces that have demeaned him as well as the dignity of his office, and he has shown that this is exactly how he believes he should govern.
     "Most important, he is the first president to fail to defend the nation from an attack on our democracy by a hostile foreign power -- and to resist the investigation of that attack.  He is the first to enrich his private interests, and those of his family, directly and openly.
     "He is the first president to denounce the press not simply as unfair but as 'the enemy of the American people.'  He is the first to threaten his defeated political opponent with imprisonment.  He is the first to have denigrated friendly countries and allies as well as a whole continent with racist vulgarities.
     "George Washington warned that the actions of a president 'may have great and durable consequences from their having been established at the commencement of a new general government.'  If history is any guide -- especially in light of the examples closest to his, of James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson -- Trump's first year portends a very unhappy ending."  --  They Were Bad.  He May Be Worse., by Sean Wilentz