AS THE COOKIES CRUMBLE

      Ah, those telltale crumbs. The smears of chocolate on the face. The sticky hands - and the documented propensity to repeat this crime time and time again. Nope, not talking about the little kiddies smuggling some verboten cookies before bedtime. Nope, talking about the people who are supposed to represent the best of us, yet have the audacity to be the worst, even as they claim loyalty to the people. But nope, the crumbs tell otherwise.

There is an ancient Jewish saying that when one looks at another and sees only evil and wrongdoing, it is often one's own crimes and misdeeds that one sees in that reflection. Nietzsche repeats that sentiment or warning with his abyss comment and we have often been warned that we have indeed met the enemy - and he is us. 

Every single thing that Trump, that dangerous, deranged man claims his opponents have done, every single 'crime' he has accused them of committing, every shenanigan, every lie - when investigated and traced, all follow the telltale path of crumbs back to Trump et al and their misdeeds. If Hansel and Gretel had so many crumbs they would have found their way back and never have been in danger of being eaten!

Unfortunately, we here in America are in deep and imminent trouble of remaining only as the crumbs of what was once the greatest nation, a nation which made errors, too many, had many faults, but always tried, always worked to correct those errors, always had the ideal of being the safe haven and the ideal nation to the world. That is all one can ask and yet, we have always had our own homegrown fascists who have fooled too many people. They have managed to hide - but now flaunt - their virulent xenophobia, anti Semitism, racism, and vile traits that pose an existential threat to this country and indeed the world at large.

When a chief officer of a huge police department is found to be a rancid compound of awfulness, when the President, who is supposed to be the symbol of unity, the representative of the nation to the world, goes berserk and rants about stolen elections and fraud, one wonders if that anger is more that his own nefarious plans to steal that election have failed. Never before has there been such grandiose plans to suppress voting rights, to deny that right to so many. 

From riots, to lies, to bigger lies, to court suits, to tirades and tantrums, including one on Election Night, or rather Wednesday morning, where he claimed both victory and took off after how his victory was stolen- well, make up your mind, buddy - chocolate chips or sandwich cookies. That is the threat, there is the threat we have refused to acknowledge, to be recognized and accepted as such by too many. Why does it take the breakdown of an earnest TV host to bring it home to some?

Why is it Stephen Colbert who had to point out those crumbs, that we have been buried under the toxic crumbs of the stolen cookies out of the American cookie jar. The crumbs were always there, obvious, glaring, even. The odor of rot that they emitted was clearly able to be smelled by all, yet some claimed colds and could not smell the evil of wrongdoing going on here. Here are a few of his points. Read them, think about them.

• "sad, frightened fraud."
• GOP needs to "get off the Trump train" because "it's not a passenger train, and he'll load you on it sometime, too."
• "Donald Trump tried really hard to kill something tonight."

• "So we all knew he would do this," he said before tearing up. "What I didn't know is that it would hurt so much. I didn't expect this to break my heart. For him to cast a dark shadow on our most sacred right from the briefing room in the White House — our house, not his — that is devastating."

  "He is the president of the United States," he added. "That office means something, and that office should have some shred of decency."

The election is not yet over as the counts go on, the same counts that Trump and his ilk are desperate to stop. From DeJoy's dangerous tampering with the mail system, one of so many corrupt officials under Trump, all the way to constant accusations about officials, whines about watching - and by the way - counting, after polls are closed, are generally done only by the workers and it is no easy task to match up numbers and ballots and many, many counts are done till satisfied or long explanations as to what might have gone wrong are inserted into the records. Fraud is not easy under the system, but the fraud that this man and his supporters and enablers have perpetrated upon this nation has been too easy and to deeply implanted. 

Even were he to lose, and that is not really known yet, too many ballots and deadlines to meet, too close are the totals, too many recounts to be made, but even if he were to lose - Please, G-d - the rotten crumbs he and his have left behind, the rot that has been growing apace, will remain and there is much to do. We must not forget that. Win or lose, our work is not done, our vigilance must be strong and never ending, not if we are going to keep America as America and we remain as true Americans.