Once upon a time a sports reporter named Howard Cosell got good mileage out of the slogan : “Tell it like it is.” Now Donald Trump has appropriated it, with a slight change : “Tell it like it isn’t.” Cosell’s message was about telling truth to power: standing up for Mohammed Ali against the establishment. Trump’s message would seem to be more like the opposite : annihilating truth with power. Other than the future trivia question engendered by their respective hairdos, there would seem to be no place where the two men could agree except that they both seem to be recommending confrontation as a strategy for dealing with what each perceived as a social problem. Cosell was crusading on behalf of his friend who was being persecuted for his anti-war beliefs. Trump seems just to be crusading on behalf of himself: Donald Trump, whose “gigantic brain” and “genius” apparently need daily if not hourly reinforcement by generous doses of sycophancy, hyperbole, exaggeration, and falsehood. Cosell was eventually vindicated by the realization of the American public that depriving Ali of a title he had won fair and square in the ring was unfair. (To use one of Mr.Trump’s favorite debating points : “WRONG WRONG WRONG”.) Mr. Trump seems to believe that his vindication will come when America is made over into a fusion of Putin’s Russia and Hitler’s Germany, where the winner will be the person with the loudest voice and who identifies the most “other” groups to blame his problems on, and who can assemble the most ignorant oligarchy to be his henchmen and who can most effectively stifle the press.

Ali’s reputation was eventually revived by the public’s realization that his “I ain’t got nothing against them Congs” was more honest than what our military-industrial complex was telling us. What hope do we have for the Trump problem? The gradually dawning revelation of his mental instability will come more quickly now that he has acquired a signing pen. (Have you taken note of the “yuge” nib? It’s as big as his opinion of his whatever.) The problem, as it was in Nam, is that the realization will come slowly. The injustices to Muslims and Syrian refugees don’t immediately affect the average American voter. It will take 20% increase in Walmart’s and Honda’s prices, and a painstaking education campaign about why they went up, to awaken us. By that time he will have been able to inflict all sorts of damage to the fights against carbon emissions, global warming, deforestation, mountain top removal, the public education system, the laws protecting LGBTQ rights, the makeup of the Supreme Court, voter registration laws, affordable health care, Social Security and the billionaire-favoring tax code. Among other things. Unless we choose to intervene.

“At long last, sir, have you no decency?” Joseph Welch finally asked Joe McCarthy three-quarters of a century ago, and the country finally recognized that plain outright lying was not acceptable in politics. We kicked out McCarthy and his buddy Roy Cohn in time and the nation survived. McCarthy’s “others” — Communist Fifth Column plants behind every desk in Washington — were as phony as Trump’s terrorists swelling the ranks of incoming refugees and his Mexican rapists driving up the crime statistics in Chicago. But it was, as those of us who were here in 1954 remember, a near thing. It almost tore the country apart. That “almost” is the key. That it didn’t was due to the strength of our belief in a free press, democratic government, and the moral importance of justice. That belief is now faced with a new test in the person of someone who is a certifiable sufferer from Narcissistic Personality Disease whom we have unaccountably elevated to the Presidency.

How that happened, or how broadly the cloak of collective responsibility should spread, is no longer material except as a lesson for future political strategists and historians. The immediate problem has now become one of (a) recognition of our mistake, and (b) finding effective tactics to atone for it and remove its threat to the stability of our government. (And very possibly not only ours. We are the exemplars to the world. At this moment a laughing stock.)

The first step — recognition of the problem — is under way. As the reckless and unhinged reactions of the patient are codified and assembled under the boldly aggressive signature so eagerly displayed by its author to any camera in the vicinity, citizens are already reacting. They march in support of the persecuted, chant in support of the rule of law, write and call their congresspeople to plead for a return to sanity. Those congresspeople, some torn between what they perceive as a chance for personal career enhancement through sycophancy and the dawning realization that this will in the end destroy their personal estimation of themselves, are struggling with the problem.

My hope is that the more they see of the America Donald Trump has in mind for them the more their eyes will be opened, and the sooner they will support his eventual impeachment.

For impeachment, I believe, is inevitable. Somewhere there is a Joseph Welch who will ask the right question at the right time and wake us all up. After that it will become just a matter of working out the details — who will take the lead in calling the would-be Emperor’s bluff, who will start with the actual steps of defining an indictment (probably based on the best word the Constitution offers us for salvation : “misdemeanors”), and organizing the Senate trial.

Trump’s exile will not end the divisions between the establishment haves and the self-perceived disrespected have-nots in our country, but the experience will have warned us against the dangers posed by quick-fix con men. How seriously Messrs Pence, McConnell, Ryan, et al. will take this lesson to heart will be the next critical issue. We and they will have to discuss it and take whatever steps we feel are necessary to avoid a repeat performance. It will not be a fun time, but I have faith that Americans, red or blue, brown or white, vengeful or thoughtful, will get more satisfaction from trying to solve the problem than from trying to exact satisfaction for past wrongs. As human beings we tend to believe in forgiveness. We are usually happier to save a soul than to condemn one to eternal torment. We are not against wealth; we just would like to see it spread more equitably. We don’t hate individual Syrians or Muslims or Mexicans or Jews; we can only hate them collectively, as “the other”, seen as responsible for our unemployment, poverty, helplessness and frustration in the face of terrorism, and (we may think) actually eradicable so that Heaven on earth can be realized under the auspices of the smart, white, high-school educated, religious, past-worshippers who today seem to be forgetting that this country was founded as a haven for dissenters, not as a haven for tax-evaders.

This vision is perhaps as hard to believe in as Donald Trump’s illusions of crowd sizes or the zillions of his worldwide adoring admirers, but it is not to be dismissed as crazy. It is to be accepted, even by those who don’t subscribe to it, as an inevitable reaction to disappointment and alienation, which can only be dealt with by education and love. Yes, love. If you don’t love your fellow man whom then will you love? The high radiation-tolerant rats ready to take over the next experiment in running the planet?

So what’s my advice? Dig in for the long haul. It’s a battle that can be won. Trump can be defeated. Washington can be reshaped from a political cut-throat career cauldron back to a representative deliberative body. The table can be made round again so we can all sit at it together — nobody below the salt. The UN is salvageable. The story of the Donald may be the reinforcing lesson we all need to remind us that the price of democratic government is constant vigilance.

Give me your

tired, your poor,

your huddled

masses yearning

to breathe free,

the wretched

refuse of your

teeming shore.

Send these, the

homeless,

tempest-tost, to me.

 I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

This is Me, y’all, so put away your toys and listen up. Right now I am an unhappy camper, and you know from experience that can be a problem for you. Ask Noah. Or Old Pharaoh. Remember them frogs and the locusts? So listen up when I say listen up if you know what’s good for you.

Some folks say y’all created me in y’all’s image. Other folks say the other way ’round : that I created y’all in my image. I can’t say about that. I have no idea what was here before I came, if there was a “here” before I came, so how could I know? But when it comes to this business of image, whoever’s it was to start with, we have now come to share pretty much the same one, and that’s what’s concerning me today. That it’s the same one. If either of us — y’all or me —  does something to tarnish that image, we are damaging something that’s common to both of us, and I don’t feature having my image tarnished by y’all’s mistakes, if you get my meaning. So we’re going to have to get some things straight.

Over the years I have sent you word from time to time about how I want you to behave. Start with Moses. He was my main man back then. But even before Moses. I read somewhere that the old Jews had to perform 613 different mitzvahs to be on the safe side — to be considered good people when the Judgment Day came. I don’t know where they got that many. Not from me. No way I could dream up that many. I have always said that there is only one thing you need to remember to be a good person — just treat everyone like you would like to be treated. But some prophets have staked out their turfs with different rules. Would you believe that when Moses originally came up the mountain he had a list of more than 100 things he wanted to put on those tablets? All kinds of stuff about what to eat, what not to eat, when to pray, which way to face — I mean it was a real meshuggenah mess.. I told him, Moishe, there’s no way you’re going to fit all that on those two little tombstones. Boil it down.

Well, it took a while, but we finally worked the hundred down to just ten. Unfortunately even ten turned out to be too much for some folks. They kept finding loopholes. Some wanted to go back to the original 613. I sent them word by way of several Popes and rabbis to help them sort things out, but the new prophets turned out to be as stubborn as Moses and I was busy with other things. I tried again later with a fellow named Muhammed. Had him up here for a nice visit and we reworked some of the biggest problems. We got it down to five major commandments and about a hundred nitpicks — he called them suras. But then I discovered that he had started making up new suras on his own to deal with some of his personal problems — like the four wives bit. I tried to persuade him that the Five Pillars would be all he needed, but he insisted, so I let him keep them both as long as they didn’t contradict each other too much.

As far as the story with the Popes goes, that fellow with his 95 theses pretty much nailed it five hundred years ago. He was so right and they were so wrong that they finally had to throw him out of the church altogether. They got the throwing part right, we had precedents for that with the money lenders in the old days, but it was supposed to be the bankers who got thrown out, not Luther. The popes didn’t see it that way. Well, Luther’s people went back and resurrected Moses’s original ten, and we pretty much wound up back where we started.

And now we’ve got some new of self-anointed prophets. The most straight-laced and uncompromising so far. No use for thinking at all. Just do what we say. No questions. Seems as though they’ve got it all boiled down to one method for dealing with questions — you might call it the Queen of Hearts method — “Off with their heads!”

So I’m going to say this one more time : All you need is “Do unto others…”. All this other stuff about skin color, the shapes of noses, who was your grandfather, who were the original natives and who were the invaders, promises I am said to have made, brains I am said to have handed out unequally, the hereditary rights of kings, the sanctity of private property — all that stuff is diversionary garbage. Just “Do unto other as you would have them do unto you” and that’s it. You don’t need anything else.

You want to see those locusts again? More fiery hail? Boils? Lice? I know how to do all those tricks, and I can also do volcanoes and earthquakes if you provoke me. Three days of darkness was just a taste but as I recall it really got your attention. So listen up. And shape up. The end may be nearer than you think.

This is Me talking, so pay attention. you hear?.