Brother Trump, as judged by history

[Jeb Stuart Thurmond]

Some of George W Bush's achievements are not so much about what happened, but about what didn't happen:

• We haven't had a terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11*
• We haven't had someone in the White House committing treason since the Plame affair
• We haven't had a city destroyed by incompetence since Hurricane Katrina
• We haven't started an unwinnable foreign quagmire since March 2003
• We haven't had an economic collapse since August
• We haven't spent a trillion dollars of taxpayer money on a blank check to our campaign contributors on Wall Street since October or so

Most of this also applies to Brother Trump. But while George W Bush was merely a boring-but-better-than-average president, Brother Trump stands among more spectacular historical figures, and will have a legacy like King David:

"...celebrated as the man who unified the kingdom of Israel, wrote the Psalms, brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, and planned the Temple there. The New Testament declares him to be an ancestor of Jesus, and the Koran includes him among the major prophets. Then there’s the modern state of Israel, which flies the Star of David on its flag and in many respects considers itself the embodiment of his geographical, political, and ideological legacy."

Not bad for "a power-hungry outlaw, a wife-stealer, a murderer, a traitor, and a usurper [who] didn’t kill Goliath, write the Psalms, or plan the Temple."

Like Brother Trump, King David had his own "Qanon" working behind the scenes: "There’s this whole sequence of deaths, for example, that befall those around David, every single one of which works to his benefit. The Bible and tradition try to tell us that David had nothing to do with them, but when you have a whole pile of bodies, and every single one is a good thing for David, you start to wonder."