I’m old, old enough to remember when getting a tattoo was a sign of rebellion, not a sign of conformity. I’m also old enough to remember when people felt shame.

In 1968, faced with a catalog of well-documented and proven abuses, Richard Nixon, for all his faults, faced the music and resigned from office. After fighting all the Watergate charges, he realized that, in addition to losing the trust of the American people and with impeachment imminent, there was no way out of the corner his illegal, unconstitutional activities had painted him into. Finally, he admitted defeat and, waving to the crowd with his trademark double peace sign (a peace he had held hostage for most of his term of office), flew off into infamy aboard Marine One, then on to Air Force One, which lost that call sign somewhere over Missouri on its way to California.

He, along with most of his staff, had been shamed out of office and deservedly so. We as a nation put them behind us and moved forward. This kind of thing had happened before, from Boss Tweed to Joe McCarthy to George Wallace to the embarrassing but more benign shenanigans of the likes of Anthony Weiner.

Things have changed today. In spite of all the charges and failures and lies and convictions and scandals, not to mention a failed overthrow of the American government, no one seems to want to admit defeat or take responsibility. (A friend who is in the know about these things told me that a certain current president has had a Watergate every month and has never been held to account.) The crazies just keep on pushing nonsense about stolen elections, DEI plane crashes, fake news, Democrat controlled weather, birthers, dog-eating immigrants, alternate truth, and countless more inanities.

I doubt these corrupt, shameless scoundrels or their cowardly enablers would bat an eyelash at the accusing words with which Joseph Welch brought down another bully, Joe McCarthy, when he declared,

“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness… You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

These people have no sense of decency, so those words would disappear into the vacuum where their consciences should be.

Now those same thugs are running the show again. And they’ve brought along their trillionaire friends (None of those, you say? Just wait; with extensive graft happening already, it’s only a matter of time.) to wreak havoc over the entire globe. Unlike Nixon, whose own party at that time had the ability to distinguish right from wrong and thus ran him out of office, these miscreants are being empowered and encouraged to perform their nefarious acts by their equally unprincipled, spineless accomplices. Now millions around the world will pay for our sins with their lives.

Shame on them.

Shame on us for letting this happen.