How can we unring the bell that Donald Trump set swinging?
Let's call it the un-liberty bell. Let's brand it, as he does.
Trump towers, Trump sours. When it comes to politics, anything Trump says and does is a liability. Because essentially everything he says and does is some form of a lie.
The U.S. News and World Report noted last month that in September Trump said: "I love the Muslims, I think they're great people." Asked if he would appoint a Muslim to his cabinet, he answered, "Oh, absolutely, no problem with that."
Three months later his campaign's Dec. 7 news release stated: "Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." And he called for surveillance against mosques and the possible creation of a national database of Muslims in the U.S.
All in all, Trump's mix of hate, lies and feigned "love" of the people and things he puts down are like napalm on the public tinderbox of discontent.
Not that the public shouldn't be discontented. After all, our shrinking middle class and growing numbers of working poor are seeing their wallets shrivel to paper thinness as the top 1 percent in the country grow richer year after year.
These are top 1 percenters like Trump. What's amazing is how easily Trump fools people into believing he's a plain speaker when he really is just a grifter - a con man who's learned that the snake oil salesman routine of reality TV will mask his true self.
Remember this is a man who has used the nation's bankruptcy laws four times to enrich himself - meanwhile stiffing all the bankers and builders and other people who worked for him in those four projects. That was the real Donald Trump. He himself termed it "taking advantage" of the country's bankruptcy statutes.
Meanwhile, like another loser before him - George Wallace - the toxic support Trump stirs, the polluted ideas he spreads, the hate he encourages will be an evil that will live on long after this oversized junior high ego fades into reruns. As Lawrence Downes noted in a September New York Times blog: "We will be cleaning up after Mr. Trump for a long time."
Republicans especially. And no, that's not said with glee on this Democrat-leaning page. We are the great country we still are because we embrace a two-party system that understands compromise is important to support America's big tent and melting pot democracy.
Even local Republicans see the ruin Trump brings.
Tennessee Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, who last year successfully passed a bill in the Senate to allow illegal immigrant students to pay in-state tuition at state colleges and universities, hopes to get a House OK this year. The House, last year, rejected the measure by just one vote.
The children affected were brought here by their parents and have already been educated in our primary and secondary schools, Gardenhire argues. Let's give them a chance to be the best good citizens they can be, he says. Yet, thanks to the immigration storm Trump has raised, he sees danger for the measure.
"I hope I don't get Trumped," he told the Times Free Press last week. "The national media has focused so much attention on it. It will be campaign fodder for opponents of my bill."
Meanwhile, across the country, media pundits keep talking about why Trump hasn't spent much on campaign ads yet continues to lead in polls, while other candidates have spent millions and can't poll out of single digits.
Well, duh. Trump hasn't had to spend advertising money. We in the media have covered his every carnival-barking word for free.
When's the last time you heard a stump speech by Jeb Bush or John Kasich or Chris Christie? On the other hand, major networks have someone reporting at a Trump rally almost every night.
When was the last time you saw any of the candidates (other than on debate nights) talk about anything except in response to something Trump said (or perhaps something that the "lawless" President Barack Obama did or didn't do)?
Trump, who will almost certainly never be president, is sucking all the oxygen out of the room, out of the campaign, out of his party, and out of our nation's future goodwill. And yes, we are guilty, too - right here, right now, right on this page.
But please think of this as a call for sanity. Allowing this madman to firebomb this country's raw psyche again and again has to stop.
We in the media, and in the public, must wise up.
We must swear off the opiate of watching and hearing (and trumpeting) the great Trump con job.