Surprise, surprise.

What happens when you elect a man notorious for playing fast and loose with the law, a con artist famous for  routinely refusing to pay vendors and employees the amount agreed on and then telling them to accept the loss because it will cost less than suing him, who once insinuated that the father of one of his political opponents conspired with Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate JFK, who claimed for years on the basis of no evidence whatsoever that his predecessor was born in Africa, and who according to one study tells a lie every five minutes, as President of the United States?

Well, you get exactly what the watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) says we got when we elected exactly such a person in 2016:  the most unethical presidency in American history.

"Crooked Hillary," indeed. Donald Trump essentially pled guilty and voluntarily settled a civil RICO case for a fine totaling millions of dollars between his election as president and his taking office. His supporters ignored it. I suppose that's actually a good thing, in some ways; their usual pattern in such cases is to claim that anything that reflects poorly on Mr. Trump is "fake news," and to whine that reality is picking on the poor man!

But it's not working. Despite an improving economy (with which, admittedly, he had little to do), Donald Trump is the most unpopular president at the end of his first year in the White House we've ever had.

The truly disturbing thing is that Mr. Trump's lack of ethics was not only well-known before he even declared his candidacy for president, but both well-documented and repeatedly pointed out throughout. Some, of course, are so willing to be fooled by Trump that they will believe any absurdity which puts him in a good light. Their numbers are worrisome enough for the health of our democracy. But even more worrisome is that a far larger number hated Hillary Clinton so much that they were willing to ignore a fact that was staring them in the face, and have been so corrupted by the experience that they, do, have in many cases developed the habit of living in an alternate reality where Trump is concerned. After all, that's the only way it's possible to continue to support the overgrown sixth-grade playground bully in the Oval Office.

Heaven knows that there was enough about Hillary worth fearing- although for anyone to cite her ethics as a reason to support Trump was laughable. She is a social radical and would in her own way have doubtless been at least as bad as Trump. I get it. "But Gorsuch...." may not be an excuse, but it is a reason.

But Hillary is gone. Yet rank-and-file Republicans continue to support Trump despite his sorry record and the degree to which his presence in the Oval Office holds the United Staes up to ridicule in the eyes of the world.  You would think there would be an active movement among Republicans to draft Mike Pence or somebody to replace the deeply dishonest, emotionally immature and unstable man who defiles the presidency. That there is not may be the best of all possible reasons for those folks to have voted for McMullin or just plain stayed home on Election Day in 2016, even if it meant Hillary winning.

But no. Even now, they cling to the illusion of power because they have a president of their own party in the White House. So they excuse the ineptitude and actually buy into the lies.

What does it profit a person to gain the White House for his party, but lose his own soul?