Donald Trump is set to become the first hippie president — a long-haired, draft dodging, moral-less practitioner of free love.  He embodies the twin hippie credos of “Do it if it feels good,” and “Don’t trust the Establishment,” and the Republicans now embrace him.  When did the Republican Party become the touchy-feely party?  They used to make fun of hippies in the Sixties for the “Do it if it feels good” movement, because we need to have principles and morals, right?  No more.

Now Trump has convinced them that “Whatever I believe” is the most important thing. Trump believes the judge in the Trump U. case is Mexican, so he is entitled to impute bias against him based on policies Trump espouses to keep Mexican immigrants out of the U.S.

Trump doesn’t want to believe that Russian interference helped tilt the election in his favor, despite the mounting evidence and the agreement of our intelligence services, and therefore it just can’t be so.   He doesn’t have to look at evidence or listen to intelligence briefings.  He just knows better.  He is the anti-Descartes: “I am, therefore I think I am right!”

Whatever he believes is true.  He believes he had a historical Electoral College landslide, which is demonstrably false, but it doesn’t matter. He believes it and therefore his followers believe it. He believes that he would have won the popular vote, despite being 2.8 million votes (and counting) behind, if only the illegals had not voted.  Where is the evidence of 3 million illegal votes?  In Trump’s mind. But remember, he’s, you know, like, a very smart person

Conservative Republicans believe Hillary Clinton was responsible for Benghazi.  It doesn’t matter that umpteen Congressional committees led by Republicans investigated and found nothing, but they still believe.  So why not an investigation into the possible Russian hacking into Democratic email systems combined with a clever disinformation campaign to distribute fake news and illegally gotten information in an attempt to influence our electorate?

Thirty years ago the Republicans would have been uniformly up in arms over the credible allegations of Russian tampering with our democratic processes.  Now there are a few noble voices on the Republican side calling it what it is — an attack on our fundamental American political process.  Others simply accept it, because they won, as any means to an end.  Damn Hippies.