We are gathered here today, the last day of 2020, to pay our respects to the politically near-departed.

President Donald Trump entered politics by asking Americans what they had to lose by voting for him. As he prepares to leave political power, the answer is clear: pretty much everything.

He promised to “make America great again”—but couldn’t even get an infrastructure bill passed. For two years his party had majorities in the Senate and the House—yet his largest accomplishment was a wall Mexico didn’t pay for and he didn’t finish.

He caged immigrant children. He destroyed public education. He ignored science. He encouraged pollution and robber barons. He nearly doubled the national deficit. He shafted the working poor and increased the wealth of the wealthiest Americans. He divided but didn’t conquer. He screamed but didn’t produce. He lied constantly about everything—even things he didn’t need to lie about. He governed by tweet. He belittled. He antagonized. He stirred up fear. He made us angry. He made us bitter. He made us hateful. He never appealed to our better angels. He was a festering sore on the body politic. A rabid hyena. A colossal embarrassment. An open-mic-night comedian onstage with professional stand-ups. A bandy-legged, lard-tailed shrimp of a wrestler in the ring, pushing disaster.

He failed to control a deadly pandemic. He sold lots of red hats. He held rallies that became superspreader events. He dismissed face masks, even as he and dozens of his inner circle caught Covid-19. Proving that the rich will survive, when Trump fell ill he got $100,000 in experimental treatment and as president had an entire hospital at his disposal. When his rich friends got sick, he hooked them up with excellent health care unavailable to the rest of us.

Now Trump is rumored to lumber through the halls of the White House residence at night, gacked to the gills on Adderall, drooling and muttering to himself while occasionally screaming like someone stuck him with a beskar javelin. (In other words, a typical evening at the Trump White House.) Some say that on his midnight strolls Trump secretly raids desks in the press room, searching for stray Junior Mints and hamberders. Others say he converses with the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. Still others believe that as he wanders he’s making mental notes on which furnishings he can sell on eBay.

Ever since Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection he’s been in denial, rallying his troops to carry guns and die for his cause while his sycophants in Congress carry the water for his dangerous claims of fraud.

Attorney General William Barr defended Trump from the onslaught of reality for as long as he could, crafting letters and proposing alternate explanations of the truth, but in the end even Barr and the bootlickers couldn’t save Trump. Barr snuck out the back, or was kicked out. Trump remains deranged, demented and disastrously active.

Trump has overseen, during the past four years, an unprecedented erosion of the honor and prestige of the American Republic. He has preyed upon those who feel victimized by actually victimizing them. He has been a ringmaster of destruction, dragging people into his bubble via seduction, threats, bribes or bullying; after they get there, they are inevitably used up and discarded, finally emerging from Trump’s influence as if abandoned on a gravel road somewhere in the rural Midwest. They awaken alone and discombobulated, bathed in a cold sweat, a few miles from a rundown Walmart, its lot populated by rusty carts with wobbly front wheels, wind blowing dried leaves across the asphalt—even in spring.

Trump remains politics’ biggest loser, leaving office petulant, whining, arrogant and intent on taking the house down with him—maybe.

His bubble is now nearly empty. Chief of staff Mark Meadows remains Donald Trump’s greatest pasty-faced fluffer, while Ohio representative Jim Jordan and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina hover nearby, armed with a cabana towel, a bottle of spray tan and a cold iced tea just in case. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida pulls up the rear with a whisk broom and dustpan to sweep up Trump’s droppings. Fear of Trump and his rabid fan base/death cult keeps these spineless, leaden-headed dullards smiling and obeying the president, frightened they could lose their power, their job and any chance of a social life—not necessarily in that order.

Donald Trump is too drunk on power, too afraid of the reckoning heading his way and too thick to understand or care about the damage he’s done to the United States.

No political obituary for the president would be complete without mentioning the obvious: Donald Trump is a national disaster of his own making. He choreographed this mess. He is unable to bend, change or adapt. He is a dangerous narcissist who cares only for himself. His own ex-lieutenants, including Michael Cohen, point out that Trump would throw his own children under the bus to save his bulbous bottom.

Trump’s rise to political power and his ongoing departure from the public stage mark an ugly era in America, one we can finally lay to rest on January 20.

Trump may not want what he gets, but he deserves it. As long as he draws breath, he will never rest in peace.