Hillary and Bill Clinton have decided to temporarily ignore the memo about Donald Trump being an arrogant, willfully ignorant, authoritarian, short-tempered, climate-destroying orangutan. How else to explain a report by Variety‘s Ted Johnson that they’ve agreed to attend Trump’s swearing in ceremony on Friday, 1.20?

The Clintons are basically saying (a) “as an ex-President, Bill is obliged to attend,” (b) “it will look funny if Hillary doesn’t go with him,” (c) “let’s show respect for the office and our country’s transfer-of-power tradition, if not the man himself,” (d) “hey, maybe Trump won’t be so bad…let’s wait for him to fuck up before going negative” and (e) “at least he said he’s not interested in prosecuting Hillary for her emails!”

The Clintons will reportedly be joined by George W. Bush (and wife Laura) and Jimmy Carter.

Johnson points out that “it’s customary for former occupants of the Oval Office to be invited along with their spouses.” True, but Johnson omits the fact that Trump’s election was a highly abnormal, tragic occurence in American life — the handing of enormous, far-reaching power to an ADD-afflicted, wildly corrupt, bordering-on-fiendish sociopath and Putin toady who is likely to introduce levels of corruption to Washington government that will make the soiled reputation of President Warren G. Harding seem mild by comparison.

If there was ever a situation that required an ex-President to ignore tradition and make a stand against greed, fact-denial and corruption in government, it’s the one we’re all facing right now.