Sure. Go ahead. Hang a second impeachment on him. Hell, if we wanted to be real he should have been impeached a dozen times by now. But like the last time, this next one is not going to “remove” Donald Trump.
We’ve seen this movie and we know how it ends. Mitch McConnell will delay it into Joe Biden’s term and then lead the new Republican chorus, (already tuning up), admonishing Trump Deranged liberals to, “Stop dividing the country and let the healing begin.” At that point Biden and Chuck Schumer will have to decide if they want all-hands-on-deck for COVID vaccinations and a gigantic infrastructure stimulus bill … or deal with still more Trump.
Their problem, which is also our problem, is that Trump is not going to go away no matter what anyone does to him. Never mind Congress and never mind all those New York prosecutors filing their fangs. The guy has a mind meld over a breathtaking percentage of the public and — I’m betting — every new episode of his flabby and incontinent Joan of Arc martyrdom is going to be fresh accelerant on the bonfires of their rage.
With the internet already ablaze with calls for the MAGA faithful to return to D.C. on the 17th for Biden’s inauguration, it was … um … unsettling to listen to reporter/author Ron Suskind, a Pulitzer-winner, tell Rachel Maddow the other night that intelligence community sources he’s spoken to since Wednesday’s riot estimate that 20% of Trump’s base are so inflamed they’re prepared to escalate violence beyond what has already happened.
If math isn’t your thing, Suskind, (his book on Dick Cheney, “The One Percent Doctrine” is a favorite of mine), calculates 20% of 75 million as … 15 million. Fifteen million.
Is he being a Chicken Little alarmist? Is that hyperbole? Maybe. But I’d put 15 million at about the number of adult Americans who came out for the first time ever to vote for Trump in 2016 and then did it again — and plus some — in 2020. Fifteen million would also collate nicely with the percentage of the public who are multiple gun-owners.
Beyond even the pandemic and economic mess, Joe Biden and incoming Attorney General Merrick Garland’s foremost battle over the next four years will be neutralizing wildly irrational, well-enough organized and heavily-armed white supremacists. And by that I mean exactly the 99% white mob who ransacked the Capitol.
So, no, I don’t find 15 million an implausible number for the number of “patriots”, many if not all with an apocalyptic view of the Trump martyrdom crisis and the liberal assault on their “freedoms” and “values”. Fifteen million who have the means, motive and in this moment, the opportunity to “fight” to “take back their country.”
It’s a crowd that is itching for a new Ruby Ridge-like fight, and unlike Arab terrorists and Black Lives Matters “radicals”, it’s a crowd that has the sympathy of a truly disquieting percentage of American law enforcement. (Gotta love U.S. police departments searching to see how many of their cops were in D.C. last Wednesday.)
How exactly you castrate this crowd without giving them the heroic, pitched battle for “freedom” they want, I have no idea. But they can’t be allowed to commit crimes and terrorize the sane and sensible with the impunity they’ve been granted up until now. Some kind of fight is going to have to be had.
As for Trump himself. I’m sure being banned from Twitter is worse than castration. But it’s not enough. He’s already made $250 million off MAGA Nation and will need a lot more.
There have been plenty of books about Napoleon’s exile to St. Helena. The one I read, “The Black Room at Longwood”, could serve as a template for what to do with Trump. Completely cut off from the rest of the world. Walking alone in the cold mist. Slowly decaying, with no hope of ever again being celebrated, before finally succumbing to a slow death in solitude.
Once all the indictments have been handed down and his crack legal team has added up the likely fines and prison-time, go ahead, offer him a deal. Serve the time and sign over Mar-a-Lago and all his soon-to-be-bankrupt golf courses or … accept permanent residency in a 1000 sq. ft. hut on a cold, distant island …
… with no WiFi.
They’ve been around for a while — the Southern Poverty Law Center has been tracking them for decades. However, Trump has provided a center of condensation for them, which makes them more unified, and thus more menacing.
Confederate flags carried into the Capitol building and scaffolds for a lynching erected outside remind me of Faulkner’s comment: the past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.
You’re correct. Lame Duck Donald is not going away. He’s been deified, like Caesar Augustus and other eminent ancients. But whereas the Roman emperors dictated their own apotheoses, Trump’s been deified by popular acclamation. Astonishing but true, and what can one say except, “Whom the gods would destroy they first drive mad.” In this case, the proverb applies to the deluded deplorables even more than to their adored dumbfuck idol.
Trump’s cult represents a clear and present danger of ascendant irrationality, with all the ingredients for a Nazi- or Fascist-type of dictatorship, focussed around a charismatic leader. It’s bizarre that a character like Trump has emerged as the “Leader”—a narcissist, bully, vulgarian, ignoramus who must be the most inarticulate demagogue in history. All Donald himself originally meant to do was operate a corrupt kleptocracy, starring himself as a Hollywood-fantasy Mafia don.
I guess it’s lucky in a weird way that Trump is as incompetent, ignorant, and repulsive as he is, because a slicker or smarter character who pushed all the same buttons of bigotry would likely never have been dislodged.
But we only have gained a brief respite from tyranny. Mr. Biden’s apparent intention to try to resume political-business-as-usual will prove as fatal for the body politic as ignoring symptoms of cancer would be for one’s personal health.
Well, the temporary reprieve could be used constructively.
Put Stacey Abrams at the head of the DNC.
Restore the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine, and do everything possible to pursue anti-trust measures against the right-wing media conglomerates such as those operated by the Murdoch and Sinclair interests.
Expose the identity of the people and outfits responsible for Q-Anon, which now assumes the truly subversive role of treason’s board of directors and central clearing house.
Statehood for D.C. within a year, and for Puerto Rico if its people want it.
Constitutional amendment to clearly reverse the doctrine of corporate “personhood,” thus rehabilitating the REAL 14th amendment and also enabling the restoration of campaign spending limits and anti-corruption laws.
Constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college; but if not possible yet, then an all-out drive to implement National Popular Vote compact.
Constitutional amendment to curb gerrymandering of congressional districts; ideally to curb state legislative gerrymandering, too.
Coordinated national educational effort to explain the true origins, purposes, and meaning of the Second Amendment. “Just say know.”
If it’s deemed politically unwise to prosecute the Trump traitors and corruptionists, then Dems must lead national debate on how power and money create UNequal justice, and why this is wrong.
I could go on all night. But I won’t. A dual strategy is needed. First, recognize that the mass madness of the Trump cult is impervious to reason or facts and those 45% of the populace cannot be redeemed. They must be met by active organizing to empower the majority to vigorously oppose them, not appease them! Second, use every possible political advantage to strengthen democracy by necessary constitutional amendments and other structural and statutory reforms.
Remember that Republicans disregarded losing the people’s votes in 2000 by a half-million and in 2016 by three million, and single-mindedly pursued their goals and implemented their self-serving policies, making no allowance or accommodation or apology for their minority rule.
And stuck us with their Iran War, their accelerated global warming, their ultra-right-wing federal judiciary, their 2009 economic debacle, their Patriot Act and surveillance state, their political malpractice of deregulation and despoliation, and their partisan poisoning of public health response to the pandemic, turning a crisis into a tragic calamity.
The prospective Democratic administration must keep faith with the majority who by an eight million margin entrusted the fate of the nation and the planet to them. To be less concentrated and determined to do what’s needed for the public well-being, even with that majority behind them, than the Bush, McConnell, and Trump grifters were in pursuit of their selfish agenda, would be a colossally cowardly blunder and would squander America’s last-second reprieve from political self-destruction.
Thank you Brian and Oliver. “going on all night” must also include a revising of the Supreme Court at some time within these upcoming four years.