Those are supposedly the last words of Beethoven. But of course, they could also apply to the farcical impeachment proceedings that just concluded. For you pessimists, they could also apply to our country’s existence as a functioning democracy.
Indeed, your social-media feeds are likely clogged with rants from your friends that start with something like “It’s official. We’re living in a dictatorship.” As if this latest travesty made everything “official,” and as if your friends have the authority to decree this (it all sounds a little dictatorial to me).
Still, pundits are wrong to call the impeachment proceedings a circus. A circus is at least entertaining. This shit is just depressing.
We received fresh proof — although none was needed — that the Republican Party is a dead-eyed cult that has succumbed to a lunatic messiah. They will deny easily verified facts (e.g., where is Kansas City?) to avoid offending the mad emperor. They will feverishly applaud Matterhorn-sized lies spewed during the state of the union. They will hem and haw and pretend to deliberate at great length — before falling into line and delivering exactly what the president wants. Hell, a sizeable contingent would be fine if Trump handed Alaska over to the Russians.
Consider that about 75% of the country wanted witnesses at this trial. Yet, about 96% of Republican senators said, “No, we don’t need them.”
Consider also that Republicans have employed dozens of different arguments justifying Trump’s behavior, virtually all of which are nonsense.
And consider that Trump’s lawyers presented a defense that consisted entirely of contradictory, alarming, and idiotic “legal gibberish merely designed to distract and confuse those who tuned into the trial.”
And still, the GOP remains undeterred. They stand by their corrupt, anger-fueled, imaginary-orchestra-conducting president.
In the end, Republicans regret that they have but one country to sell out.
During the first 186 years of the U.S. Constitution’s existence, only one president was impeached. And yet, within the last 45 years, three different presidents have faced impeachment.
Is this a consequence of increased polarization, where opposing political parties seek the ultimate punishment? Or is it a random historical coincidence, and a vast amount of high crimes and misdemouners just happens to be taking place during a relatively short time span? Or has Congress only now noticed the impeachment clause hiding in the Constitution, and thought, “Hey, as long as it’s there, we might as well use it”?
Well, personally, I think more presidents should have been impeached throughout history, so maybe it’s just that our predecessors overlooked some pretty egregious shit.
In any case, this impeachment process is different from the others, and not just because we are seeking to remove a brittle, easily agitated igmoramus who was never qualified to be president in the first place.
No, it’s because the issue of fairness has never before been such a concern when we’re discussing whether or not we should evict someone from the White House.
You see, Republicans are obsessed with being fair to Donald Trump. Their arguments throughout this entire process have had little to do with the facts (there is little dispute about what happened), or the appropriateness of pressuring a foreign government to interfere in our electoral process.
Instead, when they are not pushing idiotic conspiracy theories orshrieking like lunatics, they are demanding fair treatment for our beleaguered president.
For example, Republicans are very big on identifying the whistleblower. “Who is the whistleblower? Is he the whistleblower? Are you, them, or it the whistleblower? Hey, I think I’ll name someone I think is the whistleblower, even if it’s against the law and opens the door to death threats!”
Now, all but the dimmest of Republicans know that it simply doesn’t matter who the whistleblower is. All that matters is whether what he/she reported is true. And by the way, all the allegations have been verified about six thousand times now.
So even if Hilary Clinton were the whistleblower, it wouldn’t matter when assessing Trump’s innocence (although that would be a hell of a plot twist, and I’m sure someone’s working on the screenplay right now).
When they not insisting that they need to know the whistleblower’s identity (for absolutely no valid reason), Republicans are bemoaning that Robert Mueller, the FBI, and just about everyone who has investigated the president has some deeply held bias against him that corrupts the very act of looking into Trump’s criminal behavior.
Again, even if every single person involved in investigating Trump possessed a seething contempt and loathing for the man (and really, who could blame them?), it would not matter.
Bias is irrelevant as long as the facts are correct. If someone commits a crime, we do not say he can walk solely because the cops and the district attorney don’t like him.
Unless the GOP is willing to argue that this imaginary bias provoked investigators to plant evidence and make up transcripts — which I’m shocked they haven’t done yet — then this too is a pathetic smokescreen.
By the way, I’m old enough to remember Bill Clinton’s impeachment, and I have no recollection of anyone claiming that Kenneth Starr had an obligation to be fair and unbiased. Granted, much of the public debate at that time centered on whether a blowjob counted as “sex,” but the point remains.
Among the other accusations of unfairness is the GOP opinion that this process is being rushed, or that Joe Biden and his entire family committed far greater crimes.
At the risk of indulging absurdity, it should be pointed out that even if Biden shot someone on Fifth Avenue — to make up a totally deranged example — it would have no bearing on whether or not Trump should be kicked out of office. Impeachment is about the president’s behavior, not the possible shenanigans of his political rival’s kids.
Speaking of children, I can’t be the only one who thought it was odd when Republicans lost their minds over an impeachment witness making a pun about the president’s son’s name. These same defenders of the sanctity of childhood have no problem stuffing other, brown-skinned kids into cages. But hey, they’ve got their priorities.
And those priorities include shrieking that the impeachment process is a grotesque travesty of justice.
Um, no — a grotesque travesty of justice would be, for example, what happened to the Central Park Five.
Oh, that’s right. Trump was one the loudest voices perpetuating that particular injustice.
And that’s what is so interesting about the GOP’s new and sudden interest in fairness.
You see, this is the same party that dismisses wealth inequalityand shoddy healthcareas the price of freedom. They care little that well-documented racial imbalances exist in every facet of American life. They do not concern themselves with the fact that the electoral college screws over the will of the people.
The concept of fairness never enters the GOP equation for any of those issues.
To Republicans, being fair means being nice to the president, and shutting up as they plot their right-wing power grab.
Perhaps you remember when our totally innocent and not at all corrupt president boasted that he could murder people in the street and not lose any support?
Yeah, good times.
In any case, murdering the country has been a slightly tougher sell for the guy.
Recently, many Trump loyalists went on television to quixotically defend the president’s shenanigans with Ukraine, and as we all know, “their efforts did not go well and produced a number of cringe-worthy moments.”
Indeed, it’s difficult to spin an open-and-shut case of pressuring a foreign government to interfere in American elections, and our most esteemed Republicans appear to be “woefully unprepared to defend a president whose conduct is becoming increasingly hard to justify.”
In fact, one hot rumor holds that “if it was a secret vote, 30 Republican senators would vote to impeach Trump.”
By the way, that’s over half the GOP representation in the Senate and, assuming that every Democrat would vote for conviction, far more than is needed to remove the president from office.
But of course, any impeachment vote — if and when it happens — will not be in secret. It will be a very public, very messy spectacle.
And in those circumstances, those 30 anonymous senators will gulp and say, “not guilty,” for fear of offending their psychotic overlord.
Imagine such a scenario, and then realize that it is far worse than mere cowardice. It is treachery. After all, these senators are saying, “Yeah, I know that the president has committed grotesque crimes against the Constitution and has unleashed lasting devastation upon America, but I really, really don’t want to lose my cushy job.”
And that is clearly jamming personal ambitions ahead of the nation’s interest, which is a sickening dereliction of duty from people who constantly boast about how patriotic they are.
There has been much talk — justified talk — that Republicans regularly put party ahead of country. But the truth is that they put their individual needs ahead of even their party’s future viability, leaving the country a distant third priority, at best.
But they are not the only ones who live in fear of offending a man who flies into a rage if, for example, he’s asked to answer basic questions about his lunatic behavior.
No, the Log Cabin Republicans, the country’s best-known conservative LGBTQ organization, recently endorsed the president’s 2020 reelection bid. It’s interesting that the group “declined to endorse then-candidate Trump in 2016,” back when they thought they had a choice.
But now, the Log Cabin Republicans have fallen into line, displaying “a certain level of perverse chutzpah, or a certain level of confidence in your gaslighting abilities, to claim that President Trump is good for LGBTQ people.”
The Log Cabin Republicans suddenly got into groveling because Trump’s hardcore supporters are the real power in the GOP. And they will not be dissuaded, even if the administration’s disastrous policies nail them personally.
For example, my home state of Wisconsin continues to top the nation in family farm bankruptcies. No one seriously disputes that Trump’s idiotic trade war is “contributing to their economic hardships.”
So those Wisconsin farmers must be mad as hell at the president— right?
Well, these rural soon-to-be paupers are “appear to be sticking by Trump — not just the Republican they largely supported in the 2016 election, but the trade warrior who has put their industries in China’s sights.”
Many of these farmers don’t blame Trump for destroying their livelihoods. Instead, they aim their ire at unknown, nameless “Washington bureaucrats,” (always an easy target). And in an impressive feat of cognitive dissonance, some farmers will continue to vote for oligarchs because they are “not in favor of any kind of socialism,” even while lining up to receive their government-funded bailout packages.
But don’t worry, because most of the $8.4 billion of Trump’s farm bailouts has gone to the richest farmers, the top 10% of all recipients. Yes, even farmers have an elitist class that grabs most of the cash from everyone else, so I guess they really are like the rest of us.
As a final reminder of just how fervently, how obsessively Trump’s base clings to his aura, please keep in mind that about 40% of Republicans don’t even think the president mentioned Joe Biden’s name on that phone call with the Ukrainian president. Never mind arguing whether or not Trump pressured anyone or jeopardized American foreign policy or committed impeachable offenses. Four out of ten Republicans deny that the president even said Biden’s name, which is of course, an undisputed fact, and the most innocuous aspect of this whole sordid fiasco.
So how are you going to convince this crowd that their messiah did anything the slightest bit wrong?
Now, there is a sliver of optimism in this depressing compendium of right-wing fanaticism. Many political experts believe that “the good news for Democrats is that for every argument that pushing ahead on impeachment will hurt them, there is another that it won’t hurt much and may even help.”
And for the first time, “a plurality of Americans now support impeaching Trump and removing him from office.” Furthermore, support for impeachment is only growing with each passing day.
So maybe, possibly, in some distant future, one or two GOP senators will meekly stand up and say this administration is just the slightest bit shady.
If someone says the president should be executed, is he making an active threat against the chief executive that warrants some door knocking from the Secret Service? Well, what if that person is simply musing about the penalty for treason, and then goes on to accuse the president of that crime?
Yes, it’s a circuitous way to make a threat, and it makes for an interesting hypothetical that—
Oh, wait a minute. It’s not a rhetorical exercise.
Recently, former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld said that “the president committed treason through his controversial phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — adding that the punishment for treason is death.”
Now, you might think that Weld is one of those hardcore leftists whose days consist of smuggling undocumented immigrants, officiating gay weddings, and having brunch with the Squad before heading out to throw punches with Antifa.
But Weld is a Republican.
Damn, even conservatives are getting tired of Trump.
At long last, the president’s rampant corruption and overt contempt for the Constitution have become hideous enough for Democrats to finally emerge from hiding under their desks to whisper the word “impeachment.”
Still, even with all that Trump has done, many Democrats are afraid of removing the most bellicose, unstable, and reckless president that America has ever had.
You see, they are petrified they might lose the votes of Q Anon supporters and these guys:
And if that is not a solid reason to shirk one’s constitutional duty and endanger the entire country, well, I don’t know what is.
In any case, this Ukrainian mess will likely not change anyone’s mind. If you are progressive, and tuned into the slightest particle on reality’s wave length, you will look at the transcript of the president’s phone call and see that it “reads like a classic mob shakedown.”
If you are a Republican, and exceedingly used to denying basic facts and common-sense conclusions, you will scream, “witch hunt” or “fake news” or “the deep state” or some other worn-out catchphrase that long ago morphed from stinging rebuke into pathetic plea.
It’s difficult to believe that anyone would still embrace the administration’s sad, sloppy attempts at distracting, deflecting blame, and eluding public disgrace. But you can’t blame Trump for sticking to a formula that works.
After all, his GOP enablers will jump through flaming hoops to twist incriminating statements into exonerations. They argued that the Muller Report cleared Trump and believed that releasing the transcript of the Ukrainian phone call would never ever in a million years backfire. Hell, they view themselves as heroes.
And Trump’s fearful, logic-challenged base agrees. After all, these are the people who believe that virtually all writers, scientists, historians, economists, moderate politicians, and religious leaders (non-evangelicals) have devoted their lives to lying to the American populace for some unknown, nefarious reason.
Members of the base further believe that a delusional narcissist with a history of lying, bankruptcy, unethical behavior, and adultery is a beacon of truth — well, him and Fox News, which is little more than a slithering mass of irrational, hate-filled propaganda pushed by bigoted zealots who have a strong financial incentive to terrify their viewers.
So it’s going to work — at least with the 20% of Americans who will support the president no matter what.
For the rest of us, we remain mired in a political nightmare that careens between Lynchian and Kafkaesque, with swivels toward the Orwellian and stray Lewis Carroll fever dreams.
But is there reason to hope that we are nearing the end of this mad-scientist experiment on American democracy? Well, there is more cause for optimism than there has been since November 2016.
Of course, if Trump actually is removed from office, or hangs on only to lose the 2020 election, “the risks of bloodshed are real.”
So we’re back to acknowledging that there is no end in sight.
Among the stranger tendencies of progressives are the urge to instill a purity test on their political leaders, and a failure to identify final goals.
For the former, witness the internecine bloodletting that occurred between Hilary supporters and Bernie supporters in the last election. Plenty of progressives vowed never to vote for Clinton because she was, you know, the same as Trump.
I’m pretty sure nobody thinks that anymore.
In contrast, conservatives had no problem biting their tongues and voting for a loathsome maniac who insulted their principles, their preferred candidates, and sometimes, even them personally. They were focused on winning.
Now I’m not saying that Democrats should go to the extreme boot-licking, semi-treasonous lengths that Republicans have. But I am saying that holding a grudge because the presidential candidate isn’t as liberal as you would like is selfish and short-sighted.
Which brings us to the second progressive flaw: the failure to identify final goals.
Again, many conservatives voted for Trump because they knew he would have at least one Supreme Court pick, and probably more. The GOP had its eyes on the prize. And now we have a misogynistic corporate toady and probable attempted rapist headed for a lifetime appointment.
Yet, liberals are insisting that they can stop the Kavanaugh nomination. They can’t, of course, and even if they can, what happens next?
Does anyone seriously think that Trump will say, “Oh my, that choice offended them. I better pick a nice moderate who respects Roe v. Wade”? No, the guy is going to double down and pick someone just as loathsome and possibly even more reactionary (all part of an effort to stick it to the libs) and continue hammering away until that ninth justice is seated.
Progressives just can’t see the finish line.
Instead, we have focused on stopping Kavanaugh as a final result that, if successful, will result in champagne all around and free puppies for the masses.
The same mindset infects people who think impeaching Trump is the end of the story. Make no mistake — the president should have been impeached long ago and hopefully will be soon. But it’s distressing to note how many liberals think that impeachment means that we will be rid of Trump.
Way too many people are unaware that impeachment is only the first step of the process. Once the House presents the articles of impeachment, the Senate has to find the president guilty and vote to remove him from office.
That tiny technicality requires two-thirds of the senators to convict him. This means 67 senatorshave to vote “yes.”
To reach this threshold, Democrats would have to win 18 Senate seats in the mid-terms (they are currently projected to win, maybe, one seat).
Or another way to reach that milestone is if over one-third of Republican Senators agree that removing Trump is in the best interest of the country. Keep in mind that this is the same party that has supported Trump all the way and has been hesitant to even criticize him when he praised Nazis. The Mueller report would have to be one hell of a document to convince almost 20 Senators to yank the president from the White House — an act that, by the way, has never occurred in American history.
So why the hell are many progressives obsessing over impeachment like it’s going to rid of us of this menace? More likely, if Trump is impeached, he will come out of it even angrier and crazier.
Again, where is the end game in that?
Oh, in the highly unlikely event that Trump doesn’t finish his term, we all get President Pence.
So there’s that.
At some point, progressives are going to have to accept the fact that Trump is most likely going to be around until 2020, and the best we can do unit then is to limit his insanity and shame the GOP enough so that it never — and I mean, never — wins another presidency.
To be fair, who could have possibly known that a corrupt, venal, ruthless, cutthroat businessman would turn out to be a corrupt, vicious, conniving, disastrous president? I mean, what are the odds?
Certainly we can’t blame the white working class, who are still merrily chanting, “Lock her up” even as their mighty hero faces the most overwhelming legal trouble for a president since Nixon in the throes of Watergate.
And the Republican Party leadership could not possibly have foreseen that a man whose views were antithetical to their supposed values would break laws left and right in an amoral drive for power over principle, leaving them mute and impotent with their moral cowardice on display for all the world to see. Talk about a whoopsie.
Cleary, the question at this point is not, “Are there grounds to impeach Trump?”
The question is, “How do we choose which grounds to list in the articles of impeachment?”
Yes, it is odd that in this cavalcade of corruption, the silver lining for so many conservative media figures is that the word “Russia” has not been mentioned once.
But all this proves is that Trump has pulled so much horrible shit that we don’t even need to get into the Russia mess to verify that the man is a walking, talking personification of crime, unethical behavior, and grotesquery.
And believe me, we still have to get to the Russia mess at some point.
In any case, these are dark days for America’s favorite unindicted co-conspirator. If Democrats take the House in three months — likely but not a slam dunk — we can start betting on whether they will vote to impeach on the first day of the new Congress or sit back and let the orange menace sweat it out for a week or so.
Wow, it’s almost like an episode of some really bad reality television show — almost.
Now in its fourth century of existence, the United States of America has withstood the birth pangs of violent revolution, a bloody civil war, the enslavement of millions of its residents, the brutal forces of racism and xenophobia, the Great Depression, multiple recessions, the murder of some of its most brilliant leaders, two world wars, Vietnam, Iraq, and the September 11 attacks.
But you know what we can’t possibly endure? You know what would break our back and destroy the nation?
That would be the impeachment of Donald Trump.
Yes, according to many commentators, impeaching the lunatic of Pennsylvania Avenue would be bad for the country, even a “grave injustice.” And plenty of Trump supporters have threatened to “begin a second civil war in the U.S. if President Trump were impeached.”
Even our old friend Nancy Pelosi said “pushing Trump out of office would further ‘divide the country’ and suggested it could do more harm than good.”
Oh, I know that two other presidents have been impeached — one just a couple of decades ago. And nobody ever suggested that trying to remove Bill Clinton from office might result in America’s collapse. Although to be fair, that was all about a blowjob, which is far more of a crisis than silly things like selling out the nation to a homicidal dictator of a hostile country. I mean, it’s about priorities.
And I know that this nation has endured warfare, natural disasters, civil rights outrages, drug epidemics, economic collapses, rioting in the streets, and even the rise of disco (that one really stung). But clearly, we’re just fragile princesses when it comes to the strain of a Senate trail of the president.
It’s best to just avoid the whole thing and go about our business.
After all, we wouldn’t want to upset Trump’s hardcore supporters, who as we know, are a minority of the population, have had their every concern or insecurity elevated to national prominence, and are driven primarily by racism, hatred, fear, and ignorance. No, let’s just kowtow to them even more than we already have.
It’s just a good thing that we’re not implying that if a subsection of America threatens violence, we’ll all give in — oh wait, that’s exactly what we’re implying. Never mind.
Well, at least we’re not saying that corruption, incompetence, and neo-fascist tendencies would actually be rewarded, rather than punished, which is horrifying in both the present and because of its ramifications for future presidents. Check that — I guess we are saying that too.
And we’re certainly, most definitely not saying that all the talk about the rule of law, and the importance of checks and balances, and the sanctity of the Constitution, and the strength of America’s institutions, and the integrity of its very culture — all that is meaningless. Oops, wrong again — we are not just implying that but screeching it from the rooftops.
But still, whatever horrors the Mueller investigation uncovers, we should all just ignore them. Yes, only good things can come from denying reality and appeasing madmen.
The great state of Texas is underwater, and our president thinks that desperate, devastated Americans who have lost everything — maybe even a loved one — are coming out to cheer for him.
Unfortunately, this is not a surprise, coming from the sociopath in chief.
The previous non-shocker, of course, was Trump’s pardon of the infamous Joe Arpaio.
Now, there’s not much analysis I can add to the sorry spectacle of Trump’s shady, rushed act clemency that undermines the judicial system, upends presidential tradition, and shows contempt for both the Constitution and the very concept of law and order (which is supposedly a GOP value).
Because while Republicans play their usual song and dance about being outraged but doing nothing, the rest of us wonder if this a is a test run to undermine the Russia investigation.
At the very least, we all know that this is another example of Trump’s authoritarian tactics.
It might even be an impeachable offense (a phrase that has been ascribed to Trump’s behavior so often that I have lost track of his potentially criminal actions).
Furthermore, we know that Trump’s pardon sends a clear message to bigoted cops and prejudiced government officials everywhere that there are no — as in zero — consequences for even the most xenophobic and oppressive behavior.
We also know that Arpaio isn’t just a middling bigot, but is in fact “viciously racist” on a level we haven’t seen in public officials since the Civil Rights Era.
And finally, we know that Arpaio — in addition to being a hate-filled racist and scourge to Latinos everywhere — is also an incompetent cop and flat-out evil man.
So what do I have to add to the discussion?
Nothing, really. I just want to make sure that everybody is aware of all of the above.
And if you still support Trump, think about the company you keep.
Well, yes, if one is a black-hearted egotist whose only concern is keeping a clammy, slippery grasp on power. In that case, it can be quite difficult.
As we all know, our straight-talkin’, tell-it-like-it-is president was unusually quiet last weekend, when fascists, racists, and violent thugs descended upon Charlottesville. The man who tweets every umbrage or perceived slight had nothing to say when the KKK started throwing punches, and white supremacists chanted Hitler-era slogans.
He then came out with a baffling, condescending condemnation of “both sides” of the violence. I suppose he was trying to be fair to both homicidal bigots driving their cars into people, and the demonstrators who should be blamed for… well, I don’t know what — perhaps for violently putting dents in the car or cracking its windshield when the vehicle plowed into them. Yeah, both sides are clearly to blame.
Of course, Trump did eventually come out against white supremacy, which proves that he will indeed take a moral position — provided that both sides of the political spectrum, millions of Americans, and every half-respectable media outlet scream at him for days to denounce fucking Nazis, which let’s face it, is the absolute minimum qualification for being considered a decent human being. But hey, he did it, right?
No, because he changed his mind the next day and went back to equating sign-carrying liberals with deranged Nazis who murder people, setting off a shitstorm of outrage and disbelief. So there was that.
Now, there are only three possible motivations for Trump’s false-equivalency nonsense:
He is an impulsive man-child who lashes out at others even if it is detrimental to his own cause.
Some dark part of his soul — perhaps a bigger part than his followers would like to admit — agrees with the white supremacists.
He is a chickenshit politician who is scared of offending his base, which is ironic when one considers that he is supposedly the anti-politician who is not afraid to speak his mind.
All three of these options are terrifying. In all three scenarios, the guy who is the face of America, and its political and even moral leader, has abdicated his responsibility (and possibly his humanity) so that hate-filled men shouting anti-Semitic slurs can feel good about themselves.
Of course, it’s perfectly obvious to me that someone should have told the president that the fascists in Virginia had mocked his tiny hands, or pointed out his dismal approval ratings, or brought up his disastrous leadership skills. If that had happened, he would have lacerated those bastards in a furious speech before they could finish saying, “Seig Heil.” But that didn’t happen, and now we have to wonder about the following:
I don’t mean that in the political sense. We all know the gutless GOP will not turn on Trump unless and until he has outlived his usefulness to them. Otherwise, they will just keep apologizing for his maniacal outbursts and ugly tirades, or looking the other way, or somehow coming up with a twisted rationale for it (like, “liberals made this happen”). Hey, I guess it helps them sleep at night.
No, I’m talking about a cultural turning point.
After all, there can no longer be any doubt — if there ever was — about the kind of man Trump is (i.e., the kind who coddles Nazis). There could not be a clearer contrast between his delayed scripted words of false comfort and his spontaneous, appalling endorsement of racism.
Similarly, those who have excused his abhorrent behavior to this point have finally run into a non-negotiable, unambiguous, swastika-shaped look into his loathsome mind. Any defense of his stance goes beyond the usual pathetic, infuriating, illogical, baffling excuses that Trump supporters have offered for other transgressions (and there have been a lot of them).
This is so sickening, so reprehensible, so concrete in its evil that it threatens to permanently brand anyone who defends it as either a spineless coward or a sociopathic villain.
Witness that prominent conservatives, corporate CEOs, and military leaders are all blasting Trump. These are hardly liberal snowflakes getting riled up by fake news.
So it’s fair to ask if this is Trump’s Katrina moment. Could this be the final outrage that pushes his casual supporters over the edge and solidifies his calamitous reputation?
Already, a majority of Americans — not just progressives, but most of the country — is aghast at their president’s unhinged craziness. A full 40 percent want his impeachment.
Those numbers will only increase. The sense of disgust will only snowball. And because Trump burned up so much good will mere months into his presidency, it is difficult to imagine the trend ever reversing.
For Trump supporters, after this point, there is no turning back. Which of them wants to be the last deplorable standing, waving his Make America Great Again hat around as the rest of the nation looks away in shame and horror?
Bigger questions (e.g., how much did they collude, what info did they gain, did this info sway the election, etc) are the next frontier in this never-ending freak show of incompetence, corruption, hubris, and possible treason.
It is no longer liberal paranoia to ask about impeachment, or the 25th Amendment. At the very least, all patriotic Americans should be demanding answers and an end to blatant lies spewing from the White House.
But of course, that is not happening.
Instead, conservatives are telling us that working with a hostile government to undermine democracy and then covering it up, while distasteful, is not as bad as, say, lying about a blowjob. Or they are telling us that collusion is actually a good thing.
Hey, many Trump supporters insist that Jr’s meeting with the Russians never happened — despite the fact that he admitted it.
“It’s time to move on,” the White House has been saying for a couple of months now, and many of your friends on Facebook no doubt have said the same thing.
Yes, it is indeed strange how the crowd that still wants Hilary Clinton thrown in jail is very eager to let bygones be bygones when it comes to Russian hacking. And speaking of the former presidential candidate, we all know the outcome of her email fiasco. No charges were brought against Clinton, and while you may not have agreed with that conclusion, it was clearly the result of a thorough investigation that came to a definitive end. It wasn’t the result of some benign collective urge to “just let it go.”
No, my GOP friends, you don’t get to tell us that it is time to move on. We have to stay on this to the bitter — and I do mean, bitter — end, regardless of where it leads us.
Of course, you may think that the latest avalanche of disturbing facts is still not grounds for impeachment, or even for criminal charges. I do not agree, but we can have a civilized debate about this.
But to imply that the Trump/Russian collusion is no big deal, to insist that nobody in the Trump administration has done anything the slightest bit shady, to say it’s all a media conspiracy… well, that’s just grotesque hypocrisy and flat-out unpatriotic.
