Trump proves my point
In my last post, I noted that, thanks to the ascension of Donald Trump and the Trumpists, it is no longer possible to say with ease which of America’s two major parties would be more likely to instigate violent social upheaval to achieve its ends. Within twenty-four hours of that musing, Trump caused a new stir on Twitter by invoking the specter of civil war, and directly suggesting that Democrat Adam Schiff should be arrested for treason because he misrepresented Trump’s Ukrainian phone call in Congress.
Think about that. Trump, the man who controls the Department of Justice, is using his bully pulpit to accuse a political opponent of a death sentence crime, and none-too-subtly implying he could and might initiate a federal investigation of that opponent aimed at arresting him and charging him with this death sentence crime.
As usual, Trump’s media and “grassroots” idolaters are defending this appalling assault on representative government and even enjoying their god’s great power in using such “tough” language. And as usual, it is left to me, along with about five other people who haven’t sold their minds to greed, hero worship, and power lust, to point out that Trump’s words indicate exactly the opposite of toughness. They reveal cowardice, or more precisely Trump’s mortal dread that this impeachment talk might actually go somewhere and harm him.
His invocation of civil war is in line with my explanation of his rhetoric in my previous post: He is begging for protection from his cult, because he lacks the nerve or intelligence to fight his own battles. His invocation of treason shows just how deeply scared he is at this moment.
This is not a man who should be anywhere near political power, simply because this is not a man at all.
Happily, one of the five holdouts I mentioned above, namely Patterico, a victim of Red State’s Trump Cult Purge who now writes exclusively for his own blog, makes a very sensible case that for just this action alone — threatening an opponent with a treason arrest from the position of President of the United States — Trump needs to be removed from office.
Trump’s threat to have Adam Schiff investigated for treason is impeachable all by itself, but the threat is also part of a larger pattern of Trump’s view of criminal law as nothing but another tool he can use to protect himself and threaten his enemies. There are too many examples to cite them all: threatening Michael Cohen’s father with an investigation; expecting Jeff Sessions to un-recuse and exonerate him out of personal loyalty; asking the FBI director to drop an investigation of one of his former campaign and White House officials; asking a foreign leader to criminally investigate a likely political opponent; dangling pardons in front of potential witnesses against him; ordering subordinates to fire a prosecutor investigating his own wrongdoing. Donald Trump sees law enforcement as a collection of henchmen there to serve his personal partisan political interests. That’s not what they are there to do, and we can’t continue to have someone running federal law enforcement who sees the Department of Justice as his personal hit men.
In short, Donald Trump has the mind and character of a two-bit dictator, and becomes utterly unhinged in the face of challenges to his ego or competence. Moreover, he has millions of cult followers prepared to act on his words, or at least to parrot them in a manner that undermines civility and the rule of law, not to mention the rule of reason.
A final note. Patterico, in an addendum to his own well-reasoned post linked above, notes the following:
But every day I listen to the voices of people like Mark Levin or Stephen Miller, who both went on tirades over the weekend, and all I can think is: I despise these people. And every word out of their mouths sounds like insane and ridiculous twaddle. I don’t think I’ve definitively said until today that this guy has to go, but I have reached a breaking point with the tweet about Schiff. No doubt several more “friends” will flounce and shun me as a result. This is me shrugging my shoulders. Now about my kitchen…
This is what courage and manhood look like, although Trump and his millions of trained chimps, from Ted Cruz on down (or up, depending on how you look at it), have now redefined blind sycophancy and obsequious self-diminution as the heights of virtue, because they essentially agree with their master’s implied definition of human nature as the search for personal popularity and gratification. As for Mark Levin and the rest of the fake conservative media peddler men, who spent years drawing millions to their so-called message only to throw those people and their hopes under Mitch McConnell’s orange bus for the sake of their bank accounts, they can all take a long walk off a short pier.
