The investigation may not result in articles of impeachment being drafted. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been careful not to go off half-cocked so far and it’s unlikely the House will actually impeach unless they can be absolutely certain. But that’s hardly the point.
Impeachment would be followed by a trial in the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans and led by a Trump troll in the form of Mitch McConnell. Does anyone seriously think they would convict? It’s not going to happen.
Trump is not without his critics in the Republican party but as the old saying goes, Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line. One of the most vocal Republican opponents of Trump during the election campaign was Lindsay Graham, who is now one of the president’s chief apologists.
The fact is if ‘Grab ’em by the pussy,’ didn’t end Trump’s political career, nothing will. The one great service Donald Trump has done America is to expose what a bunch of shameless hypocrites many Republicans and their supporters are. They maintained plausible deniability for over 50 years but it was Trump who proved beyond reasonable doubt that all their talk about character, faith and family values was a load of bunkum designed to use Christian conservatives as useful idiots.
When the tape of Trump uttering those vile words and far worse was broadcast, his supporters rationalised it by saying the US elects a president, not a Pope. It would be a fair argument if the same people hadn’t clutched their pearls so over Bill Clinton’s infidelity.
The same people who continue to search for any excuse to charge Barack Obama with treason, have no problem with Trump publically begging Russia to hack the State Department, appeasing an unstable dictator with newly acquired nuclear weapons, or inviting the leadership of the Taliban to Camp David on the eve of the September 11 anniversary. It’s not that negotiating for peace is a bad thing. It’s ultimately quite sensible. But you know Republicans would have demanded Obama’s head on a platter for any one of those things.
Despite talking tough on Twitter and at incredibly disturbing rallies, Trump has shown he doesn’t really have the stomach to order military action. Again, this isn’t such a bad thing. A president should not treat America’s military like toy soldiers. But after attacking every Democrat since Carter for being wimps when it comes to sending the marines at the drop of a hat, Republicans suddenly see strength in avoiding war. They don’t really of course. They see strength in backing Trump no matter what.
The same people who reached for the smelling salts when Obama used the word ‘hell’ as an expletive, were happy to shrug off Trump’s ‘shithole countries’ comment. “He uses the language of the common man,” they said. In fact, the biggest change I have seen in America under Trump’s presidency (apart from people no longer being ashamed of wearing or carrying swastikas) is the fact that news channels no longer bleep out the word ‘shit.’
It’s pointless to expect any kind of moral consistency from Republicans because they have none. And that’s why impeachment proceedings will probably go nowhere. It’s not that they don’t know Trump is a corrupt idiot, they just don’t care.
A large portion of Americans, and fellow travellers internationally, would happily watch the world burn so long as the guy who flicks the match yells, “AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!” as he does it, and it upsets leftists
(which these days can be described as anyone more progressive than Mussolini).
These people are enabled by another large section of the population which expresses its disillusion in the imperfection of alternative candidates in the form of not voting. And how’s that working out for you?
This is not a fit environment for common sense to prevail. If intellectual, ideological or moral consistency mattered a damn, Trump would never have made it past the first primary.
The truest thing Trump ever said was, “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” I don’t see impeachment going anywhere. It’s not that he isn’t a liar, a phoney, incompetent, and probably a traitor. It’s just that half the county doesn’t give a fuck.
Both sides think so little of themselves that they vote for someone who they think is good enough to rule over them.
ReplyDelete"The measure of the state's success is that the word anarchy frightens people, while the word state does not." - Joseph Sobran
100%
ReplyDeleteWhich is why I think all this hand wringing about outcomes is beyond ludicrous. The people who pretend this is anything but a binary choice are delusional. Pick a side because history will be the judge and neutrality is complicity.
As Chris Hedges says, "I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists."