Things are better than I’ve been thinking lately.
Lately, my thinking has focused a lot on the idea that Donald Trump has defeated “the rule of law” in a way altogether unprecedented in American history. Neither the Mueller Report nor an Impeachment has succeeded in stripping this lawless President of his powers, despite his demonstrating almost complete indifference to the law, despite his clear willingness to do anything that serves his interest, no matter the cost to the nation.
Since the impeachment trial, Trump has been acting like he understands he’s defeated the forces of the law, acting as though he’s convinced that he can get away with anything. Feeling invincible, Trump has dramatized more blatantly than ever — through a sequence of ugly actions -- the darkness of his character:
like vindictively firing Col. Vindman for doing his duty, like ranting against Jesus’s teachings about loving your enemies at the National Prayer Breakfast, and like nakedly wielding the Justice Department to hurt his enemies and help his buddies like Roger Stone.(Trump shows that he doesn’t care a whit about legal vs. illegal. All that matters if “for me” or “against me.”)
We’ve seen now more than once that the more he feels unleashed, the more vividly he shows he’s the very worst kind of person—vengeful, contemptuous of any display of integrity (like calling into question Romney’s religious sincerity) and, as always, lying about everything of consequence. Trump displays the evils of his nature with even greater clarity than before.
But the good news is that the side that lost in the impeachment is not done fighting. That one battle was lost, but the forces that would defend American democracy — like much of the Press, like the House Democrats — have shown that they are not defeated. They’ve shown it by the powerful way they have arisen again to denounce Trump over this whole naked Roger Stone play.
Trump may have defeated the efforts of “the rule of law” to protect the nation from this would-be dictator, but there remains the upcoming election, as the last-ditch way that the powers of the presidency can be taken out of Trump’s dangerously corrupt hands. And denunciation of Trump’s ugly and clearly corrupt actions is an apt way to focus the battle on public opinion in this election year.
We still have a free society where we are allowed to shout our message to knock over an evil force. And so I am encouraged to see how they/we are going after Trump with a level of passion undiminished by defeat.
Come to think of it, we long knew that the Republicans in the Senate were too morally bankrupt for impeachment to succeed, despite the overwhelming strength of the case against Trump. The impeachment process was nonetheless required as a way of standing up for the necessity of defending and protecting the Constitution. And it was required, too, as a way of doing the work of getting as many Americans as possible to see this President for the monster he’s now still more nakedly showing us that he is.
That work of exposing the evil now continues, in the hope of getting a big majority to vote to get the powers of the Presidency out of this would-be-tyrant’s hands.
Trump must be defeated at the polls next November in order to avert a national disaster of the first magnitude.
Donald Trump has shown us what he’ll be when he feels invincible. Can you imagine how much more he might unleash his darkness (his power-lusting, his vengefulness, his cruelty) if he passes that last barrier in the constitutional order, if the people fail to remove this man from power? Any reasonable envisioning of what all he might do over that four-year period — and that is optimistically assuming that he wouldn’t reach for that “president-for-life” status he often “jokes” about — must say that there is a capacity for enormous damage.
All of which means the election is a battle that must be won. Which means that the central task of this moment is to move as many Americans as possible to want him out of office.
Which is why, to me, it is a most welcome sign that the side that lost the impeachment is out there speaking boldly to the nation about the ugliness and the threat to American democracy this emboldened Trump is displaying.
Prosecutors resigning in protest, calls for the resignation of the President’s bag man pretending to be an American Attorney General, headlines of a Tuesday-night Massacre, etc. — all cries to the American people to overturn the corrupt verdict in the impeachment trial and, on this coming Election Day, to take power out of the hands of this most destructive President.