Scales of justice teetering all one way
Thunk, thunk, thunk, is the sound of Donald Trump throwing shovelfuls of partisan excrement on one side of the sagging scales of justice within a crumbling system of governance. In one week he has named a blatantly partisan operative of the political right wing to the position of Acting Attorney General—without even bothering to give lip service to the obligation to get Senate confirmation—and gone on to deny the legitimacy of elections in places where the sole source of grievance is that the President’s allies may lose to Democrats.
Talk of impeachment is now much in the air, with pundits parsing the meaning of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” to be invoked in the case of impeaching a U.S. President. Here’s the wording of the impeachment clause in the U.S. Constitution: “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
Does repeatedly calling into question the legitimacy of elections and disrupting the impartial rule of law add up to “high“ crimes and misdemeanors? If not technically crimes, then activities so damaging to vital institutions that they effectively sum to treason? Is there a level at which a slowly mounting pile of violations of rules and norms crosses a bar into “high”—or, are the Trumpian acts of malfeasance of such a lowly nature they could never reach a level where politicians of the President’s party, inured to increasingly appalling misbehavior, would cry out “enough?”
Keep in mind that, no matter how flagrant Trump’s chipping away at the Constitution becomes, to remove him from office requires not only impeachment by the House, but also conviction by 2/3rds of the Senate—a Senate which is now majority Republican no matter what the outcome between Scott and Nelson in Florida.
We might have a glimmer of expectation for Senate Republicans to stand up to Trump, were it not for the fact that even now, with barely a murmur of protest, they are accepting right-wing stooge Matthew Whitaker’s takeover of the Justice Department without so much as a committee hearing. In other words, instead of standing up to Trump, they are bending over to have him—pardon my crudity, but I am in much of a lather—ram a shaft up their collective rectum, while the rest of us shudder in disgust.
An accumulation of low quasi-crimes and misdemeanors that have already reached a critical mass, while logically disqualifying in the eyes of many of us, are not enough to bring this president to account. The high crimes and misdemeanors that are lurking in the shadows must be drawn out into daylight in order to put a stop to a criminal enterprise.
Elections, schmelections
Another theme popular with pundits is that the proper remedy for Trump’s assault upon the Constitution is not impeachment, but the 2020 election. Hmm. Two problems: (1) last I checked, the 2020 election is still two years away, and (2) the installation of whoever then gets elected President is still another two months after that.
A third problem sobering to contemplate: flat defiance of an election outcome.
A lot can happen in twenty-six months, while President Trump continues daily to assail small-d democratic institutions, people, and processes, as fake and fraudulent whenever and wherever they challenge his authoritarian bent. He has gone so far as to demand nullifying elections in Arizona, Florida, and Georgia, should they go for Democrats. (Fortunately, Martha McSally in Arizona has now conceded the Senate win to Kyrsten Sinema, upholding the legitimacy of that election in contravention to Trump.) He flings about the most preposterous allegations of cheating —such as, that Florida Senator Bill Nelson advocated giving illegal aliens the vote. Did Trump actually believe that Bill Nelson would commit political suicide? But such is Trump’s fury against his actual enemies and perceived enemies, that once he is crossed, logic flies completely out the window.
During those twenty-six months, Trump will work invariably to delegitimize all processes—legislation, judicial decisions, investigations, political movements, and elections—that undercut his power. While he does so, his base, feeling they are under siege now that Democrats have taken the House, will cling all the more fiercely to him. Those members of his own party who have the power to check him, if recent history is to be any guide, will refuse to do so. And so, unbounded and intensified by his followers messianic faith, his paranoia and dictatorial impulses will grow.
Meanwhile, the Russian efforts to undermine Western democracies will continue. Gone temporarily underground, giving the American public a false sense of complacency, they will return in virulence in 2020, metastasizing across social media in a redoubled onslaught. Depend upon it—Vladimir Putin has been feeling out weaknesses in our system, steadily widening the wounds in the American body politic, exploiting the ham-handedness of the administration’s foreign policy to put more distance between us and our allies, leaving both the weaker. Russian operatives are now in research mode, analogous to intelligence gathering prior to open hostilities in a war. In 2020, these developments will come to a head in the U.S. elections. Both internal and external enemies of a legitimate U.S. government, sensing weakness, will go all in. If our enemies are clever enough, we may not know the extent of it until it is too late.
Worst case: power grids and/or communications networks get taken down. Enemy action is not necessary for such an occurrence: a hefty coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun could accomplish this “naturally.” Trump’s authoritarian tendencies, coupled with his ineptitude at administration, portend complete disaster in such an event. If cooler heads do not prevail, the country could fall apart in a matter of days, along with a bunch of other countries. For the sake of argument, let’s set aside this scenario for the near future, although the probability of a CME will not decrease by our wishing it so.
What’s the end game?
One end game possibility is, that if the 2020 Presidential election goes against Trump, he will declare that the election is rigged and may refuse to leave office. If he has during the intervening time managed to fend off the investigations that could reveal the full extent of his criminality, his base sticks unthinkingly with him, and Senate Republicans continue to give him free rein, all bets are off. Ultimately, it may take a military coup to oust him, and the Constitution will be stretched on a rack. Do I exaggerate? I certainly hope so.
Alternatively, the Democratic Party in the House, beginning in January 2019, will reject his hollow offer to work with them on legislation only if they decline to investigate him, his administration, and the swamp creatures that infest it. House Democrats will go after him full bore with every committee that has oversight, in every sordid corner of his operation. The aim should be first, to expose corruption and wrongdoing from the head on down, and second, to pursue the impeachment which should naturally flow from such exposure. In this there should be no compromise. Since Obama was first elected, Republicans have shown the effectiveness of not compromising when the chips are down, and their model should be used to benefit Democrats for a change. At the very least, impeachment proceedings would throw Trump far off his game, even if conviction fails in the Senate, and Republican efforts to obstruct proceedings would openly reveal them to be the enablers of criminality that they are.
It would be wise for the House leadership to downplay a drive toward impeachment, even while it is tacitly the goal. No use giving the right wing an opportunity to claim that all the Democrats want to do is bring Trump down. It makes sense to go through the motions of collaborating with the President, even if everyone other than the most gullible Trump supporters know very well that he will yank the rug out from under any collaboration if Congressional investigations draw the least pinprick of blood.
A nightmare to end all nightmares? Not hardly.
All the while the necessary political fights will be fought, ecological degradation in the shape of climate change, ocean acidification, and habitat destruction, will continue apace in the background. The poor of the world will suffer the most. These developments need to be brought into the foreground, but there’s no solving these problems if political upheaval cannot be stilled. If we succeed in ending the political nightmares of the next few years, the deeper nightmares that may ensue from environmental inaction will make the Trump presidency look like just another hard gust in a hurricane.