Democracy At The Brink

Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post joins Charles Pierce of Esquire in calling out the fact that we are deep into a Constitutional crisis:

Robinson points out that in response to Trump’s absurd, but chilling, “I hereby demand” tweet that the Justice Department manufacture an investigation to to discredit the investigation underway against him and attack his political rivals,

After walking through Trump’s lies and the rightwing’s eager peddling of them, Robinson concludes,

And Pierce observes that The New York Times’s nearly mind-boggling reporting on the Trump/Nader/Broidy/Prince/Qatar/Kushner/UAE/Saudi scheme gives ample reason to believe that the Trump administration

Yet, in the face of what ought to be an on-all-hands-on-deck scramble among the Congress and others sworn to defend the Constitution to put a stop Trump’s apparent trading of our national security to enrich himself and his family, with a grotesque cast of illicit international and shady domestic characters at the ready to facilitate not only a giant grift on the American public but in essence the destruction of our system of government itself, we have a Republican Party that is eagerly assisting in the demise of self-rule in exchange for tax cuts and self-enrichment (a more charitable view might be that they are so knee-capped with fear over losing the mid-terms that they are willing to sacrifice the country itself):

And lat night, a friend noted to me in a private email hat the rightwing’s systematic sabotage and undermining of Mueller (a lifelong Republican), the FBI (deeply conservative, chock full of Republicans, and helmed by Trump’s Republican appointee), the DOJ (led by Trump appointees, rightwinger Jeff Sessions, and Republican Rod Rosenstein as his deputy), and any employees thereof who have not ignored their oaths of office, has already had such a negative impact on public perception of the Russia investigation that it’s almost a worse threat to Constitutional democracy than a Saturday Night Massacre to remove Mueller would be.

I agree with all of this.

As the news becomes overwhelming that the Trump White House is a de facto criminal grfiting enterprise for him and his family, open to bribery by foreign bidders through an international network riddled with brazen corruption, Republican loyalists, both those who are glued to Fox and worse, and their elected representatives in Congress, are simply rejecting the news entirely. They refuse to believe what is in front of their eyes, choosing instead to push Trump’s democracy-busting lies and demands, latching on to Hannity’s conspiriacies, smears, and falsehoods, and in the process, rejecting democracy itself.

That’s what has been slowly happening since the campaign. We’ve all known it. We’ve watched it in both super-slowed-down and hyper-fast real time; we knew it when that Trump voter was willing to say on the record in The New York Times (or maybe it was TV or WaPo; I can’t remember) that if it took Vladmir Putin to beat HIllary Clinton, he was just fine with it. Destroying Hillary Clinton and installing Donald Trump was more important than 250 years of democratic government and the Constitution. That guy wasn’t an outlier; he was the norm.

And this is happening not out of nowhere; it is the result of successful Republican strategy and messaging. They are out there every day pounding Trump’s message and lies, and even the mainstream media doing such great reporting exposing him and his family and cronies unwittingly assist him. They assist him by referring to Trump’s orchestrated attacks on our system of government and on the FBI and the DOJ and government employees and the judiciary and even his own appointees as his “beliefs” or his “skepticism” about the investigation. In other words, their language gives him the benefit of the doubt, and assumes he in fact has skepticism and in fact “believes” the investigation is without premise, merely because he says so. There is no basis whatsoever to report that Trump “believes” the Mueller invstigation is a “witch hunt.” He has run a non-stop campaign to discredit the investigation precisely because he and his loyalitsts know is not a witch hunt. The man who has lied dozens of times that he and his campaign had nothing to do with Russia, the man whose campaign manager is now indicted along with a host of others, chafes precisely because the investigation and the reporting are exposing his web of corruption and criminality.

While these journalistic failures — the unwitting adoption of the Trump narrative they are trying to debunk — subtly take their toll and help erode confidence in our institutions, there is no question that the blame lies squarely with Trump and his family, Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, every Trump cabinet member, Don McGahn, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Kellyann Conway, John Kelly, and every despicable Republican in Congress who is letting this happen. Every day that they support and amplify, or do not push back on, Trump’s attacks on our system of government, every minute they help discredit these investigations, they push us further toward our system’s destruction. Trump is ensuring that no matter what Mueller does or finds, there will not be support among Republicans to reinstate the rule of law, hold him to account, or protect our country from foreign influence. Every day Ryan supports Nunes’ unprecedented interference with and undermining of the investigation and the DOJ, he contributes to its delegitimization and its demise.

Republican voters won’t support Mueller’s results because every day they are told the investigation is a frame-up and that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are the problem. And without Republican leaders willing to push back on this false narrative, it goes unchallenged in their epistemicly closed loop of self-reinforcing conspiracy feedback, and the truth is labeled as the fiction of Democrats, a hoax. Trump and the GOP thus together are ensuring that no matter how strong the proof of Trump’s abuse of power, misuse of office, Constitutional violations, and likely criminality, his base will either not believe it, or even if they do, they won’t care. The Republican electeds plainly do not care, either. If they did they would be in Trump’s office pushing for his resignation and actively educating the Republican base in how our system of government is supposed to work. That they are not doing that, that instead they are colluding to permit Trump’s unspeakable corruption and betrayal of our country to continue, tells you that we are deep into the Constitutional crisis already.

The lines are drawn. Are you on the side of our country, or Donald Trump? Because you really can’t be both at this point. Trump and his party stand squarely in opposition to fundamental principles of Constitutional government and adherence to the law. It’s really that stark and that simple. It’s time to choose. And what’s terrifying is that many will choose Trump over democracy. They already have.

Related posts:

Certain tasks within Laravel’s Eloquent ORM can become very repetitive and tedious within larger applications.There’s a lot of semi-hidden functions and less-known ways to achieve more with it. In…

Our guest for this podcast is Ranjeet Sodhi, Co-Founder and CEO of Vault, a USD-pegged stablecoin backed by and redeemable for LBMA gold and USD. This interview is <25 minutes long, feel free to…

It seems that the wealth gap between the average person and the billionaires of the world is growing every day. In 2020 the wealth of the world’s richest people grew by over 20% on average. Elon…