Monday, September 30, 2019

Trump is guilty of “treason” against democracy, and so are his defenders



In the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate, a Joseph McCarthy-like, red-baiting senator was sitting at the dinner table with his wife bemoaning the fact that he looked ridiculous not settling on a figure he should give out concerning the number of communists in the Defense Department; the number they settled on  was on the label of a bottle of ketchup. The senator, as it turned out, was a weakling who was being used by his wife, who was working for a foreign entity in order undermine democracy in this country. Not only that, but she was willing to sacrifice her own son to the “cause,” after he had been brainwashed by the foreign entity in order to carry-out the assassination of a presidential nominee, whose running mate happened to be her husband. 

We might not see that exact scenario being played out today, but certainly many of the elements are. We have a president apparently working with at least one foreign entity to undermine democracy in this country. We have right-wing conspiracy theorists inventing “facts” whole cloth to suit a narrative. We have a president willing to use as sacrificial lambs his supporters and aids who choose to be brainwashed by their own hate to help him achieve his nefarious ends. And we have a president willing to sacrifice the whole country for his own idea of his power, which appears to be in conformance with the anti-democratic dictators he so admires. 

It is bad enough that Trump has gone completely off the rails in his smear campaigns in the last few days, but Trump defenders like Sen. Lindsey Graham, Rep. Jim Jordan, Stephen Miller and the like have taken to the air and cableways to spout absolute nonsense that can easily be disputed; one has to admire the refusal of Fox News' Chris Wallace to allow Miller to obfuscate the issues. Trump had been told by his own aids that there was no evidence of wrong-doing by Joe Biden and Hunter Biden in the Ukraine, and that country’s former chief prosecutor told the BBC that there was no case to investigate them. Yet Trump has decided—as he was taught by former McCarthy and personal counsel Roy Cohn—that the best “defense” is to shout out absurdities and lies so loud that listeners spend more time debating his inanities than the actual facts. To this purpose, fanatics like anti-immigrant impresario Miller and mindless pit bull Jordan have made fools of themselves trying to conceal from view Trump’s crimes by engaging in what John Oliver derisively referred to as right’s frequent resort to “whataboutism.” Trump, who despite the Mueller investigation finding that Russia did interfere with the 2016 election on his behalf, has been confounding national security advisors who have tried and failed to convince him that there is no evidence that the Ukrainians were the “real” culprits, naturally to help Hillary Clinton. 

Trump’s demand that Rep. Adam Schiff resign and be investigated at the “highest level” for paraphrasing the phone call he made to the Ukrainian president is typical of Trump’s lack of a sense of proportionality. Late night talk show hosts have been having a field day deriding Trump’s repeated claim that his phone call was “perfect,” which of course is part of Trump’s personal narrative that everything he does is “great.” The problem for Trump is that there is plenty of audio-visual evidence of his rambling, often incoherent speech when forced to provide details to explain his policy decisions, and his phone call was apparently whittled down by his lawyers for reasons of “coherence”—likely meaning that Schiff’s version of the conversation was probably closer to its basic “essence.” After all, we can all “add,” can’t we? A few days before the phone call, Trump put a hold on assistance to the Ukraine, and then he requests assistance for investigating his political enemies. Trump defenders keep saying that there technically was no “quid pro quo” here, but there is every indication that it was implied. We’d have to assume that no compromising statements were deleted from the rough transcript of Trump’s “perfect” call, and past evidence suggests we have no reason to believe that. We’d also have to assume that the Ukraine’s president was too hollow-headed to see the connection between the withholding of aid and the “request” that he investigate the Bidens. 

The phone call came right after Robert Mueller’s testimony, which was again trumpeted by Trump supporters as “proof” he didn’t collude with Russia, which apparently led to in Trump’s mind the idea that he is immune from consequence—and like the concept of obstruction, “colluding” with a foreign entity out in the open was the obvious next step in testing whether the Constitution means anything at all to Trump supporters. Trump had already insisted that he would “listen” to dirt from a foreign entity on a political rival, which is by definition “collusion,” and the Ukrainian call could certainly be looked upon in that way. Trump, Rudy Giuliani and William Barr have claimed up and down that Russian collusion was “fake,” but they can’t have it both ways. Trump and Giuliani have all but openly admitted to collusion with the Ukraine; there is no reason to disbelieve Trump and his associates attempted to collude with Russians in “secret.”

And if the call itself wasn’t enough to induce impeachment proceedings and public opinion against Trump, then what he has done since only confirms his unfitness to be president. He has called for an investigation into the identity and punishment of the whistleblower, an illegal act. He has called the whistleblower and those who provided him with information “spies” and “traitors”—even suggesting that they should be dealt with the “old” way, meaning execution. And now he tweets out a quote from a Texas megachurch pastor and one of his staunchest supporters, Robert Jeffress—who claims that Christians who do not support Trump are the next thing to devil worshippers—that impeaching the president, let alone criticizing him at all, would cause a “Civil War-like fracture.” That is where Trump has led us, not just giving “mainstream” voice to the most dangerous elements in this country, but offering his support for views that advocate just short of violence. But as we saw in the El Paso massacre, it only takes one fanatic willing to take the next step over the line to turn the rhetoric of implied violence into action. 

All this and more only underlines the fact that Trump only sees the world within his own narrow sphere of existence. When he says “America First,” how does that square with his secret dealings with foreign leaders—particularly those who are essentially dictators—to undermine American democracy? People are not as stupid as he thinks, at least those outside his “base.” Every indication is that Trump’s “America first” initiatives have weakened the country. Why do you think that Chinese negotiators have suddenly decided to stop by in a few weeks to make a trade “deal”? Because they know that in his weakened political state, Trump is willing to call anything that says “agreement” a “victory.” The bottom line is that Trump is willing to destroy what makes America “great” for his own perceived “benefit.” If anyone is guilty of “treason” against this country, it is Trump and his enablers. The sooner he is out of office, the greater the likelihood this country becomes “great” again.

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