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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