Is there a line that Republicans won’t cross? If there is one, it must be drawn with invisible ink

 

For most people there is a “line” of behavior they won’t cross. People know, for example, that murder is something that could land you in jail for a long time—maybe even death row—so you don’t even think about doing it, and look with disgust upon those who do commit the deed. But there are some people—say, gang members in inner cities—for whom the only “line” that can’t be crossed is the one marked “respect.” They know that once this “line” is crossed, they can get away with killing someone because there is a “code” that says that if you are a “snitch,” you will be killed too. Thus more than 25 years on, rapper Tupac Shakur’s murder remains “unsolved.”

Of course we can surmise that Vladimir Putin has an ego that is susceptible to feelings of being “disrespected,” particularly in regard to the way his war in Ukraine in going. Even if Ukraine eventually loses the war, so much damage will be done to Russia’s economy and military hardware that it will be weakened as a threat to the West for decades to come. Putin only has himself to blame for the “disrespect” he is feeling; the question now is what “lines” have to be crossed before he uses nuclear weapons, or if there is a line he personally won’t cross, that is to say actually deploying nuclear weapons.

That leads us to that murky question of whether there are any “lines” that Donald Trump supporters in the Republican Party (and to be frank, than means almost all of them in the House of Representatives) won’t cross, since the January 6 insurrection certainly wasn’t one of them after being given time to “collect” their “thoughts” and come up with self-rationalizations for continuing to support Trump and Trumpism/fascism.

Confronted with the mounting evidence, many Republicans (principally those who have tied their very existence to Trump), have resorted to “whataboutisms” that have no relation to the problem at hand, only a pathetic way to draw attention away from their crimes against democracy and civilization. Oh, you’re telling me that the January 6 insurrection was an example of “civilized” behavior?

But finally, like with Putin, it comes down to Trump and his “win at all costs” concept of “respect.” Trump behaves neither "presidential" nor with dignity, and his supporters actually like that because that puts him  more on their "level." Self-respect is something Trump lacks, yet he demands "respect" from others, which he seems unwilling to give in return.

In truth Trump is like both a dictator and a gangster when it comes to “respect.”  Trump can’t be crossed on any of his fixations or delusions of grandeur; when he can’t bully someone to get his way or convince someone of his magnificence, he will seek to destroy the person who won’t bow before his eminence and do as he commands, however unlawful it probably is. William Barr’s testimony that there was no election fraud in 2020 is one thing, and he can be easily “cancelled” from Trumpworld.

However, it is a whole new ballgame when his own favorite child, Ivanka, is “disrespectful” of daddy. She testified before the January 6 committee that she also believed that there was no election fraud, which must have set a wildfire inside of Trump. This was “disrespect” of the highest magnitude, but we can surmise that Ivanka has her own self-respect to consider, and a life to live and friends to keep, rather than continuing to be embarrassed by her father’s connection to the insurrection, crazed election conspiracies, and be forced to “mingle” with those socially and educationally beneath her.

We know the facts: after some semblance of “sanity” was briefly procured when the plot hatched by numb-nutters Sydney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn for the military to seize voting machines was derailed during a profanity-laced “meeting” in December, Trump refused to be deterred, apparently spending the night in inner rage before in an early AM tweet announced “Big protest in D.C. on Janu­ary 6th. Be there, will be wild!” Yeah. Given the fact that many Trump fanatics were in fact fanatical and were excited by the prospect of seeing “blood flow,” it wasn’t really all that surprising to see what happened next.

Maybe some of these people thought they would encounter Antifa and engage in an orgy of blood, but even as a reporter for the right-wing Washington Examiner observed, there were no Antifa or BLM people in sight—just Trump’s maniacal supporters who needed to blow off that steam that Trump had built up inside of them from his election lies. What to do? “Hang” Mike Pence? Or reimagine “Bastille Day” in far-right nut-job terms? Former acting defense secretary Chris Miller admitted during his testimony that Trump never gave him an “order” to prepare National Guard troop deployment to counter the very real potentiality of violence by his supporters.

All this would have seemed unthinkable a generation or two ago when Republicans knew right from wrong, and forced Richard Nixon to resign; but things are very different now. For those who think that the state of Washington doesn’t have its own numb-nut far-right voters, there seems little admiration for Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler’s not having a “crisis of conscious” moment and simply doing the right thing in voting for Trump’s impeachment following the insurrection; instead, at the moment she is behind her Trump-endorsed primary opponent.

In Wyoming, Rep. Liz Cheney also respects this country’s institutions, with her primary chances apparently hinging on Democratic cross-over votes. Her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, is appearing in a campaign ad that brushes off her Trumpist opponent, accusing Trump of being a “coward” and not being a “real man,” hiding behind these crazed candidates who are his foot soldiers stupidly serving this “individual who is a greater threat to our republic” than any single individual in this country’s 246-year history.

We may ask what “line” Trump can’t cross for his “base”; we may recall how Trump boasted how he could shoot someone on Fifth Ave and this still wouldn’t faze his most ardent supporters. Fortunately, this is still a nation of laws in some parts of this country, and even NYPD officers might feel compelled to arrest him for murder. But then again, four people died as a result of the Trump-inspired January 6 insurrection, and his “base”—including many and probably most Republicans in Congress—have apparently long since “forgiven” him for that. If there is a "line," it must be drawn in invisible ink for all anyone can "see."