“This
unraveling presidency began with the Crybaby-in-Chief banging his spoon on his
highchair tray to protest a photograph — a photograph — showing that his inauguration crowd the day before had been smaller than the one four years
previous. Since then, this weak person’s idea of a strong person, this chest-pounding
advertisement of his own gnawing insecurities, this low-rent Lear raging on his
Twitter-heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron.
“Presidents,
exploiting modern communications technologies and abetted today by journalists
preening as the ‘resistance’ — like members of the French Resistance 1940-1944,
minus the bravery — can set the tone of American society, which is regrettably
soft wax on which presidents leave their marks. The president’s provocations —
his coarsening of public discourse that lowers the threshold for acting out by
people as mentally crippled as he — do not excuse the violent few. They must be
punished. He must be removed.
“Social
causation is difficult to demonstrate, particularly between one person’s words
and other persons’ deeds. However: The person voters hired in 2016 to ‘take care that the laws be faithfully executed’ stood on July 28,
2017, in front of uniformed police and urged them ‘please don’t be too nice’ when handling suspected
offenders. His hope was fulfilled for 8 minutes and 46 seconds on
Minneapolis pavement.
“What
Daniel Patrick Moynihan termed ‘defining deviancy down’ now defines American politics.
In 2016, voters were presented an unprecedentedly unpalatable choice: Never had
both major parties offered nominees with higher disapproval than approval
numbers. Voters chose what they wagered would be the lesser blight.
Now, however, they have watched him govern for 40 months and more than 40
percent — slightly less than the percentage that voted for him — approve of his sordid conduct.
“Presidents
seeking reelection bask in chants of ‘Four more years!’ This year, however,
most Americans — perhaps because they are, as the president predicted, weary from all the winning — might flinch: Four more years
of this? The taste of ashes, metaphorical and now literal, dampens
enthusiasm.
“The
nation’s downward spiral into acrimony and sporadic anarchy has had many causes
much larger than the small man who is the great exacerbator of them. Most of
the causes predate his presidency, and most will survive its January terminus.
The measures necessary for restoration of national equilibrium are many and
will be protracted far beyond his removal. One such measure must be the removal
of those in Congress who, unlike the sycophantic mediocrities who cosset him in
the White House, will not disappear ‘magically,’ as Eric Trump said the coronavirus would. Voters must dispatch his
congressional enablers, especially the senators who still gambol around his
ankles with a canine hunger for petting.
“In
life’s unforgiving arithmetic, we are the sum of our choices. Congressional
Republicans have made theirs for more than 1,200 days. We cannot know all
the measures necessary to restore the nation’s domestic health and
international standing, but we know the first step: Senate Republicans must be
routed, as condign punishment for their Vichyite collaboration, leaving the
Republican remnant to wonder: Was it sensible to sacrifice dignity, such as it
ever was, and to shed principles, if convictions so easily jettisoned could be
dignified as principles, for . . . what? Praying people should pray, and all others
should hope: May I never crave anything as much as these people crave membership in the world’s
most risible deliberative body.
“A
political party’s primary function is to bestow its imprimatur on candidates,
thereby proclaiming: This is who we are. In 2016, the Republican Party gave its
principal nomination to a vulgarian and then toiled to elect him. And to stock
Congress with invertebrates whose unswerving abjectness has enabled his
institutional vandalism, who have voiced no serious objections to his Niagara
of lies, and whom T.S. Eliot anticipated:
We
are the hollow men . . .
Our
dried voices, when
We
whisper together
Are
quiet and meaningless
As
wind in dry grass
or
rats’ feet over broken glass . . .
“Those
who think our unhinged president’s recent mania about a murder two decades ago that never happened
represents his moral nadir have missed the lesson of his life: There is no such
thing as rock bottom. So, assume that the worst is yet to come. Which implicates
national security: Abroad, anti-Americanism sleeps lightly when it sleeps at
all, and it is wide-awake as decent people judge our nation’s health by the
character of those to whom power is entrusted. Watching, too, are indecent
people in Beijing and Moscow” (“Trump Must Be Removed. So Must His Congressional Enablers” by George Will, Washington Post).
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