The Defeat of the Constitution

Waking up several mornings ago, I finally realized what it is: A Constitutional nation would never have elected the continual travesty that is Donald Trump.

Somewhere between the end of World War II and now, we lost the authenticity of character that defines a democratic people.

Despite all the criticism of the president*, we are failing to adequately describe the calamity of the “extinction level event” his illegitimate ascension to power is to America, the world, and civilization.

The left during the McCarthy hearings recognized, and opposed:

End justifies the means rationalization 
Groupthink 
Guilt by association 
Conformism.

Today, the rejection of groupthink is a sin against solidarity. We now understand liberalism so poorly that the democratic press speaks of AOC and the Squad(1) as the most liberal segment of the House when they are clearly antiliberals whose deepest affinity is to Marx, not the Constitution (which The Newspaper of Record, in the “1619 Project,”(2) described as hypocritical).

Today, collectives are thought of as liberal, although they are based on “moral ties antecedent to choice.” But when de Tocqueville surveyed the young American democracy, he marveled at our penchant for forming “voluntary associations.”

Nations which admired us when Obama was President (which, it was thought, would be “transformational,” — McConnell made sure that didn’t happen, and we let him) they now pity us.

We have fallen so far that the “news” gives no inkling, for all its 24-hour coverage, that the left is not liberal. Today the news has no opinion, although it has constant insinuation. Once, as Sorkin’s “The Newsroom” said half a decade ago, Edward R. Murrow had an opinion, and that ended McCarthyism; Cronkite had an opinion, and that ended Vietnam.

Today forty percent of us will follow Trump come hell or high water, will follow him if he shoots someone on Fifth Avenue at high noon, will follow him into the grave.

That’s not a metaphor.

/*****/

(1) “What makes "The Squad" such a tantalizing and obvious political target for President Trump is that all four are on the wrong side of every major 2020 issue. From their calls to “abolish ICE” and the Department of Homeland Security, a position that even the ultra-progressive Center for American Progress suggests is bonkers, to their support of the Green New Deal, Medicare-for-all, impeachment for Trump and outright disdain for Israel, they are the 2020 gift that keeps on giving for the Trump White House.” - https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/456033-trumps-greatest-allies-for-a-2020-win-aoc-and-the-squad

(2) Andrew Sullivan: “The original ideals were false, and then the country was founded on “both an ideal and a lie.””

Americans elected today’s Democratic House to demonstrate their disgust with the most corrupt president* in history. The response of the Pelosi-led House is beginning to look like a profile in cowardice.

Americans elected today’s Democratic House to demonstrate their disgust with the most corrupt president* in history. The response of the Pelosi-led House is beginning to look like a profile in cowardice. 

Brian Beutler, Crooked.com: “Their irresolution has allowed Republicans to drown the public in unanswered lies about what Mueller found and what the response to it should be. … The evasive way House Democrats have responded to the report so far has done Mueller a real disservice.”

The victims of the crimes under investigation, which include the voters Trump defrauded in 2016, have only one backstop offering them any hope that justice will be served, and it is House Democrats, who are determined not to impeach the president under almost any circumstances.

1. “Republicans … drown the public in unanswered lies about what Mueller found”

2. Retaliatory, brazen Republican “counter-investigations”

We are now likelier to witness months of full-throttled counter-investigations—of Mueller himself, and everybody who played a hand in the Russia probe—than we are to get the impeachment inquiry Mueller all but declared we need.

3. “The party leadership’s [cowardly] desperation to avoid a confrontation with Trump has been comically unsubtle”

When Mueller finished his work, House Majority Whip James Clyburn immediately described the Russia investigation as a “closed” chapter, and called on Democrats to turn their attention to “everyday issues.”

4. “Their certainty that holding Trump accountable will backfire politically stems from a combination of bad history and poor reasoning”

Because Democratic candidates campaigned successfully in 2018 on protecting people’s health care, Democrats have convinced themselves that it is Trump’s only vulnerability.

5. We needed “the realization that the Trump presidency is an emergency and that building a check on his power was a matter of historic importance”

6. “Trump has predictably abused his inherent powers to work around the divided government, and Democrats can’t protect people from him by avoiding confrontation”

All they can do is demobilize their supporters by communicating that they don’t actually believe Trump is much of an emergency after all.

7. We act as if the president* is allowed to act as judge in his own behalf by buying into the “view that Trump can end or throttle those investigations if he claims to believe they’re bogus”

8. “The victims of the crimes under investigation … have only one source of hope that the federal law enforcement apparatus won’t ruin their lives to boost Trump’s political prospects, or help him seek revenge, and it is House Democrats, who are determined not to impeach the president under almost any circumstances”

9. The House Democrats “fear that if they do the right thing, they will not do as well in the 2020 elections as they will if they do the wrong thing … we do know that the wrong thing causes real harm to people right now”

10. “Without the threat of penalty, Democrats will proceed under the impression that abdicating their obligations is costless”

11. “We should all demand that they stand and be counted while it’s still an option, and should interpret failure to do so as a profound, collective failure of character”


_*__

“If the incumbent* wins, there will be four more years of enabled destruction of our political institutions.”

In a democracy, the party out of power is “the loyal opposition.” Under the treason party, election is simply the chance to continue the war of the slave-holding rebels against the United States by other means (as previously argued in “The Enemy Within”). “The upper echelons of the Republican Party in Congress decided to obstruct Barack Obama at a dinner on the night of Obama's inauguration. … [a] Democratic president simply will not be allowed to govern … as a Democrat.”

Charles P. Pierce wrote:
“Nobody who watched William Barr's performance before a Republican-majority Senate Judiciary Committee this past week can sensibly deny that, as long as the Senate remains in the hands of the Republican Party, it doesn't matter what happens in the 2020 presidential election. If the incumbent* wins, there will be four more years of enabled destruction of our political institutions. If one of the Democrats wins, and the Senate stays Republican, the Democratic president simply will not be allowed to govern. Not as a Democrat, anyway.

And this didn't start with El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago, either. The record shows that, upon Bill Clinton's election, good ol' Bob Dole announced that he was there to represent everyone who didn't vote for the winner. The Florida burglary in 2000 was in part a refusal to allow another Democrat to succeed Clinton, and the upper echelons of the Republican Party in Congress decided to obstruct Barack Obama at a dinner on the night of Obama's inauguration.”