"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it."
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, translated by Edward FitzGerald.
Trump wants to erase history.
It is a terrible, self-destructive idea. Democrats should let him do it.
The impeachments of Donald Trump were neither foolish nor partisan. Trump tried to condition military aid the Congress appropriated to Ukraine with the Ukraine's president announcing they were investigating former Vice President Joe Biden so Trump could cite the investigation to damage a political rival. The second impeachment was because, as Mitch McConnell put it, Trump summoned a mob to the Capitol to try to reverse an election by violence.The fact that he was not convicted in the Senate after the first impeachment was because GOP senators wanted to stand by their party leader. After the second impeachment there was a mix of standing by their party, serving the desires of the Republican primary electorate, and a sense that it was unnecessary because Trump was finished and would fade away, so why bother? That was a serious miscalculation.
Trump sometimes does wildly unpopular things in his relentless effort to glorify himself: his face on coins and currency, his name on the JFK Center for the Performing Arts, his longing for a Nobel Peace Prize, his birthday celebration cage fight, his ballroom and triumphal arch, his role-playing as Christ, Rambo, and superheroes, his over-the-top desire for flattery, and his self-flattery. Wanting the impeachments expunged is another iteration of his effort to glorify and sanitize his image.
It will do the opposite. An expungement resolution would bring hearings, testimony, and a reminder of what Trump did. Republicans have tried out a variety of contradictory ways to describe the January 6 attack:
-- The rioters were really Democrats carrying Trump flags -- an assertion that fell apart when it became clear that they were in fact long-time MAGA fans.
-- It was really the FBI that planned and executed it -- an assertion that fell apart for lack of evidence of FBI involvement, and ample evidence that the rioters Trump partisans who were there eagerly, having been summoned by Trump.
-- The rioters were just a very few were out-of-control people who Trump tried but failed to restrain. That fell apart when Trump switched positions from disapproval to approval of their actions, now praising them as patriots.
-- They were peaceful, law-abiding tourists. That fell apart when one looks at the videotape of crowds climbing the building, breaking windows, pushing and shoving police, forcing their way past doors and through windows, their vandalizing the Capitol, and when one reviews their guilty pleas for their violent acts.
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| Do these look like Democrats? |
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| Do they look like non-violent tourists? |
Sure, let's re-litigate the impeachments. Let's show more video of the riots. Let's put Trump back center stage defending what we saw with our own eyes. Let's require Republican House members who voted not to accept electoral votes to explain themselves. Worse, they will now have to claim that there was nothing wrong about January 6. Trump would insist that they do so since it is now the Trump position: "I did nothing wrong." This is an anchor on the popularity for Trump -- but he is probably beyond accountability. It is also an anchor on all Republican Senators and Representatives, including my own, Cliff Bentz. Bentz would be trapped, forced to defend the least-defensible things Trump did.
Give Trump the rope he seeks.
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ReplyDeleteI’m known as a story-teller in my family. My dad used to say I didn’t let facts get in the way of a good story. Exaggerations of everyday things makes for a good standup routine. People laugh if even part of it resonates.
Jefferson Fisher is a popular former Texas trial lawyer who is a NYT best selling author and podcaster with tens of millions of views on the art of conversation. One thing he says is that most people aren’t persuaded by facts or evidence, even though that’s how juries are supposed to determine a case. He says they mostly judge what is true through the lens of what they already believe. Confirmation bias
Trump is a master story-teller and he has a remarkable ability to get people to believe him on outrageous assertions because a little piece of his story resonates. But it’s not a laughing matter. I disagree Peter. He can spin this and he will, and the majority of the GOP voters will get their opinions from the filtered news of Fox and their ilk. The toady GOP Congress will fall in line. I can see it happen and no judge can stop it.
Did Turkey really massacre millions of Armenian people? Yes, they did even though Turkey is still trying to insist they didn’t. Was slavery really that bad? Yes, it was really bad. Did Trump try to lead an overthrow of an election, yes he did. Science based on finding the truth rather than opinion has brought mankind a long way. Let’s stick with seeking the truth.
ReplyDeleteTrump can build himself more monuments than Ozymandias and do all the erasing all he wants, but history will judge him as the sane do now: by the results. His achievements so far include demonizing non-white immigrants, antagonizing over half the country, alienating our allies, emboldening our adversaries and reducing our standard of living. He’s also left a massive collection of social media toots that make his malice and stupidity all too clear. And, of course, there’s his blatant, shameless greed and corruption; it’s unpresidented, to use his own malapropism. I wish he could be unpresidented.
ReplyDeleteNot really much at stake over a “symbolic resolution”, is there? Or perhaps his supporters in Congress could vote to declare him Best President of All Time. Actual history will remain unaffected either direction.
ReplyDeleteIt is telling that he fixates relentlessly on perceived slights much more than upon marginally arguable successes. Telling, and scary….