Bullets on the impeachment inquiry

The mainstream media have done an unusually good job covering the impeachment hearings, with the zealots at Fox News (sic) the only exception. But even the most progressive news channel, MSNBC, is part of the system of corporate media and must, or feels it must, observe certain boundaries.

I don’t feel any such compunction, or compulsion, nor any scruples when beating the devil. He deserves it. I love Ms. Obama, but I am not of the school that says that when they go low, we go high. Or even that of former Attorney General Eric Holder who says that when they go low, we kick them in the knee. We kick them, yes, but in the balls.

So, these are some of what are usually called my ‘takeaways’ from the hearings:

• It’s clear that Trump is guilty, above and beyond all doubt, not just reasonable doubt.
• The Republicans themselves know that President Donald Trump committed several serious impeachable offenses. They don’t care. As the inquiry progressed and the evidence mounted, Trump’s GOP defenders were left with fewer and fewer arguments. They went downhill from “he didn’t do anything wrong” to attacking witnesses to their last ditch, desperate defense: “You are going to impeach a president for this?” What do they mean when they say this?
• ‘This’ is a series of small matters. Trampling all over the Constitution. Attempting to trade national sovereignty to try to win an election. Trying to blackmail a foreign leader into providing him with dirt—any kind of dirt, whether based on fact or fiction—usable to smear his most feared rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. Obstructing justice repeatedly, both during the Mueller investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and during the impeachment inquiry itself by trying to stop witnesses from testifying before the House Intelligence Committee, withholding documents wholesale, and trying to intimidate a witness through nasty tweets right as she was delivering her testimony.
• There is a rather simple explanation for the actions of the Republicans. This is a president willing and able to do what until Trump the Republicans could only dream about. Waging a fierce battle against racial and ethnic diversity through a savage immigration policy. Lavishing enormous tax breaks on the rich and the ultra-rich. Afflicting the afflicted by trying to take away their health care, their food stamps, and everything else possible. The Republicans, as they have veered farther and farther right, as they have become much more reactionary than any normal conservative party in the Western world, needed exactly the kind of person that Donald Trump is: A man without conscience, cruel, devoid of empathy, incapable of showing kindness. In other words, to fulfill their wet dreams, the Republicans needed a real son-of-a-bitch. They got him in Trump, in spades. They are not going to lose him now that they have him, even if tomorrow he shoots a random person on Fifth Avenue.

At this point the reader will have the impression that I detest Donald Trump. I prefer a stronger word. I loathe Donald Trump. How do I hate you, Donald Trump? Let me count the ways. I detest your constant boasting. I abhor your endless lying. In fact, I loathe everything about you, from the tip of the shoes you use to play your bourgeois sport of golf (notwithstanding that Che Guevara liked golf too) which to me is not a sport, a sport requires sweating, aerobic activity, coordination, athleticism, being in good shape. The guy who recently ran a marathon in less than two hours, albeit in a non-standard course, is a consummate athlete. Trump is an overweight, lazy slob who cheats at golf, as he does at everything else.

But these are the trivial reasons for my aversion toward the president. The most significant reason can be described in two words: The Wall. The Wall, as Trump envisioned it, encapsulates all that is evil about the man. Trump had a malevolent purpose in mind for his big beautiful Wall: “Trump was crystal clear on one point, though: the wall should be dangerous enough to dissuade immigrants from even attempting to scale it. More than once, he had instructed officials at the Department of Homeland Security whether the wall could be electrified so that anyone touching it would receive a shock. He wanted the spikes on top to be sharp enough to pierce human flesh in an instant. He wanted concertina wire everywhere. Trump had vivid descriptions of what he wanted immigrants to experience if they tried to scale the wall: They would be burned, maimed, cut to pieces by the wire. I want these people to be in horrible shape if they climb, the president would say.” (‘Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration’ by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael D. Shear).

Donald Trump is a criminal. And not just any criminal. He is a sociopath with the power to make his cruel designs come true on a grand scale. He is the first and most dangerous big criminal of the twenty-first century. Kim Jon-un, his buddy and the dictator of North Korea, may be as evil or worse. But his power to cause mayhem is puny compared to Trump’s. Trump suffers from a stage four Empathy Deficiency Disorder.

But we have known this for a long time. Damning the devil only goes so far. What is more stunning is the conduct of Trump’s silent enablers, the people a student of Nazi Germany called “Hitler’s willing executioners.” They are those who should have resigned and spoken out on upon first hearing of Trump’s vicious plans for the wall. People like Kirstjen Nielsen, the Secretary of Homeland Security, who chose to play ball, to go along to get along with Donald Trump. They will not be forgiven, although they may be nearly forgotten, like Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy’s despicable hit man, small people fading away in the ash bin of history.