To no one’s surprise, the Senate failed to convict Trump on the impeachment charge forwarded by the House. What was originally put forth as a “save the nation from his lunacy the last two weeks of his term” was flipped on its head to a tepid “keep him from running for office again” Kabuki that masked a baser, partisan-politics reality.
The actual charge, “inciting violence against the government of the United States,” wouldn’t pass muster in a court of law, but the Senate isn’t that, and impeachment is an inherently political, rather than legal process. Nevertheless, I felt, at the time, that his post-election behaviors coupled with his failures of leadership during the riot were sufficient to call him on the carpet immediately thereafter. Once he was out of office, however, the utility of impeachment as a pre-emptor of other misdeeds evaporated, and it became about what has dominated the Left for over four years: Trump Derangement.
That visceral hatred, so powerful that it frustrates actual policy discussion, remains alive and well even after his departure from the White House. And, it carries on despite his eviction from social media.
The Left’s power players in DC know this. They know that the disagreements on the Left are easily subordinated by the unifying power of Trump Derangement. They know that the Republicans have fissures within, between Trump’s loyalists, Never-Trumpers, Trumpist America-First protectionists, and more ‘traditional’ Republicans and conservatives who don’t align with Trumpism. Those fissures serve the Left very well, so keeping them open is beneficial.
So, even as Trump himself is muzzled on the most available information conduits in current society, the Trump name will continue to splash across the political and news/opinion landscape. Those who curate and control all that know it’s good business and good politics for them, and even if Trump himself were to retire quietly, they’d persist. That all this is far more apt to encourage Trump to continue being a political player, and more apt to harden the loyalists’ resolve, is a feature, not a bug, of this Neverending Derangement strategy.
That it also satiates the personal derangement of those power players is bonus.
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When I wrote to advocate impeachment, there is one element I did not factor heavily enough: there is nothing so bad and wrong that our political class cannot make worse. There is no acting reasonably and responsibly for the common good, or for the sanctity of law, as a principal. There are no principals with these fiends. They are political calculating machines, nothing more. I invite all RoL readers to remind me of such, if I ever get so carried away again.
This was posted as anonymous, I meant to post under “EDN.”
A question I have heard a lot during the current impeachment time waster, “don’t they know the only result of all this will be more Trump inspired insanity, on both sides, not less?” You sum up the answer to that quite nicely, that the fact that it is “apt to encourage Trump to continue being a political player, and more apt to harden the loyalists’ resolve, is a feature, not a bug,” He has always been and will continue to be a gift to the Left, and if they do not use the anathema to stand with Trump to strip Americans of their individual liberties then Marx was a Capitalist Fatcat.