Comedian Chris Rock once asked his audience, “who’s the biggest liars, men or women?” After a rowdy crowd response, he informed us that “men lie the most, women tell the biggest lies.” His explanation is consistently hilarious, but he floored me when he told the women “look at you! You got on heels, you ain’t that tall!!”
That bit came unbidden to mind as I witnessed the high moral dudgeon that the House Democrats who are working the Trump impeachment have clutched unto their politician-black hearts. One of the biggest whoppers, a ten inch platform stiletto boot of a whopper, was Nancy Pelosi claiming that “I pray for the president all the time.” She prays for… what, exactly? Certainly not for his success, and certainly not for the fortitude to weather the soul-wearying strain of the Presidency (a job that turns them gray). And, in entirely predictable fashion, she turned the impeachment vote into theater, wearing funereal black, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in front of a cardboard flag, and scolding a few Democrats who applauded when the articles of impeachment passed. Pure theater, transparent and wholly unbelievable.
Politicians are cheats and liars, and we should trust them only as far as infant children can throw them. Unfortunately, the tribal elements of human nature causes many of us to invest our trust and faith in one party or the other, even though, rationally, we recognize how they are, with rare exception, not to be trusted.
As a result, they’ve learned that they can spout righteous indignation, that they can shriek outrage, and that they can puritanically cluck and scold, all with straight faces, and get roughly half the nation to holler “Amen!”
This brazenness has been elevated to stratospheric levels in their outrage over anything remotely related to the Untethered Orange Id, and we’ve borne witness to a nonstop stream of huffs, puffs, chest-thumping, vexation, and bilious finger jabbing for three years. All of it, we are meant to believe, rooted in Trump’s unprecedented affront to the Constitution and to all that Americans hold sacred. The fact that the nation has managed not to implode during his first three years is of little relevance to their belief that he poses an existential threat, of course.
Here’s the problem. If you’re a scumbag, we’re not impressed when you call someone else a scumbag. If you pretend to high moral ground, but are obviously engaged in raw and rank partisan politics, we’re prompted to justified suspicion of your motives.
The accusations against Trump: Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress, could be found in his actions, if one is motivated to do so. They could also be found lacking in substance, if one is motivated to do so. They are that mushy. But, set that aside for the moment, and consider that the Ukraine matter wasn’t even on the radar until this past September. The Democrats have worked more angles than I can count in their “remove Trump” efforts prior to its emergence, and in true Chicken Little/Boy Who Cried Wolf fashion, burned the trust of much of the public in the process. They engaged in this effort two and a half years before the whistleblower’s complaint even came forth. To hear them bloviating about this particular transgression without feeling disgust at their hypocrisy requires forgetting about everything that came before – and ignoring the shocking misbehaviors of the FBI that have recently come to light.
Did Trump try to squeeze an investigation of the Bidens out of Ukraine’s government? Perhaps, leaning towards probably. If so, was it purely for personal benefit, without consideration that exposing corruption would be beneficial to America? Perhaps, maybe less probably.
Does this, if true, rise to the “high crimes and misdemeanors” criterion for taking the drastic step of removing the President from office? That’s where many hop off the wagon.
Where some allege “abuse of power,” others see “politics as usual,” and lump it in with the political horse trading that is part-and-parcel, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Does the interaction have a film of dirt on it? I’d say so, but is it a thick enough film to warrant Trump’s removal from office? Was it an act that did harm to the Republic? Contemplate that the Steele Dossier, paid for by the Clinton campaign, was used as a political weapon by the government against people in Trump’s circle to understand the “politics as usual” aspect of this… IF it’s true that Trump did as alleged. Which, as I noted earlier, can be read differently by different people.
But, the impeachers won’t even get that far, in terms of convincing the public, because the Democrats decided he must go 3 years ago, and have been noodling in the mud for three years in search of a plausible justification. Congress could, if it was willing to risk voter outrage, impeach Trump for wearing his neckties too long, so the mere fact of impeachment doesn’t tell us much. And, since they’ve engaged in stark partisanship before and during the process (Schiff and Nadler have been especially contemptible in their pretzeling of the proceedings), the statesmanlike puffery that the Democrats are flooding us with is laughable. When Congressman Eric Swalwell tweets, “We are custodians of the Constitution. A Republic by the people for the people,” I can’t decide whether to face-palm or eye-roll. As columnist David Harsanyi pointed out Swalwell responded to someone’s resistance to the idea of banning assault weapons by pointing out that “And it would be a short war my friend. The government has nukes. Too many of them.” That someone who’d say such a thing is clutching the Constitution to his bosom is the stuff of farce.
The moral preening that we are witnessing from so many “Trump must go!” politicians is intended to cover up the rankly political nature of this impeachment. Don’t believe for a moment that they are married to Constitutional principles – there’s nothing in their track records to support such a claim, and countless points of data that tell us how much they revile the limits placed on their power.
This high moral dudgeon is elevated on stilts. It’s Chris Rock’s high heels. It’s a fraud, intended to make us think something other than the truth. And it reminds us, as if we need reminding, that no one tells bigger lies than a politician. The notion that they are pursuing this Trump impeachment because they are standing in defense of the Republic, the Constitution, and good, clean government is the howler of the year. Ukraine, no matter the truth of Trump’s actions, is seen as of mere convenience to the Democrats: the raison-du-jour in their from-day-one mania to undo the results of the 2016 election, and it’s that mania that is the doom of the Dems’ impeachment effort. Had the Dems not been trying to unseat Trump for 3 years, the electorate may not have been so cynically polarized, and they may have had a real shot at making these charges stick.
Before you start pointing fingers, make sure you hands are clean. — Bob Marley
The Democrats’ hands are not clean in this, and the theater-of-the-somber (or dance of the living dead, if you prefer) that Pelosi orchestrated, isn’t fooling anyone.
There’s an election in a bit over ten months. That’s when and how the matter of Trump’s presidency should be decided.
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Pelosi maybe praying for Trump as an obligation/habit. How many pray because their mom told them too, I know you don’t like so and so but you need to pray for him any ways. Or just because it the Christian thing to do…
I think Trump was out to get the Bidens but felt he could do so because it was uncovering corruption. He could care less if Biden was corrupt except that it could help him.
As to the impeachment, they have been trying to find something and the call came to light with a WHISTLE BLOWER making it too good to pass on. the transcript had to be ignored.