John just thinking . . . .

Television coverage of Trump’s rallies in recent days repeatedly brought to mind what a creepy, disdainful character he is, but it was followed by bewilderment: What on earth attracts persons who appear to be angry, childish adults to Trump’s stream of incoherence? Can they not see that he offers no solutions to whatever concerns them, nothing but inanities and whatever gets the louder cheers?

Most persons with an authentic interest in governance improvement are reluctant to express their prescriptions incased in simplistic shouting. Trump’s crowds, on the other hand, seem untroubled by the bizarre verbal torrent that issues without end from their mendacious authoritarian. It is as if they really don’t care that he can never be counted on for either truth or decency.

However, we can make an educated guess that Trumpers’ fascination for conspiracy theories is a good match for Trump’s own. Neither you nor I can know at a distance whether that is true, but we all too frequently are treated to Trump’s setting about his proud portrayal as Mr. Conspiracy Theorist, jumping from one unsubstantiated story to another, intentionally bestowing validation by virtue of the office we foolishly gave him. He seems naturally to exude an enticement for personality characteristics that match his own (or better, that match what they wish were their own), a powerful attraction not to sincerity, authenticity, modesty, or accuracy, but to bloviation, vanity, blaming, irresponsibility, and self-aggrandizement.

In other words, Trumpers may like Trump because they are like him or want to be. But there are better sources about this matter beyond my retired psychologist top-of-the-head reflections. You can find far greater understanding from writers (referenced below) whose command of autocracies, democracies-becoming-autocracies, and authoritarians who seize autocratic power while you and I slumber with pleasant dreams of “it can’t happen here.”

“It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.”  —James Madison, fourth U.S. president (1751-1836), “A Memorial and Remonstrance,” 1785

Unlike my recent posts on this topic, I will simply extract a number of points (not presented with the exactness of quotations unless so marked) from three authors relevant to this post, to wit:

Beware the one party state . . . “human nature is such that American democracy must be defended from Americans who would exploit its freedoms to bring about its end.” [OT, p.27]

A would-be autocrat is more likely to become an autocrat depending in part on how firmly the established politicians oppose it. [HDD, p.8]

Citizens who are resentful or unsuccessful are more likely to feel attracted to authoritarianism than those who are not. [TOD, p.24]

Be wary of paramilitaries. “When men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh.” [OT, p.42]

America raised the likelihood of autocracy when in November 2016, it elected a president with a dubious allegiance to democratic norms.  Trump’s surprise victory was made possible not only by public disaffection but also by the Republican Party’s failure to keep an extremist demagogue within its own ranks from gaining the nomination. [HDD, p.8]

He/she rejects the constitution or expresses a willingness to violate it, or suggests a need for antidemocratic behaviors such as cancelling elections.

A politician is more likely to adopt authoritarian behaviors if:  [HDD pp. 23-27]

• He/she describes their rivals as subversive, opposed to the existing constitutional order; baselessly describes their partisan rivals as criminals whose supposed violation of the law disqualifies them from full participation in politics.
• He/she has any ties to armed gangs, paramilitary forces, militias, guerillas or other illicit violence; tacitly endorse violence by their supporters by refusing to unambiguously condemn it and punish it; supported laws or policies that restrict civil liberties, such as expanded libel or defamation laws, or laws restricting protests.
• He/she praised repressive measures taken by other governments in the past or elsewhere in the world; if extremist parties emerge as contenders.

Abbreviations used above refer to these books:

“HDD:” How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.

“TD:” Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, by Anne Applebaum.

“OT:” On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder.

(Additional books not referred to in this post may be found in recent posts concerned with autocracy.)

[JohnJustThinking is an irregular commentary by me (unless otherwise noted) on social, ethical, scientific, and non-partisan political, partisan political, and cultural interests. More than 230 essays have been posted since mid-2013, all accessible from any page. If you choose to be a Follower (there is no charge), you’ll be automatically notified with each new post.]

Few Americans wasted time hoping the coronavirus would finally catch up to President Invulnerable and his sizable number of recurring contacts. As to myself, neither will I devote any get-well wishes to the man whose moral recklessness has contributed to the virus’s ability to lead thus far to 7.5 million covid-19 cases, 4.9 million of whom recovered (fewer if we count the “long haulers”), .21 million deaths, and uncounted millions of persons whose economic pain has by no means been trivial. Almost certainly, he spread his virus-loaded breath even more on the very day he announced his first positive test.

Any worrying I do is reserved for persons who mistakenly assume their president has their best interests at heart. Many Americans are voluntarily wearing masks to protect others more than themselves. There’s no reason for the president to have less empathy than they. And with Trump’s faulty understanding about airborne viral transmission, many have been led toward practices that make them more vulnerable, not less. They’ve derisively laughed along with Trump in mockery of those who wear masks, treated distancing as silly and even dangerous, or were convinced their religion would save them. I’ve neither tears nor sympathy for Donald Trump, for his “strong flu” was self-imposed.

Even as late as a week ago I watched Mark Meadows, Chief of the White House Staff, say on camera the reason he didn’t have a mask on was that he’d tested negative that morning. I don’t for a minute think someone in his important position is unintelligent, though his statement was ridiculous. A test may be more or less accurate, but even if perfect, it isn’t remedial any more than a speedometer slows a vehicle’s speed. Consequently, making such an absurd remark reveals either a simple misunderstanding or some other factor, such as pleasing the boss. When other White House staff frequently make the same mistake, it appears more as if they’ve been admonished to do so. In any normal setting, I’d not arrive at so suspicious a conclusion. But we’ve learned that the White House is a setting where everything is played by Trumpian rules, such as minimal disagreement with  Trump’s decisions and using words more to obscure reality than to clarify it.

We’ve observed repeatedly that White House staff seem to consider wearing a mask to be burdensome if not a symbol of weakness. If asked why they are not wearing a mask, they pull one out of a pocket or purse and say proudly they have one “if needed.” I assume that means when in in close proximity with others or in the presence of persons known to have tested positive. When not normally wearing a mask, to do so hurriedly at these times is better than not. But it isn’t always possible to know these conditions quickly enough or to make safe assumptions about others, such as when a person walks into someone’s small office unannounced. I have been on maskless strolls through a park, for example, when surprised by a couple quietly overtaking me in a narrow walking area. I’m not meaning to advocate masks in the shower here, just pointing out that when a risk is great, the value of caution becomes even greater.

Those in Trump’s camp who slavishly seek to please him have for almost four years gone to extremes to rearrange reality to fit his egotistical construction of it. Even after the advent of Covid-19, they are expected to endanger their lives to fulfill his political wishes. Republicans not directly dependent on Trump have little or no excuse, for ostensibly they have the freedom to think for themselves. Unfortunately, Trump’s rallies exert a social pressure to leave one’s mask at home. Pretty clearly, disciples’ decibels at rallies indicate that they to exercise their freedom sparingly. As to Trump’s side of the equation, the screams of adoring fans shower him with too large a narcissistic drug for any other pleasure to compete; not even the best ice cream can lure an addict away from his heroin.

So I’ll not be sending a get-well card, nor praying for Trump’s speedy recovery. Those hopes I’ll reserve for persons with decency, caring, honesty, and a detectible caring for the United States and its people, not to mention seven billion human beings trying to help each other live in this often difficult world.

[JohnJustThinking is an irregular commentary by me (unless otherwise noted) on social, ethical, scientific, and non-partisan political, partisan political, and cultural interests. More than 230 essays have been posted since mid-2013, all accessible from any page. If you choose to be a Follower, you’ll be automatically notified with each new post.]

America’s Loser-in-Chief renders the challenge to whoever surpasses him as worst president in U. S. history insurmountable. His collection of scrambled oratory, stupidities, cruelties, mismanagement, international embarrassment, creative medical interventions, and simple meanness grow by the day. But what became his greatest goal—converting America from democratic republic to autocracy—is only steps away, virtually certain if he is still president on the afternoon of January 20.

Unfit to Serve

This month Bob Woodward adds yet another book to the list of  lies, cheating, and crimes. Accurately adding still more derogatory descriptions is easy, but I—who’ve  has erred as much as anyone in this regard—will make greater effort to minimize criticizing Donald Trump, for he is now and has been an ethically lost cause all along. In more than 35 essays in this blog (of 232 total) I’ve argued that Donald Trump is not only pathologically narcissistic and thoroughly unethical, but a material danger to the United States, the strength of democracy, and America’s place in the world. Perhaps his psychopathology forgivably drives him far beyond conscious purpose.

Viewed more broadly, there is little damage he has inflicted on this republic without the aid and comfort of the Republican Party. Most Republican Senators and Members of the House have gone so far as to violate their oaths of office in order to stay on Trump’s good side. They could have—and still could—rein him in multiple ways, though they continue to ignore or, worse, to join his treachery. After Trump exits the stage, look for their righteous conversion, resembling ex-leaders of post-communist Europe.

As I was preparing this post, columnist Jennifer Rubin beat me to the following numbing charges words with which I fully agree: “There are no innocent Republicans running for reelection to the House or Senate [italics mine; JC]. Their grievous misdeeds . . . were intentional. Their desire to maintain their good standing in the Trumpified Republican Party and avoid the wrath of President Trump’s deeply dishonest right-wing media allies overrode all considerations of decency, honesty and constitutional probity. ”Even when the House Impeachment Committee (majority Democrats) handed the Senate an easy choice between cowering and governing, all Republican Senators save one ducked behind their desks and voted for acquittal. Had Trump not shown everyone but the senate how crooked he is? I suppose not, for Mitch McConnell and the rest sheepishly granted Trump cover for whatever illegal, traitorous actions he might later commit. My, what brave patriots they were!

Trump’s further opportunity for misuse of his office came soon after Mitch McConnell and his colleagues—by acquitting Trump—got their opportunity to do likewise, thereby confirming that Trump could do whatever he wished (ready for that shot on Fifth Avenue?). The coronavirus arrived within days, furnishing fresh opportunities in the next few months for the Senators and Trump to demonstrate how many coronavirus deaths can be shrouded by the expression, “unfit for office,” both his and theirs.

Accountability for that and four years of misgovernment includes a significant amount of pandemic culpability. When the US coronavirus performance is compared to more effective countries, Trump and therefore his Republican protectors are obviously responsible for the many unnecessary deaths. Trump tried to protect himself by a constant coverup about how the US was doing a better job than anyone else. Trump is directly responsible for a confused and feckless federal/state effort that makes America look (and be) amateurish. Further, he contaminates expert opinion with political factors and partisanship, causing the country to suffer a worse economic condition, widespread illness, and unnecessary deaths.

I need to make clear that I don’t think the Republicans I’m shaming ran for office with intent to endure, much less cause, an unprecedented degree of White House sleaziness, or to be accessories to presidential desires for autocracy. Yet, they accept a subservience to Trump at the expense of their own constitutional responsibilities. Misgovernance cannot but cause even further mismanagement, miring governance in culpability under current conditions for a significant amount of our pandemic failure.

And pandemic death. The coronavirus deaths—beyond 200,000; possibly twice that by January—occurred while elected Republicans at the Congressional level were either silent or actively loyal . . . not to the United States, not even to the Republican Party, but to Donald Trump. President Nero fiddled with crank treatments, played political favorites among governors, and complained unendingly that Covid-19’s source being in China proves definitively that he is not responsible.

Except that he is.

As are Republicans who eulogize him in return for electoral morsels from his table.

[JohnJustThinking is an irregular commentary by me (unless otherwise noted) on social, ethical, scientific, and non-partisan political, partisan political, and cultural interests. More than 230 essays have been posted since mid-2013, all accessible from any page. If you choose to be a Follower, you’ll be automatically notified with each new post.]

In a number of previous posts I’ve lamented that America has begun a grievous transformation from democratic republic toward an unplanned, largely unnoticed autocracy. My reason for concern about the deterioration of our 132 year old republic has built up during the Trump administration, the two year Republican hegemony of Senate and House, followed by a majority in the Senate for most of an additional two years. Inasmuch as this post concerns momentous damage to America, I need to state a proviso: I have no reason to believe that Republicans in the Senate and House or in the Republican Party more broadly had or have any intention to reorder American politics into an autocratic state. Further, I do not mean to cast aspersions on anyone’s fidelity to the United States with the exception of President Trump. Short of such explicit intent, however, I do allege that most elected Republicans at the national level are guilty of political negligence and inordinate careerism, repeatedly choosing the president’s favor over the good of the country. Presidential historian Jon Meacham said it better than I: “Republicans sold their soul to President Trump . . . and the check bounced.”

I promised in my last post (August 2) to examine where we are now, what may be next, and how can it be avoided. To do so, I’ve been obligated to go beyond my limited knowledge in order to learn from others. I sought authors whose wide international knowledge of autocracy aborning might shed light on the American experience and where it might head. My task was to read about that deterioration at different times and locations. I sought insights that might inform us in the here and now, more-or-less in the way a scientific theory can enlighten the understanding of specific events. Books that helped me are listed at the end of this post. Because various authors shared similar findings, I have only identified quotations when findings specific to one author or a particularly meaningful wording helped make understanding easier. This is an opinion post, though—I hope—with reasonably chosen substantiation; it is not intended to have the exhaustive treatment of of either publishing or graduate school standards.

Theory

I found very little that qualifies scientifically as a “theory” of encroaching autocracy. One important aim of fields of study is to discover whether there are similarities among them despite differing circumstances. The closest to theory I found may come from the work of Hitler’s favorite legal scholar, Carl Schmitt, who conceptualized a phenomenon he called a “state of exception.” When an emergency, “a singular event that shakes up the accepted order of things,” the would-be autocrat, to save the day or exhibit leadership, “creates new, extralegal rules, addressing the emergency. The leader thereby amasses enough power to declare a ‘state of exception,’ gaining even greater, unchecked power. The change becomes irreversible and, in effect, makes the state of exception permanent,” and the autocrat firmly entrenched. The German example stretched from the 27 February 1933 Reichstag fire until Hitler’ death.

Other histories that exhibit all or part of Schmitt’s state of exception theory include the December 1934 murder of the head of the Communist Party in Leningrad, then used as a pretext for a state of exception. Another was Putin’s reliance on “a succession of catastrophic events to create irreversible exceptions, for example, a 1999 series of apartment bombings in Moscow and cities in southern Russia, the tragedy that enabled Putin to proclaim that he could summarily execute those deemed ‘terrorists’” and also becoming an excuse for a new war in Chechnya. Happily, though, Schmitt’s prediction of events in Russia were not as catastrophic as World War II.

“Insurance” against evolving autocracy

“We like to believe the fate of government lies in the hands of its citizens. If the people hold democratic values, we think, democracy will be safe. This view is wrong. It assumes too much from a democracy”—to Arendt “the people’ cannot change at will the kind of government they oppose.” For example, it’s hard to find any evidence of majority support for authoritarianism in recent Venezuela. Adjudged by the 1998 Latinobarómetro Survey, 60% of Venezuelans signified agreement with “Democracy is always the best form of government” versus 25% who chose “Under some circumtances, an authoritarian government can be preferable to a democratic one.” Yet Hugo Chávez was elected by a majority vote. Even more telling was the 1920 experience in Germany and Italy. Before the Nazis and Fascists seized power, less than 2 percent of the population were party members, and neither party achieved anything close to a majority vote in free and fair elections. Rather, solid electoral majorities opposed Hitler and Mussolini—before both men achieved power with the support of political insiders blind to the danger of their own ambition.”

Not only is the democracy-to-autocracy sequence found widely, it is obvious that the “it can’t happen here” syndrome is merely faux consolation. It happened in otherwise satisfied democracies around the world where citizens’ uninformed blindness sought not solutions but comforting assurance. Example countries other than those above include Brazil, Peru, Hungary, and others. Unfortunately, having been accustomed to democracy does not protect from a decline into autocracy. “Given the right condition,” summarized Arendt, “any society can turn against democracy.” There is no reason to think the United States is exempt from that conclusion, much as we believe our exceptionalism protects us—a hope as fleeting as that Trump would become “presidential” or our hopeful reassurance to each other that American institutions are stronger than any one candidate or even any one president.

The autocrat him or herself

Many authoritarians can be easily recognized before they come to power. Hitler led a failed putsch; Chávez led a failed military uprising; Mussolini’s Blackshirts engaged in paramilitary violence; Peron helped lead a successful coup two years before running for president. Of course, not every strong leader is bound to become an autocrat. Various authors cited these characteristics: disdain for excellence even to the extreme of kakistocracy (government by the least qualified); failure to distinguish the difference between fact and personally generated fiction, referred to by Gessen as “unmoored from lived reality;” use of absurd lies not as reflections of idiocy but demonstration of power over others; a monomaniacal focus on being seen as unerring and all-powerful; and disregard for human life.

However, there is continued work at finding more organized and insightful conceptual framing. On this, Juan Linz seems to have led the way. Building on his work, Levitsky and Ziblatt developed four key indicators of authoritarian behavior: We should worry when a politician: (1) rejects in word or action the democratic rules of the game, (2) denies the legitimacy of opponents, (3) tolerates or encourages violence, 4) is willing to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including the media. Within each of those categories are further subcategories with more specificity. Here are a selected few: (a) attempts to undermine the legitimacy of elections, for example, by refusing to accept credible electoral results; (b) baselessly describes partisan rivals as criminals, whose supposed violation of the law—or potential to do so—disqualifies them from full participation in the political arena; (c) tacitly endorses violence by their supporters by refusing to unambiguously condemn it and punish it; (d) threatens to take legal action against critics in rival parties, civil society, or the media.

Apart from the personal characteristics of someone who is, has been, or is likely to be an autocrat (or any one of its synonyms), the process by which a country risks autocracy, becomes a candidate for autocracy, and finally becomes a full-fledged autocracy should be made more clear. Gessen “coined the term ‘mafia state,’ and described it as a specific, clan-like system in which one man distributes money and power to all other members.” More to the point here, Gessen developed the concept of “autocratic transformation, a process that proceeds in three stages: [1^st] autocratic attempt, [2^nd] autocratic breakthrough, and [3^rd] autocratic consolidation.”

Existing leaders’ influence

It would be hard to identify influencers more guilty in our current state than the McConnel-led U.S. Senate. In fact, the Republican Party in general fits the description. I will not say more than I already have in multiple posts about their complicit behavior in terms of allowing, enabling, and actively supporting America’s own chief executive-cum-autocrat. Finally, after backing Trump through many iterations of his terrible behavior and incompetence, Republicans—after basically patting him on the back with an impeachment aquittal—reacted appropriately when Trump floated the proposal that this November’s election should be postponed (and, of course, extending his presidency). Even the worst of Trump’s enablers in Congress dismissed out of hand the idea of delaying the election. But Trump’s suggestion was more than just imbecilic. Steven G. Calabresi, a founder of the Federalist Society, a conservative national lawyers’ group of which he’s long been a member, nailed it: “Trump’s suggestion was ‘fascist.’ It was the ploy of a would-be dictator, albeit an inept one.” George T. Conway, Republican opinion writer and organizer of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump lobbying group, added that Trump “should have been removed [from office] already twice over, for obstructing the Russia investigation and extorting Ukraine. His effort to sabotage a democratic system he swore to protect only confirms his unfitness for the job.”

 Readings

This post is the result of further inquiry into the general nature of tyranny, totalitarianism, dictatorship, and autocracy, specifically to examine the transformation into one of these forms from previous democratic republics such as the United States. I had promised further comment on such transformations in my August 2, 2020, post. I obtained and read, in no particular order: How Democracies Die (2018) by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt; Surviving Autocracy (2020) by Masha Gessen; On Tyranny (2017) by Timothy Snyder; The Captive Mind (1951) by Czeslaw Milosz; The Origins of Totalitarianism (1978) by Hannah Arendt; Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism (2020) by Anne Applebaum; The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (1978) by Juan Linz.

I recommend these books as extensive sources of what accompanies democracies as they begin to weaken and teeter on the precipice that marks an almost irretrievable decline into autocracy. I regret that time and space prevent me from utilizing as much richness as these volumes contain.

May the United States of America avoid this sequence.

This post begins by reaching back to March 15, 2016. My post in this blog that day was “Batshit crazy, the stupid party.” The quote that became my title was an indelicate criticism of the state to which the Republican Party had fallen, a phrase uttered not by Democrats, but by prominent Republicans including Sen. Lindsey Graham and Gov. Bobby Jindal. Conservative political historian Matt K. Lewis lamented that although conservatism used to have “big, thoughtful ideas,” it had “lost its intellectual bearings.” Former conservative political historian later Max Boot said the Trump surge “proves every bad thing Democrats have ever said about the GOP is basically true.”

In this post, Part One  is what I published in 2016, approaching five years ago. Trump was not a factor in GOP behavior then. But Republicans’ behavior (and regrettably, some of Democrats’) was quite enough to weaken our republic in bits and pieces, loosening its commitment to roles and responsibilities demanded by the Constitution. The very brief Part Two looks at what Constitutional irresponsibility has brought us to and, in general, where America should go next.

Part One

I don’t think deterioration is unique to the Republican party, nor even the combination of the party and its tethered television outlet, Fox News. I don’t revere everything Pres. Obama has done, nor do I criticize everything Pres. George Bush did. Somewhat allied with Lewis, however, I do consider that the Republican party has been in decline since possibly the 1960s and surely since the 1980s, with a further marked descent since 2000. It is not the first political party to get lots of mileage out of untruths. Esteemed Democrat JFK won the presidency due in part to his damning, though inaccurate charge that that his predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, had allowed a terrifying missile disadvantage vis-a-vis the USSR.

But I have additional motivation with respect to the Republican party: I fear that the US without a competent opposition to Democrats is a less robust, less philosophically muscular country. However, to my great regret, the current Republican party has forfeited that role by increasingly allying itself with the influences of xenophobia, bigotry, paranoia, and anti-science. (On a given issue, I might agree or disagree with a Republican position.) We can find small mindedness, short-term focus, careerism, fudging, and spinning, along with problems of agency in politicians of both parties. Each party condemns the other about actions for which it itself is guilty, for example, in recent years we’ve seen the reversal of which party is on which side of the Senate’s cloture rule.

Both parties stoop to intentionally quoting statements out of context in their arguments. For years Republicans have kept up an incessant drum beat of lies about Obama’s Democratic administration despite their being simply untrue, such as Obama’s “apology tour” or Obamacare’s inclusion of death panels. Neither was true, but the drum beat was too energizing to sacrifice to mere truth. In my opinion, however, while I’d not proclaim the Democratic party blameless, for the past fifteen years Republican conduct has been the most shameful.

Of course, bad things happen in every administration. It’s never difficult to find things to criticize and well-deserved aspersions to cast. Unfortunately, it is hard to assess those aspersions, since the honesty of both parties may be in question and any issue’s importance may be misrepresented. As to importance, the rule seems to be that any act of the opposition that can be shown to be shady or questionable becomes important regardless of how trivial it is. What we can know is that choosing which charges to make and how crucial to say they are can never be trusted as unbiased and proportional.

Democrats, for example, would charge that the unending Benghazi investigations may have revealed unfortunate or unacceptable behaviors, but compared to George Bush’s plunging the Middle East into a complex, extensive, and costly war is like comparing a skin rash to cancer. But whatever the wrongdoings that might be discovered about Benghazi, is it not curious that Republican elected officials have investigated the skin rash with a righteous fervor they never exhibited with respect to the cancer? They apparently value their role in making partisan points greater than their obligation as public servants, the role to which they were elected and for which they took an oath. All taken together, there is nothing done by the Obama administration or the Democratic party since the start of the century that comes close to Republican misdeeds.

Republicans have evolved into the anti-science party (see my post “Scientists (that’s plural!) define science,” August 19, 2013), substituting political judgment for scientific consensus whenever ignorance might be courted. They have reduced biology and climate science to political issues. Copernicus, Galileo, and Darwin would have been right at home, having their highly disciplined truth-finding judged by magistrates and priests. Federal scientific advisory committees have been diluted with non-scientist Republicans beginning as early as the George Bush administration, in an attempt to avoid any “unacceptable facts,” hardly the action of a party interested foremost in facts rather than dogma. Congressional hearings carefully select outlier scientists to corroborate political positions instead of the reverse.

The party has dishonored an earlier history of substantive concepts and those “intellectual bearings” Matt Lewis mentioned: its mistaken belief that blocking ideas constitutes producing ideas, to risking the country’s financial health for small partisan victories, to treating compromise and playing by the rules as unnecessary, to outright lies and deception, and recently to conducting “debates” as if reruns of the Jerry Springer Show. Pity. The Republican party (along with unaffiliated conservatives) was at one time a party of political concepts that gave us William F. Buckley, Morton Blackwell, and—to go back further in the history of conservative thought—Edmund Burke and a number of America’s Founders themselves. It is not necessary for either Republicans or Democrats to agree with these thinkers, but it is important to recognize what is lost when the lowest common denominator of judgment and intellect replaces them. Today’s Republican party has given us George Bush, Sarah Palin, and Fox News clown Glenn Beck among other intellectual leaders.

Disinformation is a political strategy, one that hampers citizens’ ability to make rational decisions in complex matters. Millions of conservatives, sustained and abetted by the party, carried the torch of disinformation by spreading preposterous claims about Barack Obama and Democrat officials. I have reviewed many of these, often taking time to check their authenticity, sometimes engaging the senders. If anything was more pronounced than the implausible rumors, it was the attitude of senders that seemed to be if the farfetched claims aided their cause, then accuracy mattered little or none.

Did Democrats act as if everything George Bush did was wrong? Unwilling to limit their criticisms to only the obvious and massive mistakes, some Democrats did just that. It is a human characteristic to slip into unfair criticisms and can be found in any party and about any party. I have known Democrats, for example, to act as if Bush’s time at his ranch was a dereliction of duty, just as inconsequential as similar charges Republicans have made about Obama. The difference is that in the past seven years, the Republican party raised unwarranted criticism and counterfactual deceptions to an art form. When I watch the angry, shouting, sometimes violent behavior at a Donald Trump rally, I see people understandably angry due to their own real pain and fear, but also misinformed by the Republican falsehoods. Obama is a Muslim. Obama wasn’t really born a citizen. Obama is ripping American apart. Obama is a socialist. Obama is responsible for divisions in the country. Obama ignores the Constitution.

Although the Fox News faithful have been shown to be less informed about national and international events, you can be sure they are certain about where blame lies for any problem that comes up. No one seems to care whether the stories are accurate or “fair and balanced,” just that they fit fans’ brain receptors like a drug. Years of such aided ignorance brought the nation almost far enough to pave the way for Obama’s defeat four years ago. We shall see if doubling down on similar disinformation and innuendo will usher a Republican into the White House this year. And that brings me to this year’s debates.

The unbelievable antics of Republican party candidates for president are, well, beyond belief. Continued descent into Jerry Springer Show politics brings us closer to its becoming the new normal. We have already developed an inability to grasp how disastrous it could be for the globe’s most powerful country to toy with political psychosis. Observers outside the US have reason to worry about so powerful a nation exhibiting paranoia and anti-intellectualism. While the Democratic contenders fight it out almost totally on policy issues, their Republican counterparts conduct a verbal slugfest. At times, they’ve seemed to be trying to out-Christian each other (see my post “Democrats vs. theocrats,” January 30, 2016), to out-condemn “political correctness” in each other (see my post “Political correctness,” April 20, 2014), and to out-shout each other with sins of Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Do they debate policies? Yes, somewhat, though there is a tendency only to bring up issues that enable an anti-Obama political point to be made. In any event, grownups are in short supply. I wonder if the candidates, if asked, would say their performance adds to the vaunted American exceptionalism or detracts from it (see my post “American exceptionalism, American bloviation,” November 11, 2015).

Let’s turn to another drama I call “A Justice Delayed is Justice Denied.” Due to the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the Republican party has to deal with more than its embarrassing primaries behavior. A less conservative justice than Scalia will change the tilt of the court for years. Understandably irritating to Republicans is that the sitting president has the job of nominating a replacement and the job of the Senate is to “advise and consent.” There is no Constitution provision that excuses assigned duties just because a party doesn’t care to perform. The country was titillated or shocked (depending on party), by the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s announcement that, despite the Constitutional obligation, the Senate would simply not do its job; that is, even if Obama faithfully performs, the Senate will not. This irresponsible action—supported by most Republicans in Congress—is not just a matter of disagreement on some policy decision, but far worse. It is an intentional change in the Constitutional rules, as if a football team unilaterally changes the rules to its benefit during the game.

(McConnell, as Republican leader, famously declared at the beginning of Obama’s first term that the “number one goal” of Republicans was to make Obama a “one-term president.” Funny, one would think any party’s main goal would have something to do with fulfilling the responsibilities of governing, in fact to perform so well that its political chances are increased honestly. (What happened to the concept of “loyal opposition”? Republican Congressional behavior after that point was, in fact, consistent with its less-than-patriotic goal.)

Republicans’ stated justification for this kind of contemptable action varies, but is often rather transparent. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley compared Obama to King George III—for his ostensible “executive overreach,” in any event also a tactic of Bush. Grassley hadn’t noticed that. Senator John Cornyn said that if Obama nominates someone, Senate Republicans will make “a piñata” of the nominee—that said with no idea who the nominee will be! Moreover, said Cornyn, “I don’t think the voters are really interested in seeing the ideological balance of the court changed for the next 30 years by a lame duck president.” Of course, it is not “voters,” but Republicans who might feel that way. Cornyn has no idea what voters want and doesn’t care. Nor does it matter. McConnell and his colleagues have decided that no president—no, this president—should be allowed a nominee in the last year of his (or her) term.

Compounding the dishonor, the Republican establishment began a rumor that refraining from nomination in a president’s final year is a time-honored practice. It is not. This tactic should not surprise us, for the right wing of House Republicans has acted that way since early victories of the Tea Party. Lying and obstructionism, not governing, have become an acceptable theme of political leadership. Authoritative repetition substitutes for truthfulness until the lie is believed as truth; that is closer to 1984 than is comfortable.

We’re at a dangerous and embarrassing position. It is dangerous because the political machinery, at least on the Republican side, is more engaged in its hyper-partisanship than doing its job for the country. It is embarrassing because the United States, the self-described indispensable country, is disgracing itself at the highest levels with uncivil and childish antics, wallowing in incompetence at facing and resolving diverse opinions, and shunning the science which has contributed to our ascent. This may turn out just to be a bad period, one in which we recover from humiliating political freefall as actually has happened before (e.g., the Jefferson/Adams campaign). But leaving that recovery to chance is excruciating [END OF 2016 POST HERE], frightening, and irresponsible.

Part Two

Two years later, on June 16, 2015 Donald John Trump, host of an NBC reality show, “The Apprentice,” memorably descended an escalator in his New York Fifth Avenue tower to announce his candidacy for the 2016 Republican nomination for president. He had considered that long-shot move for 27 years. His winning would be impossible . . . until the unexpected happened.

Fewer than 43 months have gone by since January 20, 2017 when Donald Trump became president—though never became presidential. The Republican party dismissed one clue after another as Trump distorted the presidency, overlooked the equality of Constitutional Branches, misrepresented and lied about facts, and bullied the Senate into impotence. Month by month Republican senators became his cheering chorus, forsaking their vows and dishonoring their Constitutional responsibilities. This formerly proud “greatest deliberative body in the world”—symbolically the “First Branch of American government” due to its placement in the Constitution—turned much of its lawful authority over to the unfit president who would use their constituents against them. The august, 232 year old office of President of the United States has been tainted, its integrity sapped by a hollow man and his accomplices who despite their vows espoused and defended his many perfidies (see my post “Trying an impeached president,” January 20, 2020). The office that formerly could “make the man,” this internationally respected office has become at least for now—with Republican blessing—diminished to the level of a single incompetent, narcissistic, unethical, nonempathetic, and autocratic man in only 3½ years. Indeed, this man has “made the office” to his liking. The United States Presidency has been egregiously cheapened.

Next

The nation is gripped in the tragedies of a runaway pandemic, tropical storm Isaias, economic disaster, and civil unrest over racial injustice (confronted by armed, Trump-ordered forces). This post has dealt with how I saw circumstances in the United States three to four years ago, circumstances that set the stage for what I wish to address briefly in my next post. Where are we now? What may be next? How can it be avoided? I’ll not cover those questions in detail nor with informed, predictive accuracy, being perfectly prophetic is far beyond me. However, I can assure you that my next post will be far shorter than this one, but much more important.

The world struggles with the new coronavirus China’s President Ji learned of in late 2019, and that America’s President Trump learned of in the opening days of 2020. More than six months later, many countries of the world have conducted themselves impressively. The country that has long fancied itself the most advanced finds it’s no more to be envied than Russia and Brazil. In fact, according to Statistica, of countries over 4 million population and over 5 thousand confirmed cases, only Chile, Kuwait, and Peru exceed the United States in Covid-19 cases per million inhabitants. Welcome to Trump’s America.

In China and the United States, the instinctive choice for each national leader was to cover up, minimize, or ignore what their scientists knew could become a threatening dark cloud over earth’s 7.8 billion human beings. Mr. Trump, after first praising, then castigating Mr. Ji, then chastised the World Health Organization for being “soft on China.” Eager to avoid any responsibility, thus maintaining his handy, defensive victim status, Trump and his far-right cheerleaders authored a new conspiracy theory, to wit: the virus was a hoax spread by Democrats. The lyrics of that song were getting a little old, though, so he conceded the virus but minimized the danger.

That enabled him to demonstrate both his calm control of the fearsome bug and his ability to take prompt action to deal with it, thereby leaping tall buildings in a single bound. Well, you know the story, that is, if you don’t rely on White House releases or perhaps Fox News. Needless to say, it’s been hard to miss Trump’s bragging about his wise choices, frequently against everyone else’s less beautiful ones. He still can’t stop talking about blocking air passengers arriving from China, seen as minimally useful by virus-spread specialists. As would be expected from past performances, Trump continued with a sequence of uninformed and sometimes idiotic statements, all seemingly with one aim: to show he knew more about viruses than the generals…(ahem)…the physicians, virologists, and epidemiologists.

Life is tough for a stable genius. It would be embarrassing not to know all the answers. So you’d assume even your conjectures are better than years of study by so-called “experts.” Question: When will this deadly calamity go away? A: By spring when weather warms up. Q: When will we no longer have fifteen cases? A: Very soon it will be near zero. Q: What about our first confirmed case in Washington state? A: We do have a plan and we think it’s going to be handled very well, we’ve already handled it very well [sic]. Spoken from Olympus makes such speculations no less amateur than would have a oiji board.

That list of Trump guesses is informative, not to mention lengthy, but they’ve little to do with truth. They are about Trump choosing what to guess. His slipshod practice regarding reality demands making this point: When a source that inquirers have a reasonable expectation of being authoritative and trustworthy—let’s say, the President of the United States—a shoot from the hip or mere hope constitutes a lie.

This morning, for example, Trump commented that he disagrees with Dr. Fauci (on what basis, one wonders!), after all, as circulated by Trumpists, “first Dr. Fauci said “don’t wear masks,” now he says to “wear them.” Only news geeks who follow closely, can see that is a poorly informed “gotcha.” Trump repeated the misinformation as if it makes sense, although it is true. Aha, see? The vaunted expert should be unvaunted! We trust our president, not some sawbones we never elected. To his discredit, Trump chose not to clarify that Fauci’s earlier proposal occurred months before when sufficient masks were unavailable, therefore should be reserved for vulnerable healthcare workers. Fauci changed his recommendation when masks became plentiful, available to all Americans. When an authoritative source that Americans have a reasonable expectation of being quoted accurately—let’s say, by the President of the United States—a failure to clarify factors relevant to that accuracy constitutes a lie.

This post is titled “Trump’s American pandemic” to make clear I am not blaming him for China’s or WHO’s errors, but I do blame him for most of the shambles he has caused in America’s handling of Covid-19, including most of its deaths and suffering, and for both the substance and the appearance of America’s incompetence in the world even prior to viral assistance.

Had he been able in intelligence and managerial understanding—now he is incompetent in both—to actually be the wartime president he grandiosely claims to be, he would have called upon Fauci and others for a rapid tutoring in virology and epidemiology, addressed the federal vs. state Constitutional impasse right away, assigned responsibilities for segments of the whole while not shedding his accountability for the total, assigned White House and Departmental roles to experienced, capable persons rather than choices like Jared and others not big enough for the job, shared all these actions openly and without secrecy, forbid on pain of banishment any “political games” that threaten the overall mission.

Leadership is greatly needed, yet impossible from this president.  in life or death terms to hundreds of thousands. He is no leader and is incapable of becoming one in a few months. He is not alone, of course, but his announced irresponsibility, his ignorance cloaked in certainty, his demand of reverence from others, his political bullying of Republican office holders, his usual self-flattery, and other actions that consistently reveal his motivation comes not from what is best for American’s health, but from the day to day aggrandizement of Donald Trump.

Now this shallow, authoritarian pretender to the presidency has the audacity to request re-election, for the despotism he’s begun is not yet complete.

The fish does, indeed, rot from the head.

When I was a child my mother called bad behavior “ugly.” The word can imply bad appearance, but she usually meant improper conduct (mine). On January 20, 2016 Donald Trump’s inaugural speech portrayed an America of disorder, shambles, and ruination. To me, his dystopian reference conveyed ugliness of the physical kind, like unsightly streets, dirty factories, run-down schools, and deteriorating public buildings. But as his presidency unfolded, Trump’s most obvious influence was not on unsafe dams and bridges, urban rot, and decay of roadways, the carnage I thought he criticized.

He might have had a better record if he’d really known how to diagnose and “drain the swamp,” “hire only the best people,” realize he might not actually “know more than the generals,” and prepare national leadership for unlikely but catastrophic possibilities. Trump’s failures are shockingly obvious unless you’ve years ago decided he is god’s anointed, therefore must be believed and protected . . . as do large segments of evangelical Christianity, Republican officials, and Republicans in general (minus those millions who at long last traded their veneration for reality).

Leaders can have another kind of success or failure—in role modelling rather than in material job performance. (Performance failure and modelling failure are not so distinctly separated as that suggests. But perfect dissimilarity is not required to discuss the differences.) In a democracy, for example, it is not enough for a leader to produce economic satisfaction, military preparedness, and trains running on time. There’s a vacuity if he or she is not also trustworthy, considerate, encouraging, and altruistic in character. These are not specific products or achievements, and perhaps not easily calibrated. But without them, no matter the objective achievements of a leader, a soulless gap is left, one only addressed by the earnest touch of an authentic human sensitive to the needs and feelings of others.

This post differs from others I’ve written, my having chosen to emphasize Trump’s incompetence, totalitarian ambitions, and the reckless damage he’s wrought. His “l’état, c’est moi” narcissism motivates his attempts not to lead the United States, so much as to be the United States. Note how often he equates America and Trump. It is no wonder that he brings out the worst in us, not our best. The result is a country wherein otherwise miniscule amounts of undesirable characteristics—for we all have some—are incited and roused. America has become a harsher, cruder, coarser country. We are less inclined to respect each other, more able to countenance mistreatment of children at our southern border, and unconcerned by bullying a small country that trusted us to assist its growth of democracy. He has criticized female lawmakers’ appearance, regularly ‘punches down’ against persons of less power, rants at journalists for simply doing their jobs, unilaterally discards Inspectors General. He has not only botched Americans’ Coronavirus-19 response, throwing all responsibility on others, but due to his malfeasance wantonly caused deaths.

I’m sure my late mother’s words would not have come to mind if Trump had turned out to be kind, thoughtful, honest, and competent. But his personality, conduct, and character are simply ugly. His unkindness, cheating, mocking, and bullying have become increasingly vile. His endless self-references hijack any conversation ostensibly about national issues. He was and remains an unpleasant person, a dreadful role model though it seems he doesn’t understand other-directed responsibility. He’s well versed in “look at me,” though “how are you?” is useful only for redirection to the former. He is ugly in both ways my mother meant. We the electorate made the egregious error in 2016 of entrusting a person with such odious features with the highest position in the land.

Donald Trump is an ugly man and an ugly president . . . without commitment to America or Americans or worldwide humanity, without thoughtfulness, without character, without ethics, without integrity, without empathy, without decency, and without honor. And perhaps most toxic, these attributes are spreading across America like a virus.

We Americans are often accused of being uninterested in anything outside our borders except vacation travel. Curiously, though, our “citizens of the world” credentials may be enhanced by the global nature of Covid-19. However much we botch our pandemic response, we can’t help but be largely in the same boat as most of the world. Our behavior in the boat, though, may also demonstrate our discomfort in being there, partly due to the current spat between us and the World Health Organization. WHO has its problems including bureaucratic inflexibility, but still is a significant international actor against disease and poverty. If WHO is more favorable to China than the U.S. president finds acceptable, that is regrettable. Still, WHO is a major source of help for countries around the world.

Against that backdrop, President Trump withdrew American revenues—said to be about half of WHO’s budget, claiming that WHO has been “severely mismanaging and covering up the spread of the coronavirus,” that “the organization is overly influenced by China, and was too trusting of China, particularly in the early phase of the outbreak,” and that “it had delayed raising the alarm on the threat posed by the new coronavirus.” WHO claims, however, the virus was “identified on January 7^th” and “shared [with the world] on the 12th.”

Some—this includes me—say by attacking WHO, Trump is seeking to deflect blame away from his own administration’s problems in containing the virus. We the general public don’t know the truth yet. We know statements by Trump can never be assumed to be true, and his paranoia can be overwhelming, with or without supportive facts. We know he engages his schoolyard vengeance even at the cost of inattention to more important issues. We know he’s proud of punching back harder than he’s been punched. Any Trump engagement must be scanned for these distractions.

Of course, those childish characteristics do not mean that what he contends is untrue, just that we can’t tell until later, if we ever know at all. If he is right, there’s time later to take whatever action is called for. But if he is wrong, his angry, toddler-ish thoughtlessness would make America look not only like overreacting idiots but show once again—in bullying Trumpian fashion—that America has little use for the rest of the world.

*I am indebted to Daniel W. Drezner for borrowing part of the title of his March 2020 book, The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency.

Our uncanny, national experience with Donald Trump and his indulgent supporters has subjected Americans to an inside view of how autocracy can grow from deterioration of a constitutional democracy. There are ways to describe the disturbing phenomenon, many of which I’ve cited in previous posts. A simple query occurred to me last week as the coronavirus threatened our health while enlightening us in the way Trump behaves. It is this: is there anything Trump supporters would find embarrassing about this unfit president?

Anything? Apparently, his uninformed statements, mean-spirited pronouncements, trigger-happy reactions, trust of hunches over science, mistreatment of long time friends and allies, and disregard for the Constitution seem not to bother them. Like parents who coddle whatever misbehavior their unruly child inflicts on the neighbors, all Republican senators except one openly exhibited their irresponsibility in the impeachment acquittal. Unspoken was American senators’ sacrifice of the country to avoid Trump’s vengeance by tweets and payback in the next election.

On a happier note, I’ve carefully watched the daily presentations of the Pence task force and found it to have a more refreshingly credible, professional, and careful voice to come out of the White House in some time. Except for Pence’s obligatory slavish praise for Trump, this competent group seems focused on coronavirus facts rather than ways to blame Obama, on precision in what is conveyed, and on the backbone to contradict Trump’s continual misinformation. How encouraging it is to have grownups around the table!

They appear to know the secret to keeping their concentration on expertise, facts, and solutions rather than hunches and political blaming. Unlike Trump and most of the rest of us, they have a deep knowledge of the science and logistics involved. Further, they seem to have minimized how much the president makes the complicated matter more difficult and Americans more confused. Their best tactic going forward might be to keep Trump out of the room, away from microphones, and mute on giving advice.

His presidency is well-suited for the largely fact-free rallies that subject his equally fact-free bellowing base to unending campaigning. In that setting, he needn’t attend to facts, difficult decisions, or a presidential base that extends to an entire country, just simply to those more angry than informed. His type of campaigning offers him latitude for his untruthful and often frankly stupid behavior. It does not require the thoughtfulness so critical in his day job, so even massive disinformation in a rally ostensibly does less damage than if he were speaking from what he’s transformed into his Offal Office (forgive me; that’s not a typo).

Donald Trump, with the backing and protection of Mitch McConnell, Bill Barr, and most Republicans is not just a foolish and temporary irritant to the country and its carefully designed systems. As long as Trump is in office, he is already and will remain an existential threat to what most Americans want to preserve about America. The time is growing shorter for his supporters—particularly the elected officials among them—to reverse the appalling risks they’ve been enabling. The monster Republicans have birthed and developed is already winning.

Their own behavior, as is his, is not remotely ethical, much less patriotic, for it is devastatingly injurious to America and is, therefore, unambiguously un-American.

Like most readers of this blog, I grew up with a strong interest in U. S. government, a youthful patriotism, and a whole-hearted belief in American democracy. That democracy, I believed, was not only reliable but permanently established. I brought that confidence with me into military service. When I was discharged several years later my conviction remained just as robust, undimmed by military experience. As a civilian, although I became less credulous my basic trust in America was not damaged until the presidency of Donald Trump. Politicians I’d once trusted were willing to give him free range to strip the country of its greatest asset.

This blog (JohnJustThinking), begun in mid-2013, didn’t initially focus on presidential politics but on religious liberty, origins of morality, and church/state issues. Foreseeing what has by now become obvious, however, in September and October of 2016 I published two posts pointing out Trump’s despotic danger to America. Why? This was no regular presidential candidate—not just an instance of Republican versus Democrat—but one so unfit for office as to endanger the republic. His fitness did not improve following the November election. He did not become more “presidential,” nor did he become more truthful, more knowledgeable about, or committed to the Constitution. He was uninterested in the rule of law except as an impediment that deserved only to be kicked aside.

Many Republicans, though not all, saw through Trump’s pathological narcissism, realizing a tragic mistake had been made by the electorate. They continued for a while to see Trump with the same disgust as they did in pre-election debates. For some Trumpists, Hillary Clinton’s phrase “deplorables” was as apt as it was politically unwise. Actually, of course, most Republicans understood the Constitution, the rule of law, and the damage of forsaking truth, quite unlike the shallow, unthoughtful way Trump did, that is, if he ever considered them at all.

But Republican leaders in increasingly shameful, risky increments decided to compromise, ignoring Ben Franklin’s adaptation of a Latin phrase, “if you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.” After all, this ignorant, unprincipled man had been honestly elected to the same office as George Washington, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln, and Ronald Reagan. Clearly, Trump was not a Republican, but he could be real Republicans’ instrument for transforming the judiciary and reaching other conservative aspirations despite his egregious flaws, fleas be damned.

But the would-be masters became the servants, as often happens when compromisers think they have the upper hand. Republicans in the House and Senate (the majority party in both for two years at that time) would be able to educate the loutish but unexperienced newcomer. Therefore, real Republicans with the strength of greater numbers and more skilled understanding of parliamentary maneuvers could keep him in line. But they underestimated Trump’s dogged determination and his disregard for the rules they knew by heart.

His was not a proficiency like theirs, but more a raw, undisciplined law of the jungle that recognizes no norms. Thus it was that Trump did not become more like real Republicans except in a few self-serving ways. Real Republicans became more like him, not just in abandoning truth, but in attitudes about deficits, trade, domestic free markets, rule of law, limited presidential power, checks and balances, and the vaunted Constitution itself. The Republican party was no more, having become in all but name, the Trump Party.

But recognition that a new party has developed from the ashes of the old was by no means the worst part. The gravest aspect of all these phenomena is the chipping away of America’s status as a long-established democratic republic. Trump and those who’ve become his minions have ushered in a sequence of changes that dangerously mimics an irreversible slip toward autocracy.

Consider the personalization of the presidency (a la Louis XIV’s “l’etat, c’est moi”). Observe his acting as if the majesty of the office is his, not the people’s. Cringe as he treats employees of the nation as if they are day laborers holding jobs due to his twisted definition of loyalty to himself. Be ashamed that we disrespect America’s patriots by empowering a presidency driven by personal revenge, loss of political safeguards, one man’s pathological narcissism, a despicably weak Republican Senate and, for two years, Republican House.

Am I comparing Donald to Adolf? No; things haven’t gone that far and, I trust, never will, though taking even a small risk of such disaster goes far beyond unwise. Useful comparisons can be made, however, to changes that typically precede loss of respected norms and rule of law, even in minor ways toward unbridled misuse of power, weakening of the free press, control of information, and berating (and threatening) individuals who use Congressionally established whistle blower laws, a useful managerial tool especially in very large organizations though Trump construe them as personal disloyalty.

Needless to say and particularly evident in the recent impeachment proceedings, Trump’s sycophants—seeking to escape his wrath or earn his favor—defended and protected him in ways that with their own pre-Trump values they’d have scorned. Senate Republicans demonstrated how far Trump has crushed their previous civic morality. Their craven behavior now would have severely embarrassed, even mortified those pre-Trump selves.

The president emerged spewing vengeance, reprisal, misunderstanding of democracy, bullying, disregard for the Constitution, and undisciplined conduct of his office. Yet we cannot overlook that Trump might be a negligible problem if his malevolence had not been protected and even adopted by most of the Republican Party. Republicans in the Senate and House dirtied themselves by neglecting their obligation to the nation, leaving Trump to abuse power as he wished. During Trump’s post-acquittal display of childish anger, high level officials, eager to enable his behavior, supported him with their adolescent laughter, cheering the reckless remarks delivered more like an authoritarian strongman than an American president.

No surprise. Donald Trump is not chastened. He is not bowed. He is, in fact, strengthened. His supporters disgracefully continue to foist his presidency upon the America to which they swore an empty allegiance. Their honor is as besmirched as is his to whom we as a people in grave error granted the presidency and stewardship over not only civic decency but whatever American exceptionalism and goodness we have left.

 *    *    *    *    *    *

Of 214 essays that I have written and posted to this blog since launching it in mid-2013, the following 37 are largely or exclusively focused on Donald Trump. All 214 posts can be accessed by month or by topic using the lists to the right.

1. “America’s celebration of ignorance,” Sept. 26, 2016.
2. “October relief…sort of, Trump’s still here,” Oct. 28, 2016.
3. “Please, Mr. President Elect,” Nov. 15, 2016.
4. “What does a proto despot look like?” Dec. 12, 2016.
5. “Flirting with fascism in Trump’s America,” Jan. 23, 2017.
6. “Trump and the new American truth,” Feb. 10, 2017.
7. “Despot Don,” Feb. 27, 2017.
8. “Congratulations, Trump voters,” Mar. 6, 2017.
9. “You and I deserve Despot Donnie,” Mar. 20, 2017.
10. “Prerequisites for the presidency,” May 30, 2017.
11. “Our republic…if we can keep it,” July 3, 2017.
12. “Fish rot from the head,” Aug. 18, 2017.
13. “Moral courage and the Trump threat,” Nov. 30, 2017.
14. “Aiding and abetting injury to America,” Jan. 6, 2018.
15. “A disgraceful leader implicates all,” June 19, 2018.
16. “Trusting our leaker-in-chief in Russia,” June 22, 2018.
17. “Mr. de Tocqueville, we got the government we deserve,” July 18, 2018.
18. “Trump is NOT America’s problem,” Sep 10, 2018.
19. “Enemies of the people,” Nov. 1, 2018.
20. “Risking America,” Jan. 3, 2019.
21. “The great wall of Cyrus,” Jan. 10, 2019.
22. “A plea to my United States Senator,” Jan 26, 2019.
23. “That wall between us,” Feb. 7, 2019.
24. “Political philosophy, political behavior,” Mar. 18, 2019.
25. “Mueller and beyond,” Mar. 25th, 2019.
26. “The shaming of America,” Apr. 18, 2019.
27. “Republicans light just one little candle,” Apr. 21, 2019.
28. “Vehicle versus destination,” May 22, 2019.
29. “America’s risk of autocracy,” May 27, 2019.
30. “America after Trump,” July 19, 2019.
31. “The Republican conspiracy,” Aug. 27, 2019.
32. “Red caps to tin pot,” Oct. 17, 2019.
33. “Lying for god and party,” Sep. 1, 2019.
34. “Lemmings, not leaders,” Oct. 24, 2019.
35. “The president is above the law,” Dec. 19, 2020.
36. “Decline of American governance and homo sapiens,” Jan. 13, 2020.
37. “The Senate has failed,” Feb. 3, 2020.

If you’ve spent hours watching Mitch McConnell’s pathetic impeachment trial as have my wife and I, I send condolences. A measure of relief is on the way with Wednesday’s Senate vote when the Trump Party (formerly GOP) majority in the Senate will acquit Donald Trump, a result they announced before the trial began. (Hmmm; who mislaid the oaths?) Oh, well, one upside of a sham trial is an assured outcome, even leaving room for superficial stateliness.

All the president’s men and women steadfastly avoided direct testimony of even one relevant witness unavailable during the impeachment inquiry. They even argued that the House, not having access to useful testimony, performed poorly enough to excuse Republicans from seeking sensitive testimony it when became available. Net outcome: The Senate’s mockery of the Constitution will effortlessly authorize Trump’s right to Make America Grovel (to him) Again.

The House’s impeachment investigation of Trump’s duplicity may have had errors, though for the most part those errors were due to Trump’s having made critical information either unavailable or difficult and time-consuming to attain. “What’s the rush?” one might ask? The impeachment turned in part on election cheating by Trump in his 2020 election bid, cheating he began at least as early as mid-2019. Awaiting court action, even if achieved, would likely have given him longer to continue the practice. Senate errors, however, consist of supporting Trump’s lawyers instead of acting like an honest jury. Individual senators, as did the lawyers, kept up a running display of confused logic.

Because the House due to Trump’s stonewalling could not complete all desirable work on its preparation for Senate trial, the Senate complained that it is “not its job to do the House’s work,” a ludicrous position. As far as I know, it is correct that the Senate doesn’t have to do the House’s work for it. But there was nothing stopping the Senate from issuing subpoenas itself if it were actually seeking to fulfill its responsibility to have a fair trial. (The term “fair trial” was used repeatedly in these past several days. No problem there as long as we remember that “fair” means fair to the country as well as fair to Trump.)

The president’s lawyers often claimed points that were more drama than logic. One example is that senators and Trump’s lawyers frequently pointed out that removing Trump from office would be tantamount to reversing a legitimate election. Silly phrasing was used, for example, to blame House managers for wanting to “tear up voters’ ballots.” The implication was that elections should never be reversed. No one seemed to notice that the Constitutional option for removal always reverses a president’s most recent election; it cannot be otherwise.

It was clear from the beginning that most senators agreed to participate in McConnell’s sham, repeatedly refusing to deal with flaws in Trump’s actions, often making either amateur or illogical excuses. There have even been avowals of the “it’s just politics” sort, that expecting Republican senators to harshly judge a Republican president is just too much to ask. Perhaps the Founders were naïve to think that being in the same party would not make honest service to the country impossible.

Senators Howard Baker, Barry Goldwater, and other Republican senators convinced President Nixon to resign his office ahead of impeachment proceedings. (I was more-or-less Republican at the time and knew Senator Baker, whose ethics in putting the country first made him a hero to me, a Tennessean.) Pardon my unsophisticated expectation, but no candidate who fails to meet that test should ever be elected or re-elected to the Senate. Is that a harsh test met by few? Yes, it is. But would anyone contend that the country doesn’t deserve it? Oh, my mistake; the Senate Republicans just did!

The president’s lawyers regularly shaded the truth, hoping no doubt to fool the TV audience and perhaps some of the Republican senators, many of whom then parroted the dodgy claims. One such notion was that you surely can’t remove a president over a phone call. Senators not intelligent enough to see its absurdity or who considered voters too stupid to see through the claim would then repeat it to journalists.

Other weak points with similarly devious phrasing were part of the usual attorneys’ set of tricks, so it is missing the point to blame them rather than their clients. Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt in The New York Times last week pointed out Pat Cipollone’s presence in the infamous Mulvaney, Bolton, Giuliani strategy meeting with Trump in May. Cipollone, as counsel, couldn’t also be a witness like Bolton, et al., of course, as even non-lawyers know. Although I don’t know the way, but there certainly is the will to cheat the system if possible.

We did learn a lot from Trump’s defense lawyers in this make-believe trial, including Wednesday last week when Alan Dershowitz stunned us all with a gem suitably weird enough for Trump himself: “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.” To consider the implications of that position, I recommend Dana Milbank’s January 30th Washington Post op-ed, “The impeachment trial hurtles toward its worst-case conclusion.”

What the president has on Republican senators must be powerful stuff. It’s no surprise that, for example, Marsha Blackburn sounds dimwitted when she explains her vote. Ditto for Lindsay Graham who hasn’t even tried to sound either judicious or honest. But it is a waste of time to understand almost all other Republican senators who decided party means far more to them than patriotism. By now, though, Republican senators have had plenty of practice at making Trump happy while pretending to honor their oaths to the country. In fact, the constitutional duties of the Senate have been ignored and pretty much replaced with the care and feeding of Trump. Oh, that’s just politics.

No, it isn’t. And if it is, shame on us, all of us, the American electorate for putting up with it for decades as part of our folk wisdom, then are unprepared to oppose it when big dilemmas come along. We’ve been fortunate not to have lost this great democratic experiment long ago, for happily most presidents have not had Trump’s level of ignorance, incompetence, dishonesty, and downright evil.

Trump’s unfit personal characteristics have been known since years before 2016. But there have been events making the performance of his presidency even more dangerous. Consider these items with their possible effects in mind (I’ve borrowed this sequence from Senator Kamala Harris):

Nixon said “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” Prior to his election, Trump said, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” After his election, Trump said the Constitution’s Article II gives him “the right to do whatever [he] want[s] as president.” After the Mueller investigation found Trump’s otherwise prosecutable crimes, he could not be indicted due to an internal Department of Justice quirk that exempts sitting presidents from indictment. Then as Trump’s “inappropriate” action toward Ukraine began to fall apart, Republicans protected him at each shameful stage of “it didn’t happen,” all the way to “it happened but isn’t impeachable.” Finally, Alan Dershowitz presented Trump the ultimate get out of jail free card. Wouldn’t any of us, especially if our own ethics were weak, by now have legitimately gotten the point that when partisanship of this type and degree rules the day, in fact the president actually can do anything he wants.

Most Republican senators finally began to risk offending Trump by agreeing that his conduct was “inappropriate,” “wrong,” or whatever spineless wrist slap they could find just so that their coddling of Trump would enable him to define his win as being “not impeachable” or anything he liked. (Sorry, but he had already been impeached. The issue is whether he’d need a change-of-address card from wherever he’d launch his next real estate scam. Remember, Trump is constantly on the look for cookie jars to stick his hands into, whatever the dimensions they may be.) We may need to wait only a few days before he will define the Senate’s coming acquittal as exoneration or perhaps proof that his phone call was “perfect.”

But, very, very seriously, is there a single senator worth his or her salt who thinks Trump, now chastened by the House impeachment, will become a model president, never tell a lie, stop inflaming half the electorate, cease offending America’s allies, avoid taking impulsive actions that risk war, and other perfidies he’s not yet learned? Of course not. After all, “Trump will be Trump” has been just another way of saying “The personal characteristics that comprise his unfitness are what we have had and what we will have.

So tell me why that near certainty does not put a different spin on what justifies his “removability; he is now emboldened more than ever before.” If anything, we have reason to be alarmed that Trump’s future in the White House will bring more horrors. Has the Senate never heard, as Senator Murkowski quoted recently, “If you attack a king, be sure you kill him…you don’t want an injured king.” We have reason to believe that this president’s paranoia and vengeance have cost America greatly already and will go still further in ways not yet imagined.

He will persist in attacking the rule of law, disregarding Constitutional roles of courts and legislators, preparing for global climate change, and even weaning the country off truth itself. I fear Republicans, thoroughly ensnared by Trump, will continue to endorse this unethical man-child’s jeopardizing of our country and its institutions.

As Murkowski also accurately said, “As an institution, the Congress has failed.”

As the impeachment trial of Donald Trump gets underway in earnest, those who are not following the fine points of the process and the roles of the various actors may find the goings-on confusing. On the other hand, those who’ve been following the process, re-reading Article 2 of the Constitution, and watching untold hours of television news may themselves also find the goings-on confusing. One reason is that there is variation in how impeachment and the trial that follows it are carried out even though specifics of the Constitution haven’t changed.

Just to clarify a couple of definitions: The process going on this week is not to determine impeachment. Trump was impeached last month, though he is yet to be tried by the Senate. However, whatever turns out to be the Senate action does not erase the fact and indignity of impeachment. Nothing ever removes an impeachment decision; it stands on its own. Be watchful as spokespersons or journalists on either side sometimes misuse the terms. I’ve heard persons who should know better using impeachment to describe impeachment plus trial. The term “impeachment trial” will also be heard occasionally, seemingly to mean only the trial itself.

The Constitution gives the House of Representatives “the sole Power of Impeachment” (Article I, Section 2) of federal officers and gives the Senate “the sole Power to try all Impeachments” (Article I, Section 3), thus the constitutional sequence is (first) impeachment and (second) a trial followed by exoneration or removal from office. Using terms as they are used in criminal cases, House action is like a grand jury bringing charges and Senate action decides guilt, much like a jury. There are differences, however, in that there is no judge equivalent, though the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has some similar functions, but not all. (Even the Chief Justice’s decisions can be reversed by the Senate.) The charges by the House must be “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” (Article II, Section 4). The Senate, upon conducting a trial, determines a verdict that rules whether the president should be removed from office, that is, has the House made its case about those charges. If so, the president is removed from office forthwith. If not, the process stops and the president remains in office. Nothing, by the way, prohibits the House from launching another impeachment inquiry.

As you can see, the president is not the only officer of the United States who can be impeached; lesser officers can be as well. You likely noted the term federal officers above. Except for those who follow such things in detail, the only person you’ll ever hear about being impeached is the president. Even then, impeachment of a president is a rare event (3 times in history: Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and Andrew Johnson). If you missed the Clinton impeachment (his subsequent trial did not result in removal), it’s quite possible this is the only one you will ever see. President Nixon would have been impeached, but he saw the writing on the wall in time to resign before the House could pass an impeachment vote. If he had been impeached, on a scale of seriousness his case would have fallen between Clinton’s and Trump’s.

As I’ve pointed out in a number of previous posts, the Constitution was adopted at a time when no political parties existed in the sense they do now. That is relevant to the 2020 trial in that elected officials in the House and Senate identify quite as much with their party as with their chamber. The Constitution describes the role of the House and of the Senate, not the roles of parties. Hence, Republican Senators and House members are more politically linked to the president if he or she is Republican than if not. Of course, Democrats fall into the opposing trench. At this time, party bonds are extremely strong, so much so that the Senate since January 2017 has gone to great lengths to forfeit its constitutional independence in favor of pleasing the Republican president. The American political doctrine of separation of powers is on life support.

So we begin a trial tomorrow morning in which Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already declared victory for the president. McConnell has applied considerable pressure to Republican Senators not to break ranks, while Democratic Senators are largely ignored (though they do vote). For a naïve observer of this process, it must look quite strange. Trust your gut; it is. Logic seems out the window in a number of ways. For example, Clinton was impeached for lying under oath about Monica Lewinsky, while Trump was impeached for immensely more important behaviors dealing with national security, bribing a foreign power with a delay of almost $400,000,000 to get help in his election later this year, and blocking relevant Executive Branch documents subpoenaed by the House for its impeachment process.

I have strong opinions about this process and about taking the Constitution seriously, as I’ve made clear in previous posts in this blog. I fear that Trump gravely endangers the rule of law, the separation of powers, and other matters of leadership and Constitution. But I also abhor Trump’s non-impeachable yet despicable behaviors and statements in ways that make the country coarser, less democratic, more shameful on the world stage, less committed to truth, and other loathsome elements of his presidency. Republican Senators and Representatives, the Republican Party nationally, and Trump supporters personally bear massive blame for allowing, even inciting, characteristics that destroy any hope for America to a model for the world. That City on a Hill, perhaps wearing a red cap, has passed us by.

We’ve all heard politicians and political commentators arguing that the impeachment itself was not fair (or it was fair). We will hear that the Senate trial is not fair (or it is fair). We may be adult enough to recognize that either judgment is suspect, dependent a great deal on whose ox is gored and who had prior allegiances going in. But the greater issue is not whether the current Senate trial is fair to President Trump.

The greater issue is whether it is fair to America.

All Republicans and other conservatives would no doubt be wise enough never to hand the keys of their new muscle car to their unruly 14-year-old. Republican Senators, however, have proven willing to prostitute themselves to the president, delegating virtually unchecked power to earn favors or to avoid political punishment. One might legitimately question their wisdom or even their patriotism in vesting the president with such extraordinary authority, especially an erratic or untrustworthy president. With the spineless attitude of GOP legislators, customary safeguards have been laid aside, effectively discarding our previously proud American assertion that no one is above the law.

These are politicians who’ve enjoyed a lifetime preaching patriotism and other important values that conservatives have often implied are theirs alone. Each time Republican officials give away more of the Senate’s or House’s Constitutional obligations, their behavior—even if treated as only a one-off lending of those car keys—sets a new normal which this president is eager to nudge to the next level.

I’ll not enumerate frightening, even indecent presidential actions here. They are many and obvious, all covered in daily news, editorials, and op-eds (plus my previous posts). Any voter unable to list Trump’s totalitarian moves by heart merely reveals he or she has decided that taking such risks with what the Founders bequeathed us just doesn’t matter. Time for Republicans to shut up about patriotism, deficits, low tariffs, and “fair” hearings, for they’ve lost the ability to evangelize on or even to discern such concepts.

Let me turn to one aspect of the recent Soleimani action: So far Americans have no explanation of what constitutes “imminent.” Congress has long made a reasonable judgment that the president should have more latitude to take actions he or she might otherwise not have if a dangerous situation is imminent. A president with no commitment to truth and fact might fudge on this distinction. Characteristically, Trump’s assurance to Congress and the nation was meaningless and suspect—meaningless due largely to his perpetual lying and his disdainment of any limits on executive authority—just as was his consolation that the assassination would make the Middle East safer.

That may eventually be proven accurate. I’m not qualified to judge that calculation. What we can be certain of is that throwing a rock at a hornet’s nest will bring on a flurry of unhappy and, given Trump’s transactionalism, unconsidered side effects. What I am qualified to judge is this: it is risky to trust Trump, anyone who works directly for him, or supportive Senators.

Trump lies consistently and unceasingly about small and large matters alike. Especially when events are moving fast and the fog of conflict multiplies life or death matters, surely it would be important to trust our president. Senate Republicans are aware of these things (some have personally felt the president’s sting) but have simply decided not to acknowledge awareness even to themselves. Thus does Trump’s duplicity regularly determine the dishonesty of officials who choose to honor their relationship with Trump more than obligation to the nation.

.     .     .     .     .     .     .

In the face of those things, let us consider an even larger issue than they. Although it is clear that Trump’s misbehavior and that of those closely around him do grave damage to our country almost daily, we regularly overlook that much of that same behavior harms the world at large. It is painful to consider the damage we’ve done to America’s world leadership, a role of which most Americans have been proud and which much of the world has welcomed. No small amount of it, in fact, has been to the credit of responsible conservatives.

Pity, for the world loses as America becomes more intimate with anti-democratic regimes, shows that our treaties can’t be trusted, spreads amateurish conspiracy theories, worries about the growth of our zero-sum mental smallness, and makes a laughingstock of our international posture and competence. This corrosion of our country is not due to “conservative values,” but in part to loss of prudence and wisdom that improved national governance in earlier decades by the Republican party.

We squander our ability to influence the world for good as if we’ve no recognition of national noblesse oblige. The United States is failing to lead the world morally, technically, and economically, as its capability would once have enabled and its awareness would once have motivated. But more than any of these degeneracies is one that will finally overwhelm everything else.

It’s as if we mistakenly and carelessly think we’d given that hazardous son a plastic toy Ferrari, but it had turned out to be the dangerous real one. To examine the consequences, however, we must think even beyond misuse of national authority in America. For even more challenging than what I’ve discussed above is the massive and deadly matter of climate change that threatens to devastate the human race, yet is officially ignored and thereby worsened, not just by America, but by the world at large. Under Trump’s imitation leadership and in general the pettiness of American party politics, the power of the United States is largely unavailable to address increasing threats to humanity’s future.

Allow me to deviate for a bit: We know for a person’s ability to address physical challenges requires basic skills and strengths to aid him or her often as much as knowledge of the specific challenge. For example, consider spending a week by yourself on a mountain trail. Having broadly applicable strength, problem-solving skills, and good health will make your adventure a more pleasant experience. A nation among nations is more capable of seeing to its defense and to helpfully aid other nations if it deals well with its public systems, educational preparation of citizens, fair administration of justice, and other necessities.

Then consider how America’s helpfulness to Ukraine’s path toward democracy has been gravely damaged by America’s own inability to get it right at home. It is in this way that the current American conduct of federal government at the highest level including workable immigration, treatment of health care, political dysfunction in the presidency and Congress, and inattention to well developed norms can render the country inadequate to pursue its own perfection and to contribute to he world as much as it can.

The “indispensable country”—whether we ever deserved the title or not—should be standing with the world in taking wise actions to address humans’ next and perhaps greatest predicament. We are naïvely coasting along with little sense of the enormity of the issue. To take aim at the really critical threats, we must not only get past little political fights, pleasing the offended, insufficient legal practices, and even international hegemony struggles. We must grow wiser as a species than to clutter our ability to distinguish big matters from small. Hotly contested niggling matters command our time and commitments and misdirect the evolving necessities of life on this planet . . . if later there is to be human life on this planet. To repeat, America not only disregards the threat of climate change, it intentionally denies it.

I do not believe it to be an overstatement to say that behavior of our species may well doom us to remain appallingly on the wrong side of history—insipidly working against humanity rather than for it. In this worldwide challenge in which even strong, wise leadership may be insufficient,

America has decided not to lead.

My most recent essay in this blog was two months ago, the unusual delay due in part to time spent on impeachment issues. Like a substantial number of you, I’ve read lengthy reports and watched many hours of impeachment arguments. There is reason to be concerned about America’s worrying descent toward authoritarianism. That is due, at least initially, to the president’s character and behavior, though then supported by Republican Senators.

Our Constitution was designed as the supreme owners’ manual for our new country, its philosophy painstakingly argued and its words carefully expressed. Of course, even perfect inscription of the founders’ wisdom into a written record would result in naught if actions of the electorate and their politicians are not judiciously disciplined by those words. Among other knotty issues, they dealt with the chief executive role, struggling with wanting a powerful presidency while simultaneously fearing it. Americans have been exposed in recent weeks to at least some parts of the founders’ solution to keep these competitive forces in balance. We’ve learned that political personalities and circumstances can make the Constitutional discipline difficult to maintain.

Every citizen should demand that an unhampered Constitutional balance of authority among executive, legislative, and judicial branches be maintained (the oft stated “checks and balances”), regardless of their representatives’ parties or their own. Thus, when President Trump acts as if he has absolute power (“the right to do whatever I want as president”) and the Senate consents to carte blanche approval of executive actions or plans, they are both challenging if not violating the Constitution. In the case of impeachment and Senate trial, if the Senate Majority Leader is more committed to the political link with the president, he is mocking the Constitution.

The Constitution assigns certain job responsibilities and authorities to the Senate and House that might—and sometimes must—thwart the president’s wishes. For example, the Senate’s accepting its Constitutional duties necessarily means from time to time that the Senate must take issue or even oppose the president. True, this makes it harder for Senators, but faithfully maintains the Constitution’s clarity of roles.

However, in the first years of the Constitution, political parties as we know them did not exist. It was possible to speak of the president’s relationship to the Senate or House as distinct political bodies. But as parties came to create semi-permanent components of the Senate and of the House, that clear distinction became complicated, in many instances making reference to the Senate’s or House’s position on an issue a two part (or more) matter, that is, designation of each party’s vote totals. But having parties created even further difficulties.

Consider a minority party in the Senate that is in the same party as the president. The minority party, of course, cannot speak as the Senate (though the majority party can). Although the Constitution establishes the relationship of Senate to president, a disclarity will have arisen if party alliances in practice extend to the relationship between president and Senate minority, thereby cluttering the link.

To make my point more actual than hypothetical, it is easier to visualize the reverse situation, that is, if the president is politically linked by party alliance to the Senate majority. Consider that a president has been impeached, thereby triggering a Senate obligation to render judgment whether the president should be vindicated or removed from office. That is the duty that fell to the U. S. Senate beginning last evening. Because of the current party attachment, Senate Majority Leader McConnell wasted no time announcing that his and his majority’s duty will intentionally not be fulfilled.

There are other situations in which this same Senate has failed to fulfill its role since President Trump began his term. “Babysitting” this president impeded its Constitutional and statutory duties. I’ve referred to a few instances in previous posts so I’ll not repeat them here. They illustrate that, while the Senate actually has its own job to do, it has been burdened by dealing with the president’s inadequacies, feeling protective of this nonperforming president of the Senate majority’s own party.

Such sycophancy has become commonplace for Republican senators and representatives since early 2017 due in part to the forceful and unscrupulous personality of President Trump. It may be tempting to pity Republican office holders who must balance daily between their personal convictions and the president’s threats. Still, surrendering to his guileful brand of pressure is a violation of senators’ and representatives’ oaths of office. The current Republican mixture of political intrigue, slippery explanations, and carrying the president’s water is tantamount to a distressing confirmation that despite a phrase Americans dearly love to chant, the American president is indeed above the law.

There was a time that when abroad I never conceived of being ashamed of America. It wasn’t that the country was ever free of racial discrimination and other grave errors. It was that efforts were afoot to heal at least some of our civic sins. Political parties skirmished over their differences and politics could get dicey. Largely, however, we believed that “politics stop at the water’s edge” and that in the end, it was the country’s benefit that mattered, not politicians’ or their party’s. Please forgive my emotional worship of the past here, but it is true that we respected the flag and sang the anthem at baseball games (we actually knew the lyrics). This all seems unsophisticated now—enough for me to be self-conscious about these words—but it was our reality then.

Wednesday this week we were treated to a group of out-of-control Republican Representatives storming against House rules into an otherwise secure meeting, each a Donald Trump mini-me out to demonstrate his or her allegiance. Their fidelity was not to the country, not to the flag, not even to a semblance of Congressional order, decades in the making. (White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham was quoted saying that Trump was pleased with the Republicans’ “bold stand.”) Theirs was loyalty to a pompous, emerging tin pot dictator who’d not only disgraced the presidency in three short years, but had demanded that they descend to his level of ignorance and treachery. In fact, this president—separated only by a technicality from being under criminal indictment—we have vacuously called “leader of the free world.”

Appearing more juvenile than Members of Congress are normally expected to be, they brought no new facts to disprove Trump’s serious misbehaviors. They came only with distraction and the silly claim that the hearing should be public, an invalid point that may have seemed sensible to citizens who don’t follow these political shows. Republicans already had a fair proportion of members in the hearing, but their share of questions to witnesses was as if they constituted 50%. This was preparation, it must be remembered, for a possible impeachment (like an indictment) of the president, not a decision as to his guilt.

It is true that in the Clinton impeachment, a “special counsel” method was used to prepare the indictment, which is why a similarly closed-door process is being used now, parallel to the special counsel’s privacy. All testimony will be open to the public at the impeachment if there is one. Besides, Republicans, who became masters of interminable find-the-dirt investigations, kept their Benghazi hearings closed throughout, leaving them able to cite the investigation qua investigation—as if it had unveiled misbehavior simply by existing. Interestingly, the Republicans’ outlandish, quasi-mob interruption of the Wednesday meeting brought to mind a Trump-like flailing, disregard for both facts and decorum.

Trump and Lenin

And so goes the deterioration of America’s democracy, an advanced form of government in world history, to be sure, yet one that requires constant tending. Our many decades of pride in the American experiment has been comforting, productive, and of benefit to the world as well as to us. But it cannot be preserved by political theater, weakened rule of law, manufactured “facts,” substitution of demonstrations for the hard work of government, or—worst of all—following a despotic leader to please the least knowledgeable among us.

Whether the federal government of the United States is becoming more amateurish or more attracted to despotism is hard to say, but neither enhances democracy. What is clear is that these matters and the substance of every day’s news are not politics as usual from which we safely bounce back after another election. They are an alarming threat to our Founders’ dream, America’s global leadership, and a peaceful world. The threat is embodied in Donald Trump and increasingly those devotees willing to protect him against what decreasingly remains of a stable, powerful, humane, and trustworthy America.

Here we go again . . . last weekend of American right-wing terrorists misusing a fictional constitutional right to wreak deadly havoc on people just going peacefully about their lives. Yes, here we go again; a criminal and narcissistic President trying to impersonate decency. We have no more reason to believe his “act nice” remarks as we have had for any of the unceasing stream of lies and mean-spirited histrionics he emits.

Only days before, the National Rifle Association had held its convention of 5,000 or so enthusiasts in a Dallas arena. (For the president’s protection, the arena had been declared a gun free zone.) The governor of Texas, Gregg Abbott announced his solution to gun violence: religion and the Second Amendment! He argued that “The answer to gun violence is not to take guns away” from Americans, but “to strengthen the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.” Yes, you heard that right, he said “The problem isn’t guns, it’s hearts without God [italics mine, JC].”

Inspirational! Who knew? The solution is more guns and more religion, a ridiculous prescription anywhere else on earth. To my knowledge, no one questioned whether religion includes liberal Episcopalians, Jews, or even—God forbid—Muslims. Donald Trump, ever the logician, added “If we’re going to outlaw guns, like so many people want to do—Democrats—then we are going to have to outlaw immediately all vans and all trucks,” since they can be used to kill. By the way, what exactly does it mean to “strengthen” the Second Amendment?

Putting a finer touch on the “more guns” part of Abbott’s remedy, Trump added, “We want highly trained teachers to carry concealed weapons.” Why? Because, he said, “When [killers] know there are guns inside, they’re not going in.” OK, Trump’s conviction that would-be killers would be deterred is worth study (see below); it does seem to make sense. Further, as could have been expected, Trump and Pence moved on to the bigger issue, finding a way to connect mass killing to crazed immigrants.

When such remedies are so confidently touted by Abbott, Trump, the NRA, and your next door neighbor, it would be useful to ask what remarkable wisdom led to their certainty. Maybe more stringent background checks are not a good answer after all. Maybe guns on college campuses would make everyone safer. Maybe requiring all private homes to have a gun would help. Maybe good guys should be required to carry guns. Maybe enforced fundamentalist church attendance would cure the problem. Maybe tighter restrictions on rate of fire or magazine capacity is all we need. Possibly getting the president to refrain from malicious rants would help, after all such rants did have an effect in Germany in the 1930s; they worked even on regular folks. And we can link them to courage and patriotism as Trump bravely did in Dallas, saying, “We will never give up our freedom [ostensibly to carry military weapons into shopping centers; JC]. We will live free and die free!” If you can’t hear the muskets and see the galloping horses, you’re just not a patriot.

However, regardless of how all opinions about firearms are advocated by either Republicans or Democrats, we really don’t know much. “In the area of what works to prevent shootings, we know almost nothing,” said Mark Rosenberg, who supervised the CDC’s gun research efforts in the early1990s. How would Donald Trump know? How would your favorite pundit know? How would the most dedicated, honest observer know? I can guarantee you that I don’t know either. Even if the NRA and arms manufacturers knew, they are hardly disinterested so their findings and opinions are suspect. Consequently, we are all a bunch of amateurs stumbling in the dark about what has proven to be a life-or-death quandary.

But there are ways to discover relevant facts in the matter of reducing gun violence. To use them, we’d have to understand that a vote of senators and representatives in Congress won’t do it. In fact, a perfectly run referendum of citizens cannot settle it. Opinions do not matter, not Trump’s, not the NRA’s. Nobody’s opinions matter about, e.g., magazine size, firing rate, or similar factors help; they serve only to clutter a legitimate search for truth. That is what we have now, our options solidified because each faction has already decided that its opinions are the facts.

We need facts first. Only then do opinions matter, for the second question is what to do with the facts we’ve discovered. The NRA has less interest in facts than in pleasing gun manufacturers. Many Republican elected officials have less interest in facts than in pleasing the NRA. Pity, for research using the scientific method when applied to tough quandaries has yielded countless breakthroughs in understanding otherwise unsolvable mysteries for almost three centuries. (Careful though, all research, even honest research, is not constructed with the scientific method’s rigor.) We are a nation that has frequently put scientific research to work to enlighten teaching methods, rocketry, power production, drug efficacy, and a host of issues in all fields of endeavor.

Why, then, can true scientific research not be applied to the use of our deadly devices? Fact is, it can if we do not choose to stay in the dark. We have done, and continue to do, just that, throwing up our hands with inane statements about gun control like that of Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin’s “You can’t regulate evil.” Or we blame mental illness. (A pundit recently observed that Republicans rarely concern themselves with mental illness except to bring it up as the reason for mass murders.) The real stopper, however, is the belief that Americans have an absolute constitutional right to have and carry firearms. Statements by the NRA, elected officials, and uninformed citizens expose an assumption that this right applies to any size or any lethality of firearm.

But according to the Supreme Court, there is no such right (District of Columbia v. Heller, 2008) as discussed in “The lethal cost of playing with guns,” my post of March 4, 2018. Of course, we somehow know the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to howitzers and surface-to-air missiles, but the Court’s interpretation clarified more than that about which individuals, which rights, and which arms, thereby establishing a “floor” under individuals’ rights to “keep and bear Arms.” Whenever gun rights are brought up, Americans should carefully inspect what is being said. You will find inferences that such rights apply in such a generalized way that an uninformed listener could reasonably conclude that guns of all sorts are available to anyone. Hence I found Governor Abbott’s prescription to “strengthen” the Second Amendment strange; do we not mean to enforce all parts of the Constitution.

It is permissible for lawmakers at state or federal levels to impose whatever gun restrictions they wish as long as Court-determined minimum rights are protected. As expressed in the Court’s decision, rights guaranteed are “not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” Moreover, in United States v. Miller, 307 U. S. 174, the Court held that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.”

So how might legislatures and Congress go about establishing what leads certain perpetrators to violence against certain persons in certain settings with certain guns? What are the characteristics of those persons and their experiences, and what are the characteristics of weapons themselves and current efforts to control them? The former leads toward psychological considerations, mental illness, and so forth. The latter leads toward mechanical distinctions in gun manufacture, sale, characteristics, and disposition, as well as various control methods. Here arises a great problem in finding a reasonable solution, a problem created inside the walls of the Capitol itself.

Consider Jay Dickey. Dickey was a Republican congressman from Arkansas who crusaded in the mid-1990s to stop the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from funding gun violence research. Every year the Congress reauthorized what came to be known as the Dickey Amendment. However, Dickey (now deceased) later changed his mind after multiple waves of mass shooting. NRA had not changed its mind, however, and still accused the CDC of promoting gun control. So in 1996, the Republican-majority Congress threatened to strip funding from CDC if it continued research into firearm injuries and deaths. (In such matters, the chilling effect on others can depress research nationwide beyond the researchers directly affected.) Gun control research in 1996 came to a standstill.

It is not that in 2019, there is no firearms research going on, though likely not nearly enough to match the importance and apparently growing incidence of gun violence. One example is the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, a multi-disciplinary program of research and policy development. Another example is the National Institute of Justice (an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice) in its funding of gun-related studies 1993 to 1999 then 2009 to 2012, though it resumed in 2013.

Further, in 2013 the prestigious National Academies, Advisers to the Nation on Science, Engineering, and Medicine, became home to the “Committee on Priorities for a Public Health Research Agenda to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence.” The multi-disciplinary research products would be comprehensive and extensive, not capable of being concluded quickly, even if adequately funded. It is important to understand that although the formidable and professional task of prescribing research goals (not research results) is a time-consuming activity, for naught unless there are sufficient appropriations.

Unfortunately, I could not complete a more extensive look into the ostensibly broader research that might have been funded. I did find that Congress, while not continuing to prohibit CDC research, achieved the same effect by passing federal budgets in which such research went unfunded. More-or-less, that amounts to “you don’t have to refrain from researching firearm matters, we just won’t give you any money to do it.” I cannot judge whether that was due to political oversight or to a budgetary “intentional accident,” though my own direct experience in the ways of Congress would not find deceit out of the question.

Meanwhile, the NRA has stated its position is that “tax dollars should not be used to take sides in a policy debate.” That is ludicrous. Tax dollars are regularly used to pay for policy debate or facts useful to enlighten that debate. What must be avoided are claims that unbiased facts are not needed and that preconceived notions of either Republicans or Democrats constitute facts.

An excerpt as an addendum

A preparatory statement of the Priorities for a Public Health Research Agenda

to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence

Fatal and nonfatal firearm violence¹ poses a serious threat to the safety and welfare of the American public. Although violent crime rates have declined in recent years, the U.S. rate of firearm-related deaths is the highest among industrialized countries. In 2010, incidents in the United States involving firearms injured or killed more than 105,000 individuals; there were twice as many nonfatal firearm-related injuries (73,505) than deaths. Nonfatal violence often has significant physical and psychological impacts, including psychological outcomes for those in proximity to individuals who are injured or die from gun violence. The recent, highly publicized, tragic mass shootings in Newtown, Connecticut; Aurora, Colorado; Oak Creek, Wisconsin; and Tucson, Arizona, have sharpened the public’s interest in protecting our children and communities from the effects of firearm violence.

In January 2013, [the president] issued 23 executive orders directing federal agencies to improve knowledge of the causes of firearm violence, the interventions that might prevent it, and strategies to minimize its public health burden. One of these executive orders noted that “in addition to being a law enforcement challenge, firearm violence is also a serious public health issue that affects thousands of individuals, families, and communities across the Nation,” and directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), along with other relevant federal agencies, to immediately begin identifying the most pressing firearm-related violence research problems.

The CDC and the CDC Foundation² requested that the Institute of Medicine (IOM), in collaboration with the National Research Council (NRC), convene a committee of experts to develop a potential research agenda focusing on the public health aspects of firearm-related violence—its causes, approaches to interventions that could prevent it, and strategies to minimize its health burden. In accordance with the CDC’s charge, the committee did not focus on public health surveillance and potentially related behavioral/mental health issues, as these will be addressed separately. The research program envisioned by the committee, which is designed to produce impacts in 3-5 years, focuses on

• the characteristics of firearm violence,
• risk and protective factors,
• interventions and strategies,
• gun safety technology, and
• the influence of video games and other media.

The committee identified potential research topics by conducting a survey of previous relevant research, considering input received during the workshop, and using its expert judgment. The committee was not asked to consider funding for the research agenda, and in addition to the CDC, it is likely that other agencies and private foundations will also implement the research agenda. Consequently, the committee identified a full range of high-priority topics that could be explored with significant progress made in 3-5 years. Research on these topics will improve current knowledge of the causes of firearm violence, the interventions that prevent firearm violence, and strategies to minimize the public health burden of firearm violence. To allow the research community flexibility in designing the research protocols, the report does not specify the methodologies that should be used to address the research topics.

The evidence generated by implementing a public health research agenda can enable the development of sound policies that support both the rights and the responsibilities central to gun ownership in the United States. In the absence of this research, policy makers will be left to debate controversial policies without scientifically sound evidence about their potential effects.

“The rule of law will survive those who violate it,

but will not survive those who fail to defend it.” [No citation]

Millions of Americans have given President Donald Trump a chance, though wondering whether his bizarre behavior is evidence of stupidity, mental illness, or simple indecency and malice. Now two years since his election, this president has proven to be the most damaging to America in our history. Solving the riddle of Trump matters little at this stage, but saving the republic from the demise he brings is crucial.

Americans have endured bad times, including ones we are not proud of. Generally, however, we’ve not had to worry about survival of our great experiment in democracy. We have maintained much of the government philosophy of the Enlightenment that we introduced to the world. Our history covered the Civil War, Japanese internment, mistreatment of Native Americans, and dishonest politicians. Not even access to presidential authority enables Trump acting alone to destroy what America has—albeit irregularly—tried to be. The danger comes from the electorate’s blindness to his menace and from his sycophants’ self-interested protection of his treachery.

To observe the former, one only need watch one of Trump’s many personal “Nürnberg Rallies” (“Lock her up!” “Send her back!”) or the toadying of Fox News minions, happy to call his lies reality and to furnish him further deceptions. (Americans have died to protect this country from similar anti-democratic, fact-free biases to be found in Trump’s rants, his rallies’ crazed displays, and unremitting untrustworthiness. Trump’s despotic intentions, contempt for the rule of law, and brazen fabrications took us step by step into a new normal that once would have been called unAmerican. Racism is only one example, but it is of note that last week large numbers of Americans who must’ve been sleeping through news reports finally noticed the president’s stark racism. It had been obvious for years in Trump’s pre-political as well his as political life.

To observe the latter, consider the maudlin, cloying loyalty pledges of even high government officials, the fawning Republican “fellow travelers” who eagerly massaged the ego of the world’s most powerful man, and most of all Republicans in Congressional seats who, to avoid offending Trump, willingly countenance encroaching authoritarianism though each had sworn to defend the Constitution. (Republicans’ distaste of servitude to Trump seems to come alive as they retire!) Senators McConnell and Graham, e.g., eagerly champion Trumpian duplicity and betrayal despite having mouthed great principles a couple of years earlier. Again, using racism as but one example, Republican explanations last week for why racist comments and actions are not, in fact, racist have been startlingly creative, but there is no honorable excuse. Coddling a president’s childishly weak ego, discomfort with facts, and political vengeance are ethical failures of the legislative branch. What can be said of the cowardice of elected senators who not only allow but promote a president who exemplifies l’etat c’est moi (though he likely doesn’t understand it) and that trashes the sacred creed that “no one is above the law.” Our president surely is.

Meanwhile, the world goes on without our leadership. How can America be a force for worldwide democracy and planetary climate care while we tangle ourselves in ridiculous squabbles and tin-horn dictatorship behavior? Is it really acceptable to Americans that we not only fail to lead but make things worse? How can we bring the world the moral leadership we once did when we pamper a president who is a stranger to moral leadership of any sort, whose extraordinary level of narcissism has already sacrificed much of America’s place in the world, and who has ill-treated countries that have been our best friends on earth?

Make America Great Again does not have to oppose Help the World Be Great Again, in fact, for a major power it may well be a necessary component. And though we’ve never completed either aim, each has been important to us in the past and could be again. But it cannot be while handicapped with a president who brings out the worst in us, whose meanness of spirit has no room for dedication to the rule of law, civic morality, country above party, science, or facts.

We were once proud of our aspiration for America as a moral force in the world, as expressed in the words of pilgrim John Winthrop’s (later President Ronald Reagan’s) phrase “shining city upon on a hill.” But to pursue either a “more perfect union” for ourselves or to breathe substance and fairness into our leadership for the world is—until we’ve reversed our sad decline—merely poppycock wrapped in the delusion that leadership consists of economic and military might dressed up in win-lose arrogance and strongman bluffs.

America can have—and indeed has had—bigger hopes, purer motivation, and a larger heart. While these characteristics are immensely worth recapturing and preserving, it will require difficult political restructuring, not business-as-usual partisan politics. We will need commitment to building a responsible conservative party (replacing the failed Republican Party) and sufficient discipline in the Democratic Party to avoid its taking advantage of the interim fluidity. It is not entirely clear that either is possible. That’s what is to be proven. The Founders may have had the easier task.

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My schedule this summer, including foreign travel in June, has led to reduced production. Foreign travel in June and later impediments may continue to impede my previous pace.

This post is the 203rd in this blog since I began it in April 2013. Various topics have included atheism, secular humanism, religious liberty, science, ethics, morality, gun control, and sex. Of the 203, the 27 posts listed below are concerned with Donald Trump:

“America’s celebration of ignorance,” Sept. 26, 2016. “October relief…sort of, Trump’s still here,” Oct. 28, 2016. “Please, Mr. President Elect,” Nov. 15, 2016. “What does a proto despot look like?” Dec. 12, 2016. “Trump and the new American truth,” Feb. 10, 2017. “Despot Don,” Feb. 27, 2017. “Congratulations, Trump voters,” Mar. 6, 2017. “You and I deserve Despot Donnie,” Mar. 20, 2017. “Prerequisites for the presidency,” May 30, 2017. “Our republic…if we can keep it,” July 3, 2017. “Fish rot from the head,” Aug. 18, 2017. “Moral courage and the Trump threat,” Nov. 30, 2017. “Aiding and abetting injury to America,” Jan. 6, 2018. “A disgraceful leader implicates all,” June 19, 2018. “Trusting our leaker-in-chief in Russia,” June 22, 2018. “Mr. de Tocqueville, we got the government we deserve,” July 18, 2018. “Trump is NOT America’s problem,” Sep 10, 2018. “Enemies of the people,” Nov. 1, 2018. “Risking America,” Jan. 3, 2019. “The great wall of Cyrus,” Jan. 10, 2019. “A plea to my United States Senator,” Jan 26, 2019. “That wall between us,” Feb. 7, 2019. “Political philosophy, political behavior,” Mar. 18, 2019. “Mueller and beyond,” Mar. 25th, 2019. “The shaming of America,” Apr. 18, 2019.  “Republicans light just one little candle,” Apr. 21, 2019. “America’s risk of autocracy,” May 27, 2019.

In January 2017 the Trump White House bizarrely declared the largest inauguration crowd in history. Americans got accustomed to the new president’s lies, occasionally finding them amusing—rather like a misbehaving child of an appallingly indulgent parent getting near your crystal. It is frightening to consider a hollow man like him near your secrets, your Constitution, or your wealth. Trump had even claimed he could shoot someone on New York’s 5^th Avenue and suffer no loss of supporters. We still don’t know how that would come out in real life. But after 16 months of Trump’s presidency, it’s reasonably certain that he could get away with just about any crime on the floor of the United States Senate.

The Senate majority and its chosen Leader McConnell respect their oaths of office, to be sure, though those oaths have become “to protect and defend Donald Trump,” not the Constitution. Of course, it’s customary for senators and representatives of each party to support most wishes of a same-party president. Given a Constitution constructed in a time of virtually no political parties, elected officials over two millennia have developed procedures and traditions to function in what is largely a four-way division, namely House/Democrat, House/Republican, Senate/Democrat, and Senate/Republican, for the Constitution had countenanced only a two-way legislative division: House and Senate.

It is hard for any group to be as diligent and precise as an individual. (Your city council, school board, or association board frequently exemplify how competent individuals can be incompetent as a group.) Our federal executive branch—headed by an individual—can quickly decide and mobilize while the legislative branch is still arguing over rules of debate. Thus, the Senate and House are composed of more authoritative “moving parts,” requiring them to maintain a strong allegiance to a centralizing authority while simultaneously promoting rich, wide-ranging debate. That “centralizing authority”—the point from which all functions must be derived and to which all parts must owe allegiance—is the Constitution . . . . largely Article 1 and relevant amendments.

Senators and House Members each individually owe that same allegiance. Fidelity to their political parties, their specific religions, their personal aggrandizements, or other interests—if in any way weakening or interfering with that loyalty—is a failure of duty, an unlawful violation of their oaths. So it is that neither partisanship nor individual dissent is not bad. But fulfillment of the body’s Constitutional role must be sufficiently paramount to outweigh both party concerns and individuals’ idiosyncrasies. Failure of the House or Senate to understand, plan for, and perform successfully on its Constitutional role is to imbalance the checks-and-balance architecture and to invite intrusion of the executive branch into the legislative, whether due to intent or simply filling gaps thereby left unaddressed.

If at that time the president is inclined to expand his or her influence or ignore Congressional decisions, the stage is set for severe damage to the Constitutional arrangement, a grievous harm for which both Legislative and Executive Branches are morally and legalistically culpable.

These factors are the case at this time: A president who wants prerogatives not given him Constitutionally or in law, thereby failing to take care that the law be faithfully executed. A Senate that willingly bends to the president’s every whim, thereby failing to protect the role charged to it by the Constitution. An electorate that, in substantial part, naïvely believes it has no role to play in this charade of civic responsibility, for example, to understand our Constitution and to vote thoughtfully. Elected officials and voters who fail to distinguish between (a) normal, ongoing political issues and (b) protections or threats to the rule of law and other components of American Constitutional government.

This last item will be addressed in my next post—for misidentifying the critical difference is, to a great extent, what turns healthy political struggles (about matters like budget, health care, and immigration) into dysfunctional arguments that threaten to weaken or even dismantle the healthy system within which these more conventional political arguments can safely exist, no matter how vehemently they are pursued.

[My schedule led unexpectedly to fewer posts in recent months. Due to impending foreign travel in June, that schedule interference will likely continue through the next few months.]

Appearing this week on FoxNews is a 54 second video clip by Republicans for the Rule of Law (https://www.ruleoflawrepublicans.com/). It offers a long overdue sign that maybe, just maybe organized Republican voices will finally argue against valuing party over country with regard to the Trump Administration. In a message signed by 191 House (and former House) Republicans for full release of the Mueller Report, ostensibly without the curious interpretive work of Bill Barr, who as it turned out, met no high bar.

There have been a few lights of truth lately showing through the heavily biased FoxNews, but in general those who get their “news” totally from FoxNews are not accustomed to meaningful, strong Republican truth-telling. Using the Trumpian tactic of blaming others for one’s own shortcomings, FoxNews championed fake news before it helped popularize the term as applied to anything that didn’t agree with or support Trump. That is understandable, of course, for FoxNews has been a faithful arm of the White House.

For a blogger who has decried the shame of Republicans for acting like Trump’s lap dogs, I find the video ad to be an encouraging development. There have been previous Republicans with enough integrity to stand against The Donald, for example, Max Boot, George Will, and Bret Stephens. But this is a group effort, and that’s important. It’s as if a substantial number of Republicans finally decided decency is not determined by party, though party might be determined by decency. To their credit, they’ve argued that “President Trump lied to the American people, including his supporters, and encouraged others to cover for him. It was wrong when the Clintons lied and it’s wrong when Trump lies.“

Granted, it is shameful that this statement is remarkable at all. And admittedly, the choice of words to feign equivalence between the volume, frequency, and gravity of Trump’s lies compared to those that can be “the Clintons’” even at a stretch is disingenuous. However, I am so impressed by the elevating message as a whole that I’m happy to overlook that. Maybe I’ll just focus on another phrase of theirs, one for which I’ve no reservation:

“Republicans stood up for the Rule of Law then.

We should stand up for the Rule of Law now.”

“People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook,” said President Nixon when a rot less than today’s was upon the presidency. Then, unlike now, the president’s own party was not complacent in his crimes, but (eventually) chose to protect the republic rather than the rot. Nixon was a crook, though he was not judged guilty by a court. Donald J. Trump, too, is an unindicted crook.

It takes a stupefying degree of willful ignorance for one out of three Americans to tolerate, even praise Donald Trump’s sociopathic presidency and his weak, corruptible Senate. Politicians of the late 1700s wisely vested important roles in the House and Senate, in part to save the country from an authoritarian executive. Since a majority of the senate now—beyond being just policy allies of the president—have become his slavish devotees, that protection has all but disappeared. Only the Democratic wins in the 2018 mid-term election saved the country from having an entirely sycophantic, weak Congress.

I have made the case that it is never smart to believe anything Trump says; he lies even to his allies. He is as uninformed and unethical as any president ever to demean the White House. His choice of personnel has been abysmal (remember when he was going to have the best people?), often incompetent or criminal. (Just a week ago, he proudly announced, “I even thought of Ivanka for the World Bank. She would’ve been great at that because she’s very good with numbers.”)

Turnover among Secretaries of federal Departments has been enough by itself to brand Trump an unqualified manager, as does his focusing on bits and pieces rather than the big view and long term. He evaluates persons based on whether they admire him sufficiently, then “manages” them on the same basis, seemingly at no time like a competent manager. And, with only a few exceptions, he then blames them for his mistakes. The bully pulpit since his election has lost any pretense of “pulpit,” yet has clearly become more “bully.”

This post is not meant to be a list of major, damaging characteristics of Trump and his appointees. Observers who’ve not been blind to his reprehensible behavior already know. Those who remain blind to the effects of his psychotic narcissism are determined not to see, whether due to partisanship, obliviousness, or personal gain. In a future post, I wish to take up subjects demonstrating his appalling amateurism about critical principles of management, his “day trader” decision-making unhinged from strategic thought, his focus on himself and inability to render non-personal judgements, his opposition to the rule of law, his near total inattention to the significant Russian attack on the 2016 election, his inhumane treatment of immigrants seeking asylum, his disgraceful treatment of global warming, and so on—all caused, then further complicated by his reckless personality….all demonstrating that our president is a fool.

Now comes the Mueller Report or, perhaps more accurately, the William Barr Report on the Mueller Report. Bill Barr had become Attorney General (AG) because the Trump White House was attracted to his legal position. He argued that the president cannot be guilty of obstruction of justice because, as head magistrate of the land, he is technically in charge of what at any time is the definition of obstruction. It may be that we, not even Congress, will never see the Mueller Report because it would be too embarrassing to Trump. So far, Trump is determined never to let Americans see that report, though true to his character (or lack of it) he continues to say he wants them to see it.

Barr has testified to Congress and is today scheduled to release his own redacted report of what the Mueller report reveals. Days ago, as if an afterthought, he said to a Congressional committee that he believes the Obama Administration was “spying” on the Trump campaign in 2016, admitting though that he has no evidence. Note that the Department of Justice (DoJ) has a rule against revealing the names of persons who might have been guilty of a crime, but with insufficient evidence to obtain a conviction. A prosecutorial decision not to indict therefore protects potentially innocent persons (since no court will have found them guilty).

I find that rationale convincing; it is only fair. It is ironic, however, that it was FBI violation of that rule that gave Trump the presidency to begin with. Hillary Clinton was not indicted for the email debacle, but FBI Director James Comey chastised her openly for, in his word, “carelessness.” Clinton deserved the protection of that rule as much as Trump apparently does, but she didn’t get it. Similarly, the AG’s stated opinion that the Obama Administration “spied” amounts to a charge against Obama or the FBI during his presidency without evidence and certainly with no indictment.

Americans have long been very supportive of the FBI and DoJ, but these institutions along with a number of others might be on their way toward increasing loss of respect along with other functions of government in what would be just one more instance of Rick Wilson’s recent book, Everything Trump Touches Dies: A Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever.

I cannot think of a better ending for this post.

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The post (essay) above is the 198^th I’ve written in this blog since I began it in April 2013. The various topics have covered atheism, secular humanism, religious liberty, science, ethics, morality, gun control, and sex. Of those, the 25 listed below are concerned with Donald Trump:

 “America’s celebration of ignorance,” Sept. 26, 2016.

“October relief…sort of, Trump’s still here,” Oct. 28, 2016.

“Please, Mr. President Elect,” Nov. 15, 2016.

“What does a proto despot look like?” Dec. 12, 2016.

“Trump and the new American truth,” Feb. 10, 2017.

“Despot Don,” Feb. 27, 2017.

“Congratulations, Trump voters,” Mar. 6, 2017.

“You and I deserve Despot Donnie,” Mar. 20, 2017.

“Prerequisites for the presidency,” May 30, 2017.

“Our republic…if we can keep it,” July 3, 2017.

“Fish rot from the head,” Aug. 18, 2017.

“Moral courage and the Trump threat,” Nov. 30, 2017.

“Aiding and abetting injury to America,” Jan. 6, 2018.

“A disgraceful leader implicates all,” June 19, 2018.

“Trusting our leaker-in-chief in Russia,” June 22, 2018.

“Mr. de Tocqueville, we got the government we deserve,” July 18, 2018.

“Trump is NOT America’s problem,” Sep 10, 2018.

“Enemies of the people,” Nov. 1, 2018.

“Risking America,” Jan. 3, 2019.

“The great wall of Cyrus,” Jan. 10, 2019.

“A plea to my United States Senator,” Jan 26, 2019.

“That wall between us,” Feb. 7, 2019.

“Political philosophy, political behavior,” Mar. 18, 2019.

“Mueller and beyond,” Mar. 25th, 2019.

“The shaming of America, Apr. 18, 2019.

Like millions of others, I am curious to see what we ordinary Americans will be allowed to read in the final report Mr. Mueller sent to the Attorney General last week. The AG has sent to House and Senate leadership the “primary conclusions” of that document, not the Mueller report itself. By intent or leakage, the rest of us might later get to see the document(s) (as redacted for reasons of national security and protection of unindicted persons). Department of Justice rules protect a sitting president from indictment, so we may learn little about President Trump’s behavior regardless of what he has done.

Fewer millions expect to be disappointed—in my case from three sources. (1) The report that emerges into the light of day will not produce a fly-on-the wall account of everything Trump or anyone in his campaign has done that is unlawful, unethical, untruthful, unpatriotic, injudicious, or reckless. (2) The report will not reach conclusions that Trump and persons in or linked to his campaign have acted lawfully, ethically, patriotically, judiciously, and thoughtfully.

After all, the charge to Mueller from Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was not to investigate Trump’s morality or amiability, but “Any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” and “federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, the Special Counsel’s investigation, including lying to authorities in the course of that investigation.”

However, I anticipate my most distressing disappointment will be (3) Trump’s deluge of lies about the report, claiming it as vindication from all charges, despite the report’s disclaimer that it is not to be taken as exoneration. His devotees seem to fall for whatever fabrication he comes up with, though others have learned to recognize and expect Trump’s clever misuse of language to deceive. (No, Mr. Trump, “border wall” and “border security” are not synonymous.) We can expect to hear him say the Special Counsel has proven he and the campaign are innocent of charges. But unless there is a radically different outcome of Mueller’s investigation than anything mentioned thus far, that is an outright lie, one already begun.

Further, the president is either too dim-witted or too conniving to communicate the difference between, among other examples, “failure to prove obstruction of justice” and “proof there was no obstruction of justice.” Maybe he believes they mean the same and, if so, the fear plaguing his presidency may have been prematurely reduced. Having in his own mind “won,” Trump—thus relieved of his fear—can get back to his crusade to weaken judicial independence, engage the Attorney General as his personal lawyer, undermine freedom of the press, and demand homage from Republicans in the Senate and House. Slackening any remaining self-restraints on his autocratic path promises more danger for the republic than he has already wrought, rather along the lines of “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

Remember, too, that whatever emboldens Trump’s authoritarian streak further bonds his sycophants to him, for he’s not only their ticket to re-election, but their escape from blistering tweets. If the Senate, already a subsidiary of the White House, can find a way to suppress its role even further, expect Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham and others to find it. They seem little impressed with the role the Constitution laid out.

My case here is not for impeachment, certainly not under the current conditions of an obsequious Senate and overwhelmed House. Despite its Democratic majority, the House is struggling with a desire to impeach, but is faced with a surfeit of overdue investigations and the pressure of a looming presidential campaign. Even if there were not a lot on its plate, the House would face certain defeat in the Senate trial due to its Republican majority. Some observers have warned that impeaching, then losing the trial phase (as occurred with Bill Clinton) can easily make the president stronger, not weaker.

In other words, I want to see the House do the effective portion of its job, but forget impeachment, for the Senate’s adulation of Trump will not only doom the trial to defeat but subject the House to crippling distraction. As to the upcoming presidential primaries, Democratic candidates would do well to minimize ad hominem arguments among themselves, debating with knowledgeable rigor, moral strength, and common decency. If those things don’t yield a replacement of Trump, then perhaps we deserve him.

After returning to civilian life from my time in the U. S. Air Force, I was closely linked to the Republican Party. My major professor for the degree in economics and business administration was Republican. The lobbying I did in later life involved close work with Senator Howard Baker and Congressman Bill Brock, both Tennessee Republicans, with fewer dealings with the Democrat Senator Al Gore the elder . In the 1980s I was invited by Indiana Republican Governor Robert Orr to be available for a cabinet position, which I turned down. In total, my personal acquaintance with the Republican Party consisted of office-holders I admired greatly. I voted for not-so-admired Nixon once and became a Life Member of the Libertarian Party a couple of decades later.

President Reagan, former Democrat, said he didn’t leave the Dems, they left him. I have much the same feeling about my earlier Republican involvement. Whatever doctrines a voter believes is best with regard to economics, government involvement, defense, taxation, and immigration, all sides are obligated to be truthful and factual. We are also duty-bound to respect whatever system has been created for dealing with our differences unless we choose democratically to change that system. In other words, honor demands common decency and playing by the rules, which means we can fight each other all we wish on choices within the rules as long as we remain loyal to the rules themselves.

It is unlikely that the political integrity a modern democracy requires is possible without these characteristics in the voters as well as in elected officials. Voters say what they want in demeanor as well as in policy objectives. Unfortunately, voters are not the most stable groups, being given as they are to creating factions, showing little discipline, and having little investment in system integrity compared to transactional and self-serving decisions. That, however, calls for elected officials in their several carefully designed roles to be the adults in the room. Anyone familiar with the Senate or House—federal and state, and also city councils—would know, though, that expecting rational, reasoned behavior in those settings may be several bridges too far.

But let me get back to the party that claims to be owner and protector of conservatism. It is usual to speak of Republican and conservative as if they’re synonymous. A model of conservatism would weave together a consistent mix of positions on governmental philosophy, that is, fulfill the requirement to be a theory of government. That differs greatly from a political party invested in partisan hegemony and slick parliamentary moves and tactics of near warfare. It is possible for philosophical integrity to co-exist with a party that lacks tangible integrity, but a claim by the latter to be standard bearer for the former must be seen as invalid.

My inclination toward the Republican Party in my early years was due less, I think, to its applied behavior than to the appeal of conservative thinkers like Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and National Review magazine editor William F. Buckley. I can remember being glued to my radio (as a fawning free marketeer) as Buckley argued against liberal Kenneth Galbraith’s motion, “The Market Is a Snare and a Delusion.” At that time, and to a great extent now, I was as entranced by Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” as I was with Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, Alfred Wegener’s plate tectonics, and other trailblazing insights (OK, so I was a bit nerdish).

My excuse for the foregoing diversion is to point out that it is not conservatism’s reputation that is damaged by our current national psychosis, but the party that pretends to be the champion of authentic conservative philosophy. Although I do, in fact, lean generally toward liberal philosophy, it is not so much because of a waning conceptual argument against conservatism as it is an outright disgust with the Republican Party and with individual Republican senators and congresspersons unwilling or unable to be true to the obligations of one-third of the American government.

Here is an excerpt from my post, “Batshit crazy, the stupid party,” March 15, 2016, written during pre-Trump days that now seem naïve in the extreme:

[“Batshit crazy” and “the stupid party”] were uttered not by Democrats, but by prominent Republicans (Sen. Lindsey Graham, Gov. Bobby Jindal). Conservative author Matt K. Lewis said that although conservatism used to have “big, thoughtful ideas,” it has “lost its intellectual bearings.” The decay has been developing for years, so is by no means just in current debate behavior. As to that behavior, conservative historian Max Boot concluded the Trump surge “proves every bad thing Democrats have ever said about the GOP is basically true.”

Well, a proviso. I don’t think deterioration is unique to the Republican party, nor even the combination of the party and its tethered television outlet, Fox News. . . I don’t revere everything Pres. Obama has done, nor do I criticize everything Pres. Bush did. Somewhat allied with Lewis, however, I do consider that the Republican party has been in decline since possibly the 1960s and surely since the 1980s, with a further marked descent since 2000. It is not the first political party to get lots of mileage out of untruths. Democrat JFK won the presidency due in part to his damning, though inaccurate charge that that his predecessor, Pres. Dwight Eisenhower, had allowed a terrifying missile disadvantage vis-a-vis the USSR.

But I have additional motivation with respect to the Republican party: I fear that the US without a competent opposition to Democrats is a less robust, less philosophically muscular country. However, to my great regret, the current Republican party has forfeited that role by increasingly allying itself with the influences of xenophobia, bigotry, paranoia, and anti-science. (On a given issue, I might agree or disagree with the Republican position.) I find small mindedness, short-term focus, careerism, fudging, and spinning, along with problems of agency in politicians of both parties. Each party condemns the other about actions for which it itself is guilty. For example, in recent years we’ve seen the reversal of which party is on which side of the Senate’s cloture rule.

Both parties stoop to intentionally misquoting opponents’ positions in their arguments. For years Republicans have kept up an incessant drum beat of lies about Obama’s Democratic administration despite their being simply untrue, such as Obama’s “apology tour” or Obamacare’s inclusion of death panels. Neither was true, but the drum beat was too energizing to sacrifice to mere truth. In my opinion, however, while I’d not proclaim the Democratic party blameless, for the past fifteen years Republican conduct has been the most shameful.

The events of 2019 present so many instances of shameful Republican behavior that many have left the party rather than be associated with its lack of integrity. Consider that in the last weeks, a dozen Republican Senators took the Senate’s role seriously in defying their autocratic president and—lo and behold—it’s news! OK, I suppose shedding their role as Trump’s lapdogs even a little bit deserves kudos, for it is more than we’ve seen for two years. Senator McConnell, as Leader, has been foremost in escalating partisanship into frank irresponsibility, but despite presidential threats, that doesn’t let other senators off the hook. The novel idea of senators actually following their individual best judgment about Yemen and Trump’s magic wall is marvelous, but far too little—rather like Paul Manafort’s whining for judicial sympathy after a lifetime of crime. Political courage among most of these defiant Republicans seems to be related to whether they face retirement in the 2020 election, though bringing that up spoils my begrudging compliment.

But wait. Is it that a handful of GOP senators unexpectedly read the Constitution and found that the Senate has a real role? Is it unfair that we expect senators to buck an unusually punitive president? Do we think they won’t consider that he’ll penalize unruly senators by shutting down military construction in their states? After all, he is known to be looking around for funding already made by Congress that can be raided to find funds for his wall. Most Republicans in the Senate (and House, for that matter) are more committed to avoiding Trump’s wrath than fulfilling their oaths of office. They may have gotten religion, but I suspect they just remembered their constituents’ desire for the jobs Trump controls but may deny to them as punishment for their senators’ use of their own minds.

Let’s see. I think here is where I remind us all that the United States Senate has been proudly called “the greatest deliberative body in the world.”

David Perdue, one of Georgia’s two U.S. Senators has along with almost all Republican senators excused and coddled Donald Trump. Among other travesties, that includes refusal to protect America from Trump’s ruthless shutdown and the Mueller investigation from a possible Trump frenzy. To my knowledge, Perdue has never bucked Senator Mitch McConnell’s almost dictatorial control about what bills senators will be allowed to vote on. McConnell has insisted on the Senate’s indulging Trump repeatedly. Still, every senator is responsible for his or her own behavior, though bucking the leadership can be politically costly. The following were my remarks to Senator Perdue earlier today.

Dear Senator Perdue:

I grew up in the south, served in the U.S. Air Force, voted both Republican and Democrat, and have been acquainted with senators, representatives, and governors of both parties—in some cases in actual working relationships. Having returned to the south, I’ve been a Georgian again for a quarter century. I’m aware of your years of corporate leadership and salute you for assuming the personal costs and strains of political life.

This letter is to convey my disappointment and distress over the character and actions of our president. Let me make clear I am not speaking of partisan matters, but ones central to the function of the republic, such as the rule of law, judicial independence, Constitutional roles, and freedom of the press. Mr. Trump has taken the Republican party and, more importantly, the presidency, to depths of disgrace and indignity I could never have imagined in any of my 80 years. Worse, he has bullied much of America including his expecting the Senate and House to forfeit their important joint role as an independent branch of government. Our country—my pride in and out of uniform—has deteriorated, sacrificing international leadership and trust among allies and rivals alike.

I abhor the damage the president has done and continues to do to our reputation on the world stage, to our basic institutions of government, and to our commitment to facts and authenticity. In short, his lack of integrity besmirches the integrity of you, the Senate, and America. I need not list the string of adjectives used to characterize his incompetence and unfit character. You are fully aware of them. I would wager you have yourself used some of them in private.

I do not believe your character matches the repugnance of Trump’s. But in your position of trust for Georgia and the United States, I do believe you have for two years, along with other Republican Senators and Representatives, failed to protect the country from an Executive Branch gone awry. (The mid-20th century term “fellow traveler” comes to mind with respect to otherwise responsible Republicans’ fealty to Trump.) Along with your colleagues, you have enabled the behavior of a dangerous, unethical, mendacious man as if you have no accountability in the matter.

Senator, you have allowed partisan loyalty—not unacceptable in itself—to outweigh duty and patriotism. I wonder when on some sweet day—when America and the world have recovered from Trump’s madness and Republicans’ impotence—how you will find words to account.

John Carver, Atlanta

Let’s be clear: This is Donald Trump’s shutdown. Totally Donnie’s; no one else’s. Not even partially Chuck’s or Nancy’s. Not Mitch’s either . . . well, not directly, though he is culpable for clearing the way for Trump; more on him later. Trump himself considers this travesty simply to be demonstration of his vaunted negotiating skill. His way of negotiating, however, means creating enough unwarranted pain for Americans that Congress will happily forego its ethical obligation to use its own judgment—especially about the border wall. For their part, House and Senate Republicans surrendered two years ago; fawning’s a hard habit to beat.

This shutdown is a Trump tantrum; he just doesn’t understand Congress’s audacity in not bailing him out of his beautiful wall showboating during the campaign. (Though bizarre, he’s still formally campaigning and still exercising the same poor judgment.) He seems to think otherwise, but Congress does not owe him whatever he wants, certainly not $5 billion. But this is The Donald, so not getting his way means someone must be punished. Enter government employees, just trying to do their jobs.

Voters who selected Trump in November 2016 knew what kind of man he is. No one with high school intelligence could have missed the proof that nothing he says can be trusted. Why did they then, and why do they still not understand that his promises are not something you can take to the bank. By the way, the president treats his promise to build a wall as sacrosanct, but not his promise that taxpayers wouldn’t have to pay for it. His interest is not in that fantasy wall. His interest is in how many uninformed and easily duped fans he can convince to look like a fundamentalist revival, then go vote for him. And yet most Americans keep treating his superficial seriousness about protecting the country as we would a reality-based and ethical politician, i.e., as if he really means it.

We’ve seen movies in which a criminal threatens to hurt a relative of the person being intimidated. We’ve not seen a president of that persuasion until now, to wit, give me my wall or I’ll shoot your mother. Trump—the criminal—inflicts pain on government workers, contractors, their families, all those who rely on them and the purchases they would have made. That larger number goes way past the reported 800,000 (which includes a close relative of mine) to millions of individuals, to America’s economic performance, and to our faith in stability. No matter, Trump sees that ruthlessness to be the fault of those who’ve not given him what he wants. His tantrums and his uncaring treatment of people is never his fault, but always that of others . . . others who don’t understand he is remarkedly intelligent, knows more than the generals, and needs only his gut for complicated decisions.

Trump took an oath of office that obligated him to put the good of the country ahead of personal gain, and to protect the Constitution including institutions that together virtually define America. That promise is paramount, exceeding all promises to his base when they conflict with what is best for the country. The fact that a wild promise was injudicious does not remove the obligation. Nor in Trump’s case, does a president’s dilemma justify the shutdown we are now in. Trump has shown he is willing to be cruel to get his way. He has shown repeatedly he is too unethical, too irresponsible, and too psychotically egocentric to deserve to lead even a banana republic.

Republicans in the House and even more so in the Senate are showing a slight bit of backbone in recent days, though the Senate Leader is not among them, wed as he is to partisan political considerations and Trump toadyism more than the national interest. McConnell’s “hey, don’t look at me” surrender of his obligatory role, an unmistakable mark of his sycophancy, was evident in his recent refusal to call a vote on a bipartisan bill that would have put Trump squarely on the spot.

If Kentucky voters are still able to experience shame, McConnell’s political punishment can be left for later. The historic shutdown itself continues to be imposed by Trump and Trump alone. His vicious cold-heartedness is currently working for him, for the shutdown goes on.

Thanks to Republicans in House and Senate and the continuing Trump supporters. You think maybe it’s time to drop our increasingly empty “greatest country in the world” pretense?

This evening President Trump speaks to the nation (uncharacteristically, other than by twitter!). He is expected to expound on his threat to invoke a “national emergency” to clear the way for his acting unilaterally to build a physical wall on the US/Mexico border. Americans are accustomed to the president’s “alternative facts” and repetitive lying, but are not accustomed to the nature of national emergencies. Such familiarity has become crucially important. At least on a short term basis, though possibly for a limited topic, this involves temporary suspension of the federal separation of powers. Yes; this is heady stuff in the hands of a fool.

In the January/February issue of The Atlantic, Elizabeth Goitein, author of The New Era of Secret Law, published “What the President Could Do if He Declares a State of Emergency.” As co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, Goitein is thoroughly acquainted with American presidents’ access to otherwise prohibited powers simply by their declaring a national emergency. There are others qualified to explain, criticize, and defend the Emergency Powers Act and related legislation, of course, so I encourage your Google pursuit of opposing views, such as recently that of Bruce Ackerman (see the footnote reference below). As to Goitein’s article, the one I recommend that you read in its entirety, it can be found at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/presidential-emergency-powers/576418/.

There is purpose, of course, in a disastrous, unforeseen emergency for overriding the usual constraints on the president, thereby removing barriers to swift and unilateral presidential action. Of course, that carries its own dangers, for the customary restrictions on executive power are not in place without reason themselves. Traditionally the fall-back safeguard is that Congress will assume that a given president will act in the country’s best interest when he or she is proceeding with negligible oversight.

Obviously, the provision—intended only for emergency conditions for which Congressional action would be insufficiently agile—could be disastrous if that assumption were to be wrong. It is not intended for use just because a president cannot otherwise be politically successful. It is not meant to be a political tool in the executive toolbox for overriding Congressional action or its intentional inaction. It is for real emergencies only.

Problematically, however, the president does not have to get Congressional approval to declare an emergency or to use it once declared. It takes little imagination to consider the danger to the country if the president were to be unhinged, narcissistic, misinformed, or otherwise impaired.

Consider, as Goitein warns, that a presidential declaration of a national emergency opens up more than 100 special provisions enabling increased presidential power. As she puts it, “while many of these tee up reasonable responses to genuine emergencies, some appear dangerously suited to a leader bent on amassing or retaining power. For instance, the president can, with the flick of his pen, activate laws allowing him to shut down many kinds of electronic communications inside the United States or freeze Americans’ bank accounts . . . But what if a president, backed into a corner and facing electoral defeat or impeachment, were to declare an emergency for the sake of holding on to power?” In that scenario, our laws and institutions might not save us from a president seemingly eager to be the top branch of government rather than one-third of it.

Moreover, it is not clear that a president will refrain from expand his/her emergency power still further to include other matters than those used to justify the emergency to begin with. Goitein states, “the National Emergencies Act doesn’t require that the powers invoked relate to the nature of the emergency” [italics mine; JC]. 

Are there ways for a Congress to act such as to prevent this potential run-away power grab? As I understand Goitein’s article, the Congress would have to be far quicker and more resolute than the Senate has been now and that the House has normally been in the best of times. In other words, though there are Congressional safeguards available, they are leaky ones, on which the Congress has typically exercised minimal control.

However,

Please note this proviso that readers should carefully examine the specifics of what I’ve said here. My training and experience are neither authoritative nor even fully informed. Check what others have said about the emergency powers a president may unilaterally access. Trump has behaved erratically enough for any hint of his getting excessive power is to be checked out before it actually occurs. His lying makes everything he says suspect. This is not the time to take risks with this man, described by mental health professionals as “psychotically narcissistic” and by a majority of Americans as prone to make even critical things up, and to break agreements and promises as if he’d never uttered them.

President Trump has this month already begun threatening that a “national emergency” on our southern border—an “emergency” that the Republican Senate, the former Republican House, and the current Democratic House do not recognize as even close to an emergency—will call for a formal presidential emergency declaration if he doesn’t get his way. Such a declaration might occur as early as this evening. More chilling is that once the nation has been put on an emergency footing with expanded powers vested in Trump, it may be difficult or impossible to predict to what topics and degrees that uncontrolled power might be extended.

Note

An opposing view: A less well-reasoned argument in my opinion, though it is from an authoritative source, is “No, Trump Cannot Declare an ‘Emergency’ to Build His Wall” by Bruce Ackerman, January 5 in the New York Times. Ackerman is professor of law at Yale and author of The Decline and Fall of the American Republic.

Donald Trump’s propensity to mess everything up is boundless, enough to soil anyone and anything he touches. Given what we’ve seen of this empty, foolish man for more than two years, it’s only to be expected that his ignorance-laced narcissism is integral to his presidency as much as to his personality.

But enumerating Trump’s defects is not my intention here. He is what he is. He is what he’s shown us for years. His is an authoritarian personality, fatal to democracy if allowed to run its natural course. For years past and certainly during 2016, Americans had ample warning of what was to come. The party he handily usurped saw what he was until it became to their political advantage to don their red caps.

This month we embark on a third year of his despotism-prone presidency. The percentage of American voters still supporting him is frightening large. The number of Republican elected officials willing to put the country before his authoritarianism is frighteningly small. Because American voters chose him and Republican senators and representatives protect him means they are all responsible for the damage to America that he and his sycophants produce. It can therefore be said that Trump voters and Trump-backing elected officials chose and continue to choose to put the American Constitutional system at grave risk.

It is important to understand that the problem with Trump is not just another instance of partisan politics. Voters and their representatives will always have disagreements, some easily resolved, some not. I’m not referring in this essay to issues politicians normally struggle with, like agriculture subsidies, military budgets, social security benefits, and a host of other “normal” matters. That process can be visualized as a sport wherein teams of differing approaches compete within fixed rules. Exercising the strengths and methods can be vigorous. Violating the rules, however, destroys the game.

For America, those rules consist of the Constitution as augmented by whatever additional rules to which both teams have agreed. Weakening the rule of law, disregarding the boundaries of authority, or politicizing the court system are ways in which we threaten or trash the rules of the game. Consequently, while rigorous political competition is safe and can be healthy, impairing the rules of the game threatens the country. It is the latter type of damage that voters and a scary proportion of their representatives have chosen to allow and even cheer from Donald Trump.

Like you perhaps, I’ve been engaged in trying to understand Trump, to grasp his propensity for childish narcissism, to wonder how to separate stupidity from calculated craftiness. Does he not know coal isn’t coming back, or is the hope of unemployed miners just another malicious tool? Is he stupid about global warming, or are his dimwitted comments that confound climate and weather meant to show his base he’s as confused as they? Does he really think citing crimes by individual undocumented immigrants represents any proof that immigrant crime is rampant?

Recently a friend suggested I read the ideas promoted by Bob Altemeyer in The Authoritarians and in his shorter publications. Altemeyer is a psychologist who did extensive work on the psychology of both authoritarians and persons prone to follow authoritarians. His concentration was on the latter, which in 1986 earned him the American Association for the Advancement of Science Prize for Behavioral Science Research. It is his specialization in the psychological aspects of authoritarian followers that I’m hoping will offer insights into why generally intelligent voters can accept illogic, believe lies, be blind to non sequiturs, and overlook cruelties as long as they come from an authoritarian they’ve adopted or whom they fear.

Whether Altemeyer’s or others’ research—or for that matter, further thoughtful philosophical considerations—can help us understand the grievous Trump phenomenon, it is a dynamic we must confront, for it threatens democratic government. Moreover, will we emerge more able to deal with a subsequent Trump-like character, or will we have accepted the new normal so thoroughly that a later despotic president will be welcomed to the White House? While it is easy to blame Trump for what amounts to anti-Americanism in sheep’s clothing, the most productive analysis will be the study of how you and I, along with our fellow citizens recklessly, even passionately, choose to imperil American democracy.

In my most recent post, “Enemies of the People” (November 1),  I argued that President Trump’s denigration of the press is more than harmless expression of his paranoia. It’s a symptom of evolving despotism, one of many such precursors to which America and the world have been treated in these last years. You’d think that forebodings of this sort would make us increasingly aware of Trump’s grave threats not only to our republic but to a peaceful world order. But no; by painstaking repetition and an electorate more angry than wise, they’ve become just old news. We seem to have lost our ability to be warned.

Events and assertions that only a few years ago would have stunned us are now just another day’s tweets, schoolyard taunts, and blasé dismissals of democratic ideals. While the president himself stood out as the danger two years ago, his pollution of government  has spread further as Republican officials raced to see who can most shamelessly grovel before Trump, ignore their Constitutional responsibilities, or adopt Trump’s toxic, transitional manner of governance. To be sure, the carefully constructed Constitutional system he and they carelessly endanger is not perfect. But it was assembled with more thoughtfulness and more philosophical integrity than most elected officials ever exhibit in their numerous terms.

At this point, railing further against Trump’s incompetence and treachery may be a waste of time, for he is neither inclined to accept nor capable of understanding either Constitutional democracy or multi-level large management. He came to office due to a massive mistake by the electorate. He has been and still is promoted in office by Republican elected officials stripped by greed of their ability to discern between gamesmanship and statesmanship. It is they, as I’ve pointed out in earlier posts, to whom we must turn our attention, for it is they who have let America down quite as much as the fool they’ve allowed to run amuck.

Let me suppose the American electorate retains some memory of proper government, one wherein we can have great disagreements over policy, yet can value each other and remember we are Americans, not merely pro- or anti-Trumpists. A population can forget those skills as has occurred elsewhere after a long experience of totalitarianism. Indeed, every year more of us forget the pre-Newt Gingrich days in which parties fought in the Capitol, but drank together in the bar. Our policy differences, after all, are worth struggling for, but not worth crippling the very system designed to safely contain and support the elucidation and resolution of those differences.

As long as preserving and improving the system itself is as valued as it should be, an influence like Trump minimizes and perhaps destroys the ability to approach politics productively. Sports provide a useful example. Playing as well as possible is encouraged, but has meaning only while respecting the rules. The current period in America is one in which basic rules of American democracy are ignored and even intentionally damaged, creating a bizarre game in which outmaneuvering those rules is treated as if it is the score.

It is not too early to turn attention to post-Trump America, with fervent hope there will be one. That requires studied thought and public debate about the restoration of values we’ve allowed to slip away. Our country cannot be expected to right itself simply because Trump is not around. Nor will the massive damage to American influence and international trust reconstitute itself just because we’re no longer continually exposed to Trump’s malicious brand of fake news. Such a rebirth requires far more than eliminating the negative; it requires a commitment to the positive.

We can expect, for example, that many Republican leaders will be ready to rewrite the history of their role in this horror, eager to claim their availability to lead the rebirth. A similar process unfolded in the former Soviet governments in Eastern Europe after the fall of the USSR. Old communist bosses were all too inclined to be the new capitalist bosses. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that Democrat officials will be either as righteous or as effective in restoration as they might be in opposition. Similarly, it would be a mistake to think no Republican officials are fit for a role in renewal.

Less obvious, Democrats would be faced with the moral test of not pressing their partisan advantage to the injury of system regeneration. For example, the focus must be on saving and improving critical elements of the system, not winning a vote on building a wall. In like manner, whether to pass a certain tax legislation would not be the kind of system-saving action I refer to, but safeguarding the country from the time-bomb looseness of the National Emergencies Act would be. For the whole country this would be a new kind of task, one that cries out more for renaissance than course correction, and asks elected officials more for wisdom than parliamentary cleverness.

I’m not sure the United States, its citizenry, and its available leadership are up to this job. But it is certain we’ll not be its match without studied preliminary attention to the post-Trump era. It’s not even clear that we’ll have the opportunity. If we are fortunate, still sufficiently comfortable with democracy, and possessed with enough civic faith—perhaps there can be an American revival of political decency, dignity, and competence.

____________________

I am moved to quote two Republican presidents in connection with my possibly Pollyanna prescription, leaving the relevance of these words to your consideration:

• President Gerald R. Ford: “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”
• President George H. W. Bush: “America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.”