A majority of American voters knew that Donald Trump was unfit to be the president of the United States. His temperament, lack of political experience, organizational track record, personal conduct, penchant for prevarication, and willingness to embrace and encourage poisonous racism, sexism, and xenophobia along with the early evidence that he had virtually no understanding of the nuances of either foreign or domestic policy issues, no interest in doing the work necessary to increase his knowledge and understanding, and the people he surrounded himself with were noteworthy only for their obsequiousness and avarice, certainly not for their expertise, was sufficient to convince most of us that putting a philandering mob-connected (maybe) billionaire bigot in charge of the country was not a good idea.
Because of the racist structures of our polity (Electoral College), a sustained and ongoing social media influence campaign conducted as an attack by a foreign power, co-ordinated with criminal hacking, likely tied to a conspiracy with the Trump campaign to release hacked material in ways that countered negative press for then-candidate Trump and micro-targeted persuadable groups via social media, Republican strategies of voter suppression, and possible direct Russian hacking of voting results, because of all these things, for the second time in less than twenty years the chief executive of the United States of America won the office with a minority of the popular vote.
Immediately, the stench of corruption began to swirl around the new administration. Industry allies were appointed as Agency heads to departments that had enforcement authority over the industries they had previously advocated for. Fox, meet henhouse. The foreign entanglements of Campaign and transition staff continued to be uncovered, as did their actions that actively undermined American foreign policy (see Flynn, Michael, et. al.) should have precipitated an immediate showdown with Congress, with obviously conflicted nominees being rejected by the Senate, censure and pressure from the House, and genuine investigations by Committees in both.
The president’s failure to properly divest (and similar failures by other administration officials) of his interests created another Constitutional crisis, which has yet to be resolved as well. Here again, the Republican Congress has been supine as the Administration turned government service into a profit and loss center. Small wonder, when their primary legislative achievement is the upward distribution of the nation’s wealth to the wealthy.
Through all the scandals and treason, the embarrassments at home and abroad, we’ve been told not to worry, because there are “adults in the room” who are able to calm an emotionally reactive president and help him do his best thinking. We’re supposed to believe that these advisors, “all the best people”, are the ones that Trump listens to, the experts upon whose advice and knowledge the president reflects as part of his decision making process.
But that’s been a lie.
Bob Woodward’s latest book, “FEAR”, has revealed what we already knew, what many of us knew was inevitable before the election, that the White House is in chaos because of the erratic behavior of an emotionally unstable autocrat. That much of its energy is devoted to managing Trump’s impulses instead of developing and implementing policy. That decisions get made because they “feel” right to the president, not based on any evidence that they are good for the country, long-term or short-term. Arguably, this is the situation that the 25th Amendment was made for, but we’re only good at dealing with physical impairments, not cognitive (Reagan) or emotional. And so we have a president that is incapable of fulfilling the duties of the office to any appreciable standard and no one willing to invoke the process to correct that.
Now we have an article, published by an anonymous author in the New York Times opinion pages (I refuse to link directly to it). In a moment of accidental clarity, the White House Press Secretary has released a statement that is actually accurate. The person who wrote this article is a coward, not a hero as they would have us believe. They are complicit in the actions of a corrupt government, enabling the behavior of a malignant narcissist, and failing in their duty. They see that the stink of their service in this Administration will follow them for the rest of their lives, and are attempting to carve out intellectual space to defend their actions. But their actions are indefensible. Instead of calling out the president’s incompetence, incapacity, illiteracy, inconstancy, larceny, and overall betrayal of the nation and the oath of office, he or she has justified (in their own mind) and is attempting to justify to the nation the takeover of the duly elected (and it was, bigod, duly elected until we fix the flaws in our system or prove the subversion of it) power of the Executive branch by unelected officials. There’s a phrase for this, and it is coup d’etat. This is a Constitutional crisis. People in the White House are actively preventing the president from doing his job, the fact that he’s an idiot notwithstanding. The proper response is to go public. The proper response is to call the question. The proper response is to stop the wheels from turning until this is fixed, not to participate in a “shadow government”, and then hide behind an anonymous op-ed in order to wrap your treason in cheap resistance (yes, that is a Bonhoeffer reference). The person who wrote this op-ed is no friend to America, no ally of any proponent of democracy. The New York Times should be ashamed, were they capable of it, for printing this.
To the mysterious author, in the words of Charles P. Pierce, shut up and quit.
To everyone who reads it, be clear that this is who the GOP is, this anonymous coward, enabling a maniac in order to get the things they want while draping themselves in fantasies of virtue.
Register to vote.
Register your neighbors, friends, coworkers, family.
Talk about politics, focus on issues, disagree well.
And vote like our democracy depends on it, because it does.