(Crossposted from Blog on the Run)
If an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times is to be believed, a few plucky White House staffers are trying to save America and the world from the worst impulses of Donald Trump and expect our support and gratitude.
Screw them.
Screw them because of their narcissism. They clearly are off on this trip in which they and they alone are preserving the country, protecting the rest of us from disaster. That isn’t how the system works, more on which in a minute. Moreover, their perception of disaster is WAY too selective. They pick and choose the papers they don’t like to sneak off the president’s desk, while allowing environment depredation, the caging of children and the evisceration of health care for millions of Americans, thousands of whom will die as a direct result.
Screw them because they swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and instead are operating way outside of what law and the Constitution require. Their duty requires them, if they believe the president is unfit, to resign, come forward publicly, and work for Trump’s impeachment, resignation, or removal from office under the 25th Amendment. The author says he (and the piece is so narcissistic it almost has to have been written by a guy) and his colleagues discussed trying to invoke the 25th Amendment but didn’t want to provoke a “constitutional crisis.” Dude. That horse has gotten out of the barn, over the hill, sired 25 Triple Crown contenders, died peacefully in his sleep and been buried with honors in the Pimlico infield.
Screw them for not having the guts to come forward publicly. Whoever wrote this seems determined to try to maintain some post-Trump viability. That suggests the author either already is a politician – Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, a former U.S. senator, and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, a former S.C. governor with national political ambitions, come immediately to mind – or is a staffer with political ambitions. Unfortunately, this situation is more important than one person’s political career, a fact the author and his confreres directly refuse to acknowledge.
And, finally, screw them for this:
The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.
Oh, HELL, no. You don’t get to foist the responsibility for this disaster on everybody else. I didn’t “allow him to do [this] to us,” and neither did 65 million other Americans. YOU made this possible, and you need to understand that and own it. In public. By name. Now.