Let the Impeachment Games Begin!

{Just to save everyone some time: I already know which of my Facebook friends will find the following post “foolish,” so there’s really no need to belabor the point. Feel free to write your own damned blog if you want to defend the indefensible. To paraphrase Mark Twain, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and every word uttered by Donald Trump and his minions.) 

According to Mark Shields, the respectable liberal talking head on the PBS “News Hour,” Nancy Pelosi has done the right thing in approving an impeachment inquiry into President Trump. Shields then noted that Pelosi had for months stalwartly resisted the efforts of her unruly House caucus to impeach Trump for (said Shields) “unpaid parking tickets” or for “double-parking in front of the White House”.  So, in Mark Shields’ mind, colluding with Russia, obstructing justice, using the White House for personal gain, hiding his finances, and stonewalling legitimate Congressional inquiries—behaviors in which Trump has engaged—all of that amounts, according to Shields, to “unpaid parking tickets”; and you wonder why “liberal” became a term of disdain.  

Shields’ partner at PBS, David Brooks, America’s most widely-read moral scold and premier pontificator about virtue and “character,” offered an even more risible take on the situation. Trump has committed “impeachable acts,” admitted Brooks, but Democrats are wrong to impeach him, since Senate Republicans will refuse to convict. Brooks frets that the impeachment process will hand Trump the victory he wants and even give his behavior a patina of legitimacy, while further dividing the nation. By attempting to remove Trump from office simply because he’s committed a few felonies and possibly treason, feckless Democrats, Brooks lectured*, will be undermining their own presidential primaries and thus their electoral chances; candidates will be forced to talk about impeachment rather than about the issues (healthcare, the environment, and jobs) which concern voters. The Democratic candidates, he lamented, will be caught up in an “inside Washington” partisan fight that no one outside the Beltway cares about and that doesn’t affect voters’ lives; which is odd, since I for one live pretty far outside the Beltway and I happen to feel affected by having a criminal in the White House.^ 

Mr. Brooks would have us believe that his stance stems from “moral consequentialism”: that is, what will be the outcome of Democrats’ actions? In fact, Brooks offers us a profile in prudentialism (a half-step or so short of cowardice), pretending he knows the outcome when the process has barely begun and dismissing the possibility that revelations of Trump's malfeasance might get voters' attention and might even spur their disapproval. 

All of that is, not to put too fine a point on it, a steaming pile of centrist drivel. If no one outside the Beltway cares about the corruption of American foreign policy and of the federal executive branch into Donald Trump’s personal fiefdom, that’s because pundits like Brooks don’t seem to care, either. Donald Trump oozes contempt on a daily basis for the rule of law, the Constitution, and American political traditions (about all of which he knows precisely nothing—well, maybe a liddle’); but Brooks and Shields spend more time fretting that “radical” Democrats might raise their voices in alarm.  

God forbid that anyone on the American political Left display anger; that privilege apparently is reserved for the Tea Party and for Trump Nation and its economically-stressed white working-class citizens (and those, like Rod Dreher, afraid of the Pronoun Police and the Gay Gestapo). Anger on the Right, we have been repeatedly instructed by the likes of Shields and Brooks, is caused by overreach and incivility on the Left and must be taken seriously and listened to sympathetically; anger on the Left, on the other hand, is mere intolerance and must be denounced. 

I respectfully suggest that PBS f—k Mark Shields, David Brooks, and the pompous “centrist” horses they rode in on. 

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Plenty of others, of course, weighed in on the Trump debacle this weekend. Representative Jim Jordan (R-Ohio State wrestling team sexual abuse scandal) denounced the still anonymous whistleblower as “partisan,” which leads to the obvious question—isn't Jim Jordan (R-Ohio State wrestling team sexual abuse scandal) himself partisan? Why does partisanship disqualify Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans but not steadfast Trump defenders like Jordan (R-Ohio State wrestling team sexual abuse scandal)?  

Likewise, Senator Lindsay Graham (R-Fainting Couch) waxed irate over the ongoing “persecution” of poor innocent Donald Trump. Graham, who was part of the Republican leadership during the late 1990’s persecution impeachment of Bill Clinton, said that Republicans these days are considered guilty simply by virtue of being Republicans; as an example, he mentioned Brett Kavanaugh, somehow forgetting that Kavanaugh now sits on the Supreme Court, having been put there by Graham and by Donald Trump, who, even though (according to Graham) “everyone is against him,” sits in the Oval Office of the White House.  For Kavanaugh and Trump at least, persecution has been no impediment to success; in fact, one might almost think it's part of their strategy.

Finally, Chris Wallace at Fox News had the dubious pleasure of interviewing Trump advisor Stephen Miller, who asked whether Americans should be governed by shadowy, unelected Deep State bureaucrats or by Donald Trump, who, back in 2016, was duly elected by a solid minority of American voters.** Miller also trotted out the “unitary executive” theory—the President of the United States is the sole head of the executive branch and his powers will not be questioned—which didn’t work so well for Richard Nixon back in the day. We can only hope Trump meets a similar fate. 

The coming months should be entertaining, by which I mean awful. 

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*The title of any prospective biography of David Brooks should be “‘Hello,’ He Lectured”.

^Brooks, on the other hand, won't be affected in the least by Trump's fate. He'll continue to pontificate as a TV talking head, to posture as the conscience of the ruling class, and to write best-selling books about the purpose-driven life and about how to become a virtuous person after you've already become rich and famous.

**Why is the "Deep State" only an issue now that Trump is in office? George W. Bush had eight years to install Republican loyalists into the federal bureaucracy, but I don't remember Obama whining about being undermined by the Deep State. In Trump's case, I believe "Deep State" is a euphemism for "People who respect the laws and who know how government is supposed to work". 

Comments

[Ann Markle]

I’m not sure what Facebook friends you’re referring to. Did not help Shields, but read a piece by David Brooks that convinced me he's even more of an asshat than I already thought. And as far as acceptable expressions of anger, let’s never forget Brett Kavanaugh! A pox of them all, and let’s get on with it!