Late Saturday, pro-Trump supporters descended on the nation’s capital and clashed with counter-protesters. Among the most vocal Trump supporters were members of Proud Boys, which is considered a hate group by human rights activists. More than a dozen people were arrested and four taken to the hospital with what authorities described as serious knife wounds. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers continued Sunday to shy away from urging Trump to accept reality. Los Angeles Times, December 13, 2020.
The Supremes, by a vote of seven to two, have voted to not hear what seems to be President-unelect Trump’s last legal chance to change the Presidential election (although, apparently, Trump has taken his case to YouTube). This whole thing has been surprising and distressing to me.
It’s not surprising that Donald Trump has been trying to fight the election results. He has an excessive need for admiration and we have been shown this from the get-go. The opening sequence of his Administration was to exaggerate the number of his adoring fans. It was not doing something he had promised, but sending poor, humiliated, Sean Spicer out to lie about the size of the Trump’s inaugural crowd. Spicer knew he was lying, I have no idea if Trump did, but President Trump’s first act was to try to bend, if not ignore, reality to flatter his own ego. That he is now telling us that he won the election, that it was stolen from him, that he got more legal votes than anyone in history just like his inaugural crowd was the biggest in history, is not a surprise, it is, after all, another attempt to flatter his own ego.
It is not a surprise that he is using this to try to get rich(er). What is a surprise and disheartening is the number of Congressmembers – and now, Governors, State Attorneys general – who have been willing to Sean Spicer themselves. It seems like most of them must know they are doing irreparable damage to the country, but, maybe, that is just projection on my part, maybe most of them are too stupid or too lost in the Inside The Beltway bubble. But I don’t think so and I guess I really shouldn’t have been surprised. The opening sequence of this national nightmare, after all, was also Trump making Spicer his bitch and the closing scene may very well making the Republican Party his bitch.
Trump is a kiss-up, punch down, kind of guy. There are not many people in the world who are higher on the food chain that he has to kiss-up to but there are lots who are lower and he likes to punch down. He punches down at almost everyone no matter how much power difference, actually, especially with a big power difference, Colin Kaepernick, a black, out-of-work football player, for example. Few people are willing to go toe to toe with President Trump, interestingly enough, those that do are mostly women- Speaker Pelosi comes to mind – and especially women of color like Yamiche Alcindor, a reporter with PBS, or Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. But no Republicans, with the possible exception of Mit Romney, have the cojones to go toe to toe with him for the good of the country. He has dominated his Party, unlike any President I can remember and he has sown hate and distrust like no public figure since Joseph McCarthy. That is surprising and distressing.
Extremely distressing, yes, but surely not surprising. Since the nasty ‘birther’ lies, or even before, that evil man has shown a consistent capacity to lie and to boost his gross roadshow. Which, alas, delights a large proportion of Americans. How much is due to social media who knows but a good deal almost certainly. Never before has any president ‘ruled’ by Twitter. With luck, no president will again.