What We Fear: Could They All Really Get Away With It?

And the answer is: unfortunately yes! Trump Senior and Junior, Kushner, Barr, et al could all not only get away with everything illegal, unethical, scandalous, outrageous and destructive to our democracy and the planet that they have done and continue to do, but they could potentially do it for another four years after 2020! It is even worse than that, as in many ways Trump’s nomination and election were a radical (although totally counterproductive) voter reaction against decades or longer of increasing federal political corruption and paralysis. It is extremely depressing to admit that we get the government that we permit, and therefore the one that we deserve!

There is a perfect storm of extreme political and cultural tribalism and associated unprecedented self-insulation within progressively polarized and unreliable social media and to some extent within the mainstream media, reinforced and exacerbated by Trump’s relentless attacks on the legitimate press as fake news. The sad result is that reality has become completely subjective. And when there is no agreement on the facts, there can be no rational debate or agreement about ANYTHING! And that is EXACTLY why con-man-in-chief Trump has been repeatedly assaulting the press and telling his followers not to believe what they see, hear and read, but only what he tells them and what they see on Trump TV, a.k.a. Fox “News”. So far this brilliantly simple yet unprecedented strategy (at least in this country, although standard operating procedure in dictatorships, a la 1984) has been highly effective in maintaining his base’s support and enthusiasm. A great example was a woman recently interviewed at a Justin Amash town hall meeting who stated that she had no idea that the Mueller report contained anything negative about Trump, and that she mostly listened to conservative outlets! It is as if the large minority of the population representing Trumpworld lives in voluntary exile from what the rest of us would consider objective reality. Of course, many of them would continue to support Trump for cultural reasons, such as overturning Roe v. Wade, even if they did believe everything the rest of us accept about him. The result of this is that as long as Trump’s support in the Republican base is rock solid, nearly all congressional and Senate Republicans will sadly but predictably continue to act purely out of self interest and will NEVER support impeachment or allow conviction in the Senate, no matter how strong the evidence or what they really think about Trump. Even though it appears that we are inevitably and justifiably moving toward at least an impeachment inquiry, which would most likely lead to an impeachment process and probably (although not definitely) to impeachment in the House along party lines, the political implications of all of that are still totally unpredictable and therefore extremely risky for Democrats. While it may peel off a critical few percent of uncommitted or independent voters, Trump would certainly use this to rally his base, and base turnout will be critical on both sides in the swing states in 2020.

Unfortunately, this is long term and progressively uglier no holds barred all-out high stakes political and cultural warfare, not some inevitably happy-ending Hollywood movie. As with any war, there is inevitable potentially major collateral damage. This certainly feels like a watershed period for the survival of our political system and society as we know them, and even the best possible outcome may not be so great! So unless a large number of the majority in this country wake up and get angry and vocal about taking back our government and particularly our presidency (and Senate), many of us, and certainly younger generations, will live to regret it! Unfortunately, I am not all that optimistic about the outcome, even if Trump is defeated in 2020. And if that doesn’t happen, we are sunk!