It's Evening in America: The Rise and Fall of an Empire
Part 6 of 8
Can I tell you something more?
Donald Trump spent his first four long years in the Oval Office poisoning politics and public discourse by telling an astounding 30,573 lies – that’s just shy of 21 a day – as recorded by the Washington Post, a newspaper that once brought down a criminal president but is now dedicated to propping one up.
His reign of terrible was marked by craven cruelty, capricious chaos, and crony corruption, constrained only by the few adults in the room who Trump appointed to positions of power because he was new to the game. And it was punctuated near the end by the emergence of a deadly virus which he at first tried to ignore, then downplayed as the flu, then touted all sorts of taradiddle as treatment, and finally weaponized as a way to motivate his base and further divide the country.
After all that, it seemed as if America might have come to its senses and arrested the free fall of an empire when Joe Biden won the White House with a thumping victory in both the popular vote and Electoral College. But just two months later we discovered that was wishful thinking.
Trump, proving he is not only a malignant narcissist incapable of admitting mistakes or defeat but also a full-blown psychopath, refused to accept the result of the election claiming that it was actually stolen from him due to widespread voter fraud.
For the record, the clinical definition of a psychopath is someone with an extreme lack of empathy (check), who can be charming if it suits their purpose (check), is manipulative (check), exploitative (check), and behaves in an impulsive and risky manner (check, and check). Also, they lack conscience or guilt (double check) and refuse to accept responsibility for their actions (checkmate).
His inchoate, evidence-free claims of fraud and a stolen election were presented in courts of law in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona – odd that he thought there was fraud only in the swing states that swung Joe Biden’s way – by his clown car of lawyers with America’s Chucklehead Rudy Giuliani at the wheel. Unsurprisingly, their frivolous lawsuits were not merely denied but swatted away by incredulous judges, many of whom were Republican appointees and even a few installed on the bench by Trump himself.
Rebuffed by the justice system, Trump resorted to pressuring state officials at various levels to simply change results. These efforts too were rebuffed by mostly Republicans who evidently took their oaths to the Constitution and rule of law seriously, much more seriously than they took Trump.
When that also failed, he resorted to a scheme whereby a bunch of loyal lackeys in each of the swing states were to present themselves as ‘alternative electors’ with the plan being that when the day came to certify the election results in Congress Vice-President Pence would reject the real electors and submit the phony ones instead. This was a dangerously desperate, deeply immoral, and plainly felonious ploy that actually might have worked had it not been for Mike Pence finding his balls after four years of sucking Trump’s.
When Trump and his MAGA band of bitter-enders ran out of schemes to overturn a free and fair election that he had lost – as we learned later, he was assured by virtually all of his own top advisors, the Attorney General, and White House counsel that he had indeed lost – they were left with only one card to play.
What was planned initially as a rally on the Ellipse outside the White House for January 6th, 2021, to celebrate the Electoral College victory they hoped to snatch from the jaws of defeat, instead became a mob summoned by Trump himself, a host of right-wing media personalities, and nationalist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. And they came ready to right what they believed was a grave injustice. They were tub-thumped into a frenzy by a parade of MAGA mouthpieces, all teasing violence as necessary if things didn’t go their way, and when their beloved Svengali Trump told them Mike Pence was a coward and had betrayed them, then urged that they fight like hell for their country, all hell broke loose.
Voltaire once said that “those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,” and that played out before us in the weeks after the election leading up to and culminating on January 6th.
We all saw what transpired during the awful hours that day so I will spare you the literal blow-by-blow account, all of which belies Tucker Carlson’s laughably ludicrous take that it was a peaceful protest and tour of the Capitol turned into a riot by federal agents in order to disgrace and impeach Trump. Suffice it to say that Watergate was like a kid stealing candy from a convenience store compared to Trump’s attempted coup d’état and violent insurrection.
As brutal as the violence was, and as shocking as the near overthrow of our government by a madman who happened to be the head of it, what’s truly tragic is that Donald Trump had torn asunder any remaining fabric of national unity and shattered the sense of security we cling to in a presumption of shared values.
And what’s truly terrifying is that he clearly demonstrated the rule of law and foundational principles of our Constitution operate on the honor system, and the democracy we all took for granted is as fragile as it is precious.
Trump almost succeeded in his exigent, cynical bid to hold power, but thanks to the grace and courage of state officials who refused to violate their oath of office, and countless election workers who did their jobs despite threats of violence from the MAGA mob, and yes, a vice-president who chose the right path at the last possible moment, democracy lived to fight another day. Sadly it seemed inevitable the fight would again come to our door. Jonathan Last, Editor of The Bulwark, observed at the time, “Trump showed people that they could have the politics they wanted. I’m not sure there’s any going back.”
But that’s not all I wanted to tell you either.
To be continued next week…