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(I hate George Will just as much as the next person but he does have a
way with words.)
Washington Post, June 1, 2020 at 3:18 p.m. EDT
Trump must be removed. So must his congressional enablers.
By George F. Will
This unraveling presidency began with the Crybaby-in-Chief banging his
spoon on his highchair tray to protest a photograph — a photograph —
showing that his inauguration crowd the day before had been smaller than
the one four years previous. Since then, this weak person’s idea of a
strong person, this chest-pounding advertisement of his own gnawing
insecurities, this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven
that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron.
Presidents, exploiting modern communications technologies and abetted
today by journalists preening as the “resistance” — like members of the
French Resistance 1940-1944, minus the bravery — can set the tone of
American society, which is regrettably soft wax on which presidents
leave their marks. The president’s provocations — his coarsening of
public discourse that lowers the threshold for acting out by people as
mentally crippled as he — do not excuse the violent few. They must be
punished. He must be removed.
Social causation is difficult to demonstrate, particularly between one
person’s words and other persons’ deeds. However: The person voters
hired in 2016 to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” stood
on July 28, 2017, in front of uniformed police and urged them “please
don’t be too nice” when handling suspected offenders. His hope was
fulfilled for 8 minutes and 46 seconds on Minneapolis pavement.
D.C. protesters don’t want their voices lost in the chaos
Before clashes between protesters and police, and a night of chaos
across D.C., there was a third day of mostly peaceful protests outside
the White House. (Joyce Koh, Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)
[Full coverage of the George Floyd protests]
What Daniel Patrick Moynihan termed “defining deviancy down” now defines
American politics. In 2016, voters were presented an unprecedentedly
unpalatable choice: Never had both major parties offered nominees with
higher disapproval than approval numbers. Voters chose what they wagered
would be the lesser blight. Now, however, they have watched him govern
for 40 months and more than 40 percent — slightly less than the
percentage that voted for him — approve of his sordid conduct.
Presidents seeking reelection bask in chants of “Four more years!” This
year, however, most Americans — perhaps because they are, as the
president predicted, weary from all the winning — might flinch: Four
more years of this? The taste of ashes, metaphorical and now literal,
dampens enthusiasm.
The nation’s downward spiral into acrimony and sporadic anarchy has had
many causes much larger than the small man who is the great exacerbator
of them. Most of the causes predate his presidency, and most will
survive its January terminus. The measures necessary for restoration of
national equilibrium are many and will be protracted far beyond his
removal. One such measure must be the removal of those in Congress who,
unlike the sycophantic mediocrities who cosset him in the White House,
will not disappear “magically,” as Eric Trump said the coronavirus
would. Voters must dispatch his congressional enablers, especially the
senators who still gambol around his ankles with a canine hunger for
petting.
In life’s unforgiving arithmetic, we are the sum of our choices.
Congressional Republicans have made theirs for more than 1,200 days. We
cannot know all the measures necessary to restore the nation’s domestic
health and international standing, but we know the first step: Senate
Republicans must be routed, as condign punishment for their Vichyite
collaboration, leaving the Republican remnant to wonder: Was it sensible
to sacrifice dignity, such as it ever was, and to shed principles, if
convictions so easily jettisoned could be dignified as principles, for
. . . what? Praying people should pray, and all others should hope: May
I never crave anything as much as these people crave membership in the
world’s most risible deliberative body.
A political party’s primary function is to bestow its imprimatur on
candidates, thereby proclaiming: This is who we are. In 2016, the
Republican Party gave its principal nomination to a vulgarian and then
toiled to elect him. And to stock Congress with invertebrates whose
unswerving abjectness has enabled his institutional vandalism, who have
voiced no serious objections to his Niagara of lies, and whom T.S. Eliot
anticipated:
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