In the Senate impeachment trial on Monday (January 27th), 2020), two speeches stood out. Both Judge Starr and Professor Dershowitz provided superb historical accounts of all the circumstances and thinking about impeachment as it was debated and written into the Constitution in 1787. They also recounted how that thinking was applied, both properly and improperly, in the only two presidential impeachment trials that occurred since then. These were outstanding history lessons presented with relevant ties to the present impeachment case.
Most of the content of these speeches was non-political, just pure historical fact. To the House Impeachment Managers however, these speeches were irrelevant and might as well not have been given at all. The Democrat House managers and most of the news media are so consumed with destroying President Trump, they are simply deaf to all other input, regardless of how insightful and well-presented it may be. There was no commensurate scholarly response from the House Managers on the pertinent points in these speeches. Not even close. Just their usual talking point drivel repeated over and over. Ditto for the news media. It is a shameful indictment of just how low the level of intellectual discourse has descended among the President’s critics.
Why do these anti-Trump politicians and their supporters continue to be “triggered” so profoundly by the President? It’s astonishing to us. The hatred is so gripping that it overcomes the ability to reason. A sort of heedless thought disorder ensues, overriding even self-preservation. During the House impeachment hearings and subsequent Senate trial, Adam Schiff provided perfect examples of how clinging to this animosity leads to laughably farfetched accusations. He accused Trump of preparing to steal the 2020 election. As proof, he uses the baseless claim that Trump successfully accomplished this same feat of larceny in 2016. That wasn’t enough though. In front of the full Senate and Chief Justice, Schiff also accused Trump of enabling a Russian attack on the US. Where did this come from? We’ve heard various forms of election meddling accusations before, but an attack on the US by Russia? Purposely enabled by the President?? Then Schiff joined his colleague Jerrold Nadler and went even further by accusing all Republican Senators of “covering up” Trump’s nefarious schemes. We know both Schiff and Nadler have always had a flare for the dramatic, but this is over-the-top even for them. They both are providing the clearest example of what it means to be “triggered” by Donald Trump.
Like others, Schiff’s personal disdain for President Trump began well before the 2016 election. Trump had long personified the purest form of capitalism. His appetite for excess placed his fortune on constant display as evidence of being a “winner” in the capitalist system. For anyone already predisposed to dislike capitalism, as do just about all the Democrat Presidential candidates and many liberals in Congress, his showiness amplifies their disdain ten-fold. In the months after the inauguration, spurred by Trump’s bold actions to fulfill campaign promises using the same loud bravado characteristic of his business and entertainment affairs, that disdain slowly transformed into hate. Overcome with disgust, Schiff and those similarly affected by Trump have lost all perspective and focus. They are now completely obsessed with combating, defeating and getting rid of Trump.
Trump on the other hand, has recognized this obsession among his critics and correctly identified it as a political weakness open to exploitation. Trump knew he could easily provoke these people with public tweets targeting them directly. These short and hastily assembled missives, the antithesis of traditionally curated White House communications, have had a hugely outsized affect. By feeding the psychosis of his opponents in this way, Trump continues to drive his detractors down avenues of desperation they never imagined themselves traversing.
Trump’s lifetime of competitive business dealings trained him not to lose sight of larger goals in the midst of intense negotiation or debate. His business record shows a willingness to “walk away” from a negotiation he knows he can’t win. Maintaining this perspective is what enables him, and other effective leaders, to operate just above the mire, desperation and lunacy that has so easily engulfed his unschooled critics. Schiff and others have clearly not learned this same lesson. They completely lack the ability to even consider walking away and are forging ahead without regard to their calamitous destination. As a result, it becomes easier each day for Trump to drive Schiff and his cohorts into intellectual cul-de-sacs they can’t escape from. It’s like watching a coarse, yet accomplished cowpoke corral a stampeding herd.
We are not living under a dictator as Schiff and Nadler would like us to think. We are not under any kind of “imminent threat” from our President. The 2016 election was not “stolen” or unnaturally altered by anyone, Russians or otherwise. There is no credible reason to believe the 2020 election will be stolen or altered by anyone. Claims to the contrary appear to be the result of unchecked anxieties and imagined threats, all being incessantly stoked by the news media (liberal and conservative alike). It is breathtaking how many clear-thinking and intelligent people have lost their frame of reference and become completely suffused with hatred for Donald Trump.
It’s possible that much of the intense dislike for the President started out as just overzealous negative campaigning in 2016 by Hillary Clinton and her supporters in the media. Somehow, the personal attacks and overdone attempts to discredit an opponent, typical of many campaigns, devolved into a false reality. It has literally caused some people to fall into an inexorable Trump neurosis. When challenged about the validity of their false reality, the response is that it’s the Trump supporters who are the ones living in a false reality, created in part by secret Russians who have infected the social media services.
Once again, we strongly suspect the actual number of people affected by this condition is lower than the media would have you believe. Still, it amazes us just how many good people have been overcome. Further, this is not the typical case of a few fringe characters looking for fame and/or an airing of extremist views. Instead, many of these people are educated, and have exercised discipline, talent, and work ethic to achieve high-level positions in government and industry. Counterintuitively, the severe anti-Trump affliction besetting these people makes it quite possible a portion of them will see no purpose in voting at all since they’ve become convinced the election will be stolen. Compounding this is the dearth of young inspiring Democrat candidates for them to choose from, which also saps motivation to turn out on election day.
The Dem’s rhetoric has been aimed at alarming, inflaming, and goading their base with the Trump boogieman and his asserted affiliation with all things evil. All this polarizing rhetoric is in the hopes that they can drive these duped souls in record numbers to the ballot box. Their campaign strategists know how overblown their claims of Trump’s perfidy are. Yet they loathe Trump so much, and care so little for the people they purport to be serving that they applaud and augment the insanity daily. This is what the “Party of the People” has devolved into. Is the Party’s new modus operandi that of good leaders of a democratic republic? No.
If Trump wins, will the Democrat Party faithful fall into despair, or erupt in violence? Whatever they do, in our view they have been manipulated by a political machine that doesn’t care about their anguish or fear or even their future. It views them only as numbers, data points to be aggregated and maneuvered.
Trump empowers his base with promises of success (which he has delivered upon in our view) and exhorts the public to vote in 2020 for more of the same. He lavishes praise upon the component peoples who make our country successful; blue-collar workers, the military, business entrepreneurs, careerists, and all folk who still believe in “the American Dream”. He expounds on the virtues of capitalism and the wisdom of our country’s founders.
In stark contrast, the Democrats seem intent upon terrorizing their adherents into the ballot box. Their hysterical rhetoric tries to whip their base into acute emotional responses, hoping that they may abandon balanced thinking. They present a transmogrified, bogus view of our President as a predatory monster with aspirations of dictatorship. They are attempting to inculcate an altered and dystopian view of American history (e.g. The 1619 project1) which paints our founding fathers as nothing more than horny, debased slavers. They trumpet a false, horrifying prediction of America’s future: climate disaster, race war, recession, the designation of half the populace as deplorable. They moan, scream and point daily to our worst fears and failures.
Which Party has the sober frame of mind and thought processes needed to lead America for the next four years? Thankfully, the American people still have some time to reflect on all this before deciding – ten months in fact.
1As defined by Wikipedia – “The 1619 Project is an ongoing project developed by The New York Times Magazine in 2019 with the goal of re-examining the legacy of slavery in the United States and timed for the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia.”