The subject of president came up and in a crowded waiting room Saturday. Well, really, I brought the topic up with a couple, Marisa and Finny, who met the four of us for a Memorial Day brunch. “Well, what do you think of Trump now?” I ignored Marisa’s previous advice not to talk politics and my wife is chopping the air to stop me. That question provoked my friend Finny into on a brutal public rant. Groans, spitting, the words ‘stupid’ and ‘healthcare’ in the same sentence half a dozen times, and F-bombs here and there.1
Marisa did not like his breathing. I apologized, I set off some angina. I felt bad, but insisted there was good news. I offered a nitroglycerin. My twelve year old rolled her eyes.
We had not seen each other since November. The last time we spoke we had discussed a hypothetical alliance of Trump and Putin to allow an annexation of Ukraine to take place within the first six months of the new administration. By now, after the house passed something, anything that let them off the hook, the senate would now be grand-standing with Grace-commission style hearings about all the wasteful spending in hospitals and in Medicaid. There would be a deportation force despite the reassurance of speaker Ryan—well, not good news there. There is a deportation force even in New Hampshire, but it isn’t a police state going door to door. I predicted the Senate and house Democrats would be in this awful position of making Trump popular with an infrastructure plan (TrumpWorks) that creates some jobs but even more tax breaks. But little of this is happening. I credited the resistance.
I felt free to release some unflattering opinions about the man and how things were going myself—14 million of health insurance by next year . Marisa was uncomfortable enough to mention that others in the crowd may not like to hear this. Finny insisted on some more critique. He was convinced we’d be in a war soon. They just could not hold either of us back.
“Finny” Finbar is a tradesman in northern Coos county, Dixville Notch is the first polling place in the nation—a common demographic for Trump, but he is a strong environmentalist and bigger marijuana legalization advocate; so, his politics are more liberal than mine. (Is there anyone left to be surprised there are lots of folks in Vermont and New Hampshire who grow their own?) Marisa is a computer programmer, now working for a insurance company in Vermont. Both are Big Bernie Fans,
They were convinced he would be impeached soon. He needed to be impeached for the good of the country. My wife nodded, “He needs to be impeached. “ So, with all three of their reactions I came to a realization In the end the president can be a pariah; but what we really need is for him to be is irrelevant. (Happily for us he is doing some of the work on both fronts for us.) We are on the hook; no magical agency will find the evidence that is more convincing than what Trump said in late July 2016 when he explicitly asked for the Russians to hack the DNC. He still got voted in. We need new voters to take the house in 2018. We need new voters to end this debacle in 2020. He is not going to be impeached by a Republican house anytime soon.
In fact, I cringed two weekends ago when Bill Maher bet 100 rubles Trump would be out by Christmas. The whole audience laughed at Boris Epshteyn for taking the bribe, but I am sure Bill just lost 100 rubles. To win that bet would take a cultural shift that isn’t arriving soon. We all know that a culture of intolerance and misguided thinking is keeping him in power. You can fill in here yourself2 many disturbing anecdotes about the intolerant and shiftless, a taxonmy of deplorables. These folks, who constitute 35-40% of us, are by no means fence sitters but are behind a wall. They may stand idly by or cheer on a whole industry of distraction that has sprung up. They are not going to be judged well by history3. Its telling me we need to look elsewhere for support; there is no penetrating this bubble. So, I tell myself, this is going to go on well-beyond 2018. I am bracing myself for a full eight years of this crazy guy despite the encouraging voting shift in Montana last week and the poll shifts in Georgia too,
I cannot omit mention of some more good news coming from someone who was just not engaged enough to be critical in November. “I voted for Trump just because he was a Republican,” a coworker mentioned in the context of his and other folks disgust with the AHCA. He could not believe they did not read the bill. He may vote for the next Republican but at least one voter has felt enough remorse to be skeptical next time.
The Russian Trump-Imbroglio will deepen. It will serve the higher goal of finding what was improper even if it finds nothing illegal or does not lead to impeachment. It will serve as a pillory and continue to stall the passage of some horrible legislation, really horrible. It lays bare that Trump is in this for himself. A war room will not be there to protect your health insurance, get more Carrier jobs back, or negotiate the most terrific trade deal--its there to save his derriere.4
Not to be forgotten it forces the child in him to squeal. Maybe not the right animal noise to mention. What the hell was that tweet about Germany and the other one about healthcare?—I will not reference them here; its just more incoherence. Yes, he needs a history lesson as well as daily intelligence briefings but to paraphrase Kubrick I have given up my fear and learned to love the tweets. A Trump voter co-worker of mine was annoyed months ago by the am word rants. Thinks the guy needs to get back to work. The point is I am guessing he is losing voters with each crazy tweet. The unsecured android phone is chipping away at a margin of victory which was only in the tens of thousands.
I am not sure Trump is a Bond villain and his henchmen Spectre or just to think of him as a corrupt big city mayor gone big time, liberated from blame by misguided millions. A Buddy Cianci gone Bigly. This could blow over then with an impeachmet. Yes, that could be. But if we do not stand for our institutions and principle that no one is above the law—or above political price at the ballot box, it may be the beginning of American autocracy. David Frum enshrined the concept that Trump maintain power or be given power by those able to “to protect the guilty.”
“The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty.”
Another wish I mentioned before brunch Saturday was how this whole assault on the democratic project would fall apart I hope if legislative success fails to materialize, I hope then we will have an opening to provide both electoral wins and a process with hearings. A choice between these two was debated explicitly by David Plotz and Emily during a recent Slate Political Gabfest. We will need bothh; a process to end this disaster of a presidency before more classified information is given to our adversaries, on a whim or by incompetence. We will need an electoral victory to be part of a long struggle against the undemocratic forces in our midst.
1I am reminded of a term Fox Geezer Syndrome. The right wing media cannot even come up with a sensitive or accurate name for the disorder they created. How about Fox News Syndrome to capture a lot of young folks?
2Oh yeah the flag. Maybe one anecdote to explain the picture. Last week i had a patient with a flag pin on his lapel tell me of a friend his in NY who left a job because an employer survey included three categories on gender---There was no obligation to fill out two of the three slots, so I did not ge theoutrage. Yet she or he supposedly was threatened enough to quit a job because of a transgender slot on a form dangling there in plain view. With that dubious urban legend in mind, my patient wanted to know if it was ‘that bad here.’ I do not even want to know more context so I just shook my head. We need to reclaim the flag for those of us with a positive world view
3I just want to mention this tidbit. i am reminded of The Kitty Genovese story which has been called the sin of omission of the century (20th that is); no, it wasn’t really 38 who saw murder and stood by. Much of the story is an exaggeration but as a legend/parable it hits a raw nerve. I hear the story inspired the movie High Plains Drifter. There was Clint Eastwood--not a darling of the left--who puts us in the point of view of the victim to bring us the judgement I’ll steal from Goldwater ‘apathy In the face of injustice is no virtue.’
4He is not just going to war against Americans over healthcare and tax breaks. He is also betraying us to dictators and thieves. If he knew America and loved Americans he would know it does not end well for the aggressor in any fight against us.