We've Lost to President Trump
July 27, 2017
If it was going to happen, it would have happened by now. After months of chanting this is not normal
the new normal is fully vested in our society. The critical moment came upon us, and when it did the People stood up and spoke with a single voice with a clear message: We'll put up with it.
In the past few weeks circumstances have reached a point of full saturation. The revelation of the Donald Trump Jr. emails, and subsequent Natalia Veselnitskaya meeting, was a do-or-die moment. Historians will look back to that event and point out that from that point forward, nothing else would truly matter. For those of us who hoped to eliminate the Kremlin's influence over the White House, the past couple weeks were a final stand. Reinforcements never came. And now it's too late to do anything more. The President has won in every way that matters. The country has accepted his treason, his incompetence, his corruption, his embarrassing circus, and his contemptible agenda. There will still be fights. There will be skirmishes won and skirmishes lost by both sides. But the big picture will remain the same. President Trump will be in power, he will remain in power, he will continue to consolidate his power, he will use that power to personally profit at the nation's expense, he will hand over sweetheart deals to the Kremlin, he will cripple the workings of our government with his inept leadership.
Many people have questioned our criticism of Congressional Democrats and the media as the guilty parties in enabling President Trump's crimes. But imagine for a moment that the Mafia has taken over your city while the police have sat on the sidelines, unable to be bothered to oppose them. They make appeals for funding, saying that all new Mafia activity demands more resources before it can be addressed. But they aren't really trying. They say all the right things in public speeches to give the appearance of being opposed to the Mafia. But for all of their claims to be outraged by the Mafia's crimes, they never act. They insist they're powerless, then ask for more money. In reality, they just don't care that the Mafia is committing these crimes.
The Mafia may be guilty of their crimes but the dereliction of duty by the police turns out to be the greater offense against society. They had a duty to oppose the Mafia, but instead they perverted their roles and exploited the crimes of these criminals for their own selfish gains. The Democrats have an obligation as the minority party to oppose the President. That opposition must be in actions, not merely words. They are duty bound to appeal to the People of the country, to gather support, and to bring that public pressure of the entire nation to bear on the Republican caucus. The Democrats have abandoned their duty as the oppositional minority party and have instead perverted themselves to exploit the President's crimes for their own selfish gains. How can anyone expect Republicans in Congress to oppose their own President when the opposition party can't even be bothered to do so?
Nancy Pelosi and those who are going along with her plan, torn from an episode of the early 2000s show The West Wing, to retain-and-fundraise-against have exacted an amazingly damaging wound on our country. Some of you won't see it, because you don't want to see it. It's Pelosi, her carnival barker Ted Lieu, and the rest of her followers who have conditioned you to become passive, yet believe you are active. They have programmed you to never be so outraged that you demand the President be impeached, yet be outraged enough to desperately hope he is impeached. Even when indisputable evidence is revealed that his campaign engaged in collusion with Russian agents, you will believe it's not enough evidence. You will insist on waiting longer and longer. You'll wait so long that President Trump will leave office through term expiration. No matter how damning the evidence you will never be roused enough to demand his removal. You'll only be roused enough to fetch your checkbook while you direct your outcry elsewhere. They have indoctrinated you with their doublethink, growing in outrage but diminishing in urgency, and in that sense she is no better than Louise Mensch for placating the opposition into a false sense that justice is around the corner just as long as you keep waiting. The past two weeks are the proof.
Perhaps what is most amazing, and most contemptible, about all of this is that from the beginning of President Trump's term, and until very recently, these same people would constantly be up in arms, shaking their fists in righteous indignation while shouting EMOLUMENTS CLAUSE! TWENTY FIFTH AMENDMENT! GET HIM OUT NOW!
These battle cries have been shouted for six months with such fervor that unbridled passions have stripped these phrases of their very meaning, and many Democrats (with a good deal of assistance from liberal media outlets) have eagerly fanned those flames. The same Democrats who have encouraged you to desperately hope for impeachment over a far fetched emoluments theory that never existed before January 2017 are the same Democrats who are telling you that campaign officials attempting to collude with Russian agents isn't enough to warrant impeachment.
If you believe the Democrats are powerless then you cannot support the Resistance. If you believe the Democrats are powerless then you did not attend the Women's March, you weren't at the March for Science, you weren't at the March for Truth, you haven't written a single letter, you haven't made a single call. If you've done even one of these things, even if only one time, then you cannot claim that the Democrats are powerless. If they are, then why did you bother? Did you do those things because someone paid you? Or did you do those things because you believed those actions could help to move the needle?
Nobody should believe that Congressional Democrats are powerless because Congressional Democrats don't believe it. Look what is happening with the health care in Congress. Democrats have pulled in activists and protesters into the halls of Congress and in front of the White House. They are bringing public pressure to bear on Republicans, and just enough Republicans are breaking away from the pack. Two weeks ago the Democrats were handed the golden ticket. Had they chosen, Congressional Democrats could have turned the moment into the catalyst that would have brought widespread solidarity through the country to demand the impeachment of a traitorous President. What you did not see at the time, though perhaps you're starting to see it now, is that Congressional Republicans were ripe for abandonment of the President. Had the public outrage built up with Democrats initiating the push, Congressional Republicans would have had the timing and excuse they would have needed to justify turning against President Trump. But with that knowledge, what did Nancy Pelosi do? She went on Sunday morning talk and said told the nation to ignore the campaign meeting. She complained it was a distraction from health care.
There's a reason only a very small handful of Democrats in Congress will broach the subject of impeachment. Pelosi is threatening her own caucus against pursuing impeachment. Just as President Trump is overtly attacking Republicans who don't fall in line behind him, runnning attack ads and threatening their reelections, so too is Pelosi threatening her own caucus against supporting impeachment. The very small group who have defied her are a very few who believe they are secure against any primary challenge.
Looking back, it's difficult to remember exactly what our goals or expectations were when we began this endeavor. We wanted to stand in opposition to incompetence, the destruction of reality, and alarmingly fast dissolution of the rule of law that could already be seen. Above everything else we understood that the chief concern facing the country was the integrity of our sovereignty and national security. We recognized that the concerns about President Trump were supra-partisan, and we hoped that by providing a glimpse into the heart of the catastrophe known as the Trump administration we might help fuel a supra-partisan awareness of what was at stake. Perhaps we were naive. At least, some of us, because there was certainly discussion on the matter among ourselves. We hoped that the power of democracy would be able to influence the outcome of this administration one way or another. In many ways this administration has turned out worse than even our pessimistic fears could have imagined. And somehow, our efforts have become weighed down in a thick partisan fog against a mutually corrupt oppositional leadership.
The past six months have proven that President Trump is a traitor who doesn't think twice to undermine the strength and security of our country for personal gain, and the past two weeks prove that nothing will be done about it by Congress because there is no will in either party to do so. Mueller's investigation will continue, likely for two years at a minimum, and in the end some allegation about tax evasion will be made, and maybe even some suggestions that people within the President's sphere engaged in some degree of financial wrongdoing. Just like the Fitzgerald's investigation in the Plame Affair failed to come close to producing an impeachable result when the Bush administration leaked the identity of an undercover CIA operative as political revenge, neither will Mueller's investigation be able to establish the President's treason. Likely, the President will pardon anyone close to him who happens to be indicted. And with the exception of Democrats continuing to rail against President Trump for fundraising purposes, that will be the final conclusion to the matter.
Until now we hoped we might help guide people to envision events that were on the horizon for the future. But at this point it seems the only thing useful we can do is to record history, for whatever benefit it may be a hundred years from now. It's difficult to see a useful purpose in our project anymore otherwise, especially with the growing dangers involved and the renewed zeal for prosecutions.