The Rule of Law is DOA

“The buck certainly doesn’t stop at his desk. Major League Baseball coaches face more retribution from the league’s commissioner for decoding their opponent’s signs than Trump will most likely face from the US Senate. It becomes clearer with each passing day that Trump has no problem with living in a swamp, as long as it’s his swamp.” Ron Jacobs, Counterpunch

The odds of witnesses being allowed to testify in Trump’s impeachment “trial” -- and who has ever seen a trial without witnesses or without the accused presenting one iota of exonerating evidence? -- are slim. True to his word, Mitch McConnell has twisted arms and growled threats to keep his caucus firmly in line behind Donald J. Trump. If no witnesses are allowed, we might as well pronounce the Rule of Law in America DOA. Thereafter, the batshit reasoning of Alan Dershowitz will become reality. 

This is the low point of my life as a citizen of the United States of America. I knew the impeachment trial in the Senate would be a farce. It’s astonishing to think that in a little more than three years, Donald J. Trump has shredded our most cherished institutions, and placed himself above the reach of law. According to Dershowitz’s bizarre logic, Trump can shoot Bernie Sanders dead and claim he acted in the service of his reelection, which is of course in the interests of the American people, meaning he will face no consequence whatsoever. Down in hell, Richard Nixon, who said it’s not against the law when the president does it, is smiling at finally being vindicated.  

The moral courage of the entire GOP would barely fill a thimble. How in the hell has Trump turned the GOP into a cult so quickly? Even Mitt Romney, who is independently wealthy and has nothing to fear from Trump, bows in subservience. Did these people never learn the simple playground lesson about bullies? You don’t retreat before a bully, you get in his face and expose him for the coward that he is. 

Profiles in cowardice, profiles in hypocrisy, profiles in sycophancy. This is every last man and woman in the GOP today. 

Donald J. Trump has dodged, ducked, and avoided accountability his entire life. The privileged little white boy, born with a silver spoon in his ass, always plays the victim, even as he stiffs contractors, cheats on his tax returns, lies about his wealth, and boasts about grabbing women by their private parts. The businessman who couldn’t make money in the casino business. The serial adulterer loved by Christian Nationalists. The racist adored by white supremacists. The ally of tyrants. The con man. 

Once Trump is acquitted there’s no return to the halcyon days of pedestrian political corruption. The system of checks and balances has been gamed. Get ready for full bore kleptocracy because there is nothing that can stop Trump. He may only be king of America’s rotting carcass, but he’s still king. 

The artist Patti Smith put it well in her memoir, Year of the Monkey: “A true darkening of days. All of the resources that could be used to scrape away lead from the walls of crumbling schools, to shelter the homeless, or to clean a foul river. Instead one candidate desperately shovels money down a pit, and the other builds empty edifices in his own name, another kind of immoral waste.”