Violated, Broken, and Maimed: The Acquittal of Donald J. Trump

“It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain.” Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

The Senate’s acquittal of Trump was no surprise. The sham trial was no surprise, either. The idiotic defense offered up by Ken Starr and Alan Dershowitz was as predictable as snow in Minot, North Dakota in January. Madison and Hamilton are rolling over in their tombs. “Don’t feel bad, men, your Constitution worked pretty well for over two centuries.” But not even in your darkest and most fearful imaginings could you have conjured Donald J. Trump, and an entire political party (save Mitt Romney) of cowards, hypocrites, and incompetents, who without batting an eye traded the rule of law, checks and balances, for the law of the jungle. 

Trump’s followers are betting that the good times (meaning the tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks, defense spending, low interest rates, oil and gas drilling) will keep going -- although it’s against the laws of nature that they do -- and their power grows and solidifies, and that Trump will not at some point become paranoid and turn on them, as Joseph Stalin was wont to do. Politicians of Stalin’s era feared a midnight knock at the door and a firing squad; members of today’s GOP wet themselves just thinking about being maligned by Trump on Twitter and Fox News.   

Afraid to stand up to the bully for fear of losing position and privilege. But not afraid to trash their oath of office and stomp on Madison and Hamilton’s best work.  

The imbecile bully who, after today, may as well be king. Mad king Donald. 

The American government is not a parliament of whores as P.J. O’Rourke once called it, it’s just a cheap whorehouse on the edge of a dying city, with leaky toilets and creaky beds, soiled sheets, and suspicious stains on the floor. 

Hey, Donald, we’re becoming a shithole country. Are you going to bomb us? 

Once again a minority triumphs over the majority.

In 2016 I didn’t think Trump had a chance of becoming president. I overestimated my countrymen’s ability to think logically; I underestimated their pain and fear. In 2020 I don’t see how Trump can lose. Incumbency is powerful in and of itself. Trump’s also sitting on a tower of cash that he can splash around the media landscape. But the real problem, for me, is lack of a Democratic candidate who can unite most of the party, build a large enough coalition, and energize the masses to vote. In the current field, only Bernie Sanders has the mojo to excite people, particularly the young, but the national Democratic Party despises Sanders. Why? For the same reason Republicans won’t cross Trump. Fear of losing power and privilege. Sanders might overturn the gravy train, he might build a movement, he might try to raise taxes on the wealthy and slow the growth of Pentagon spending. He might actually put some official weight behind a Green New Deal and Medicare for All. 

Establishment Democrats and their big money donors aren’t having it. That’s why they let Bloomberg buy his way into the game. That’s why MSNBC and CNN twist themselves into knots to avoid acknowledging that Sanders is a viable candidate. That’s why an unknown pipsqueak named Pete Buttegieg is still hanging around, as if he might stand a chance. It’s why Joe Biden is always described as the front runner. These are the safe guys, tried and true neoliberals and war enthusiasts, the kind of stand up people who would give Juan Guaido a standing ovation. 

I knew this day was coming, but it still leaves me low. What it portends for the future scares me. Intellectually I know that despair is not an option, and that all good and decent people have to keep their hope of a more just world alive; it’s just that today something feels violated, broken, maimed for all time. 

The Gates of Hell

“How Venezuelans choose to conduct their political affairs never has been and is not now the business of the US government. One need support neither Maduro nor Guaido to reach this conclusion. It’s simply not up to Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Marco Rubio, or any other American politician to run Venezuela.” Thomas Knapp

I don’t know much about the history of Venezuela or its politics. I do know that Hugo Chavez was a meddlesome figure for the George W. Bush administration and that back in 2002 Chavez survived a coup attempt orchestrated behind the scenes by the US. No surprise there. The US has meddled in Latin American for a century or more, destabilizing countries that refused to hand over their natural resources or open markets for US firms or adopt American-style capitalism or obey the dictates of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (the arms of American-style capitalism). Heaven forbid a Latin American country get chummy with Cuba, Russia or China, or stand in opposition to US whims. That’s a big no-no. I know that when the US can’t have its way it often resorts to force, covert or overt; it can bring enormous financial and diplomatic pressure to bear on a target country, and if that fails to unlock the door, the US can, and will, obliterate the door with military might. Chavez survived in 2002, his hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, may not. This is a different time than 2002, the third-stringers are running things in the US, leaping from the bench with their tattered imperial playbook. The US corporate media is reluctant to call what is happening in Venezuela a coup, though it certainly smells like a coup and walks like a coup and looks like a coup.

If Venezuela wasn’t oil rich would the US care about it so much? Dumb question, right? Would we go to such lengths for apples or grapes or bell peppers or cauliflower? Or maple syrup? Or coconut oil?

I have heard media pundits blame Maduro’s socialist policies for wrecking Venezuela’s economy. I have also heard pundits claim that the economy collapsed due to punishing US sanctions. Andrea Mitchell, NBC’s old talking head, said that Venezuela was thriving when Chavez took over, the people’s pots overflowed with bounty, life was good, but if that was true and the populace was content, why did they elect Chavez? Other pundits claim we have to recognize the unelected opposition leader Guaido in order to save democracy in Venezuela, and that the crippling economic sanctions are actually helping people. Where are you, George Orwell? But it gets truly comical when the US claims that Maduro’s reelection was marred by massive voting irregularities. After the American election in 2016, and last year’s midterms, with those infamous now-you-see-them-now-you-don’t polling stations, faulty voting machines, and purged voter rolls, that’s just flat out hysterical.

The truth is always more complicated than the “official” narrative makes it out to be, but if you live in the US and swallow corporate media, you will be wildly misinformed, and not only about Venezuela. The situation in Venezuela is extremely complicated and cannot be reduced to ten second sound bites or 140 character explanations.    

The writer Chris Hedges likens the US to a wounded beast, thrashing around in its death throes. Hedges isn’t optimistic about the immediate future, or if any meaningful future is even possible. The murder of the planet continues while Trump and America face off over his vanity wall. The American empire is still powerful, but also hollow, ruled by corporate interests and abetted by a corrupt political system full of unscrupulous hacks like Mitch McConnell and Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, not to mention hopelessly compromised souls like Chuck Schumer and, yes, even the darling of the moment, winner by TKO of the Great Wall Showdown, Nancy Pelosi.

What to do? What to think? Where to turn? Feels to me that we are closer to the gates of hell than to the gates of heaven, but perhaps this is business as usual for our species.