JANUARY 23, 2020 – Given Adam Schiff’s textbook, prosecutorial performance yesterday, the untenable aspects of the Republican defense of Trump are now in the plain light of day. Perhaps the most startling revelation of yesterday’s proceedings was how many Republican Senators were hearing and seeing evidence for the first time. And what greater hubris and contempt for truth could be revealed than Senator Rand Paul’s conspicuous work on a crossword puzzle during the historic proceedings? Answer: Lindsey Graham’s hours-long, total absence.
Might not a potential voter in November, just tuning in, and familiar with the terms “trial,” “evidence,” and “jury,” and half a notion of “legitimacy,” say to self—and Republicans—“Hey, wait a minute!” In sufficient numbers such potential voters could put Republican senators in a quandary. Do they vote to keep the proceeding a sham and render the outcome illegitimate, thus alienating those potential voters? Or do they vote to lower the evidentiary stonewall erected by Trump and allow in testimony and documents that are only going to make things worse for the man to whom they’ve pledged personal fealty—and worse for Republicans, even with acquittal?
Plan B: Alan Dershowitz and his phony baloney wrapped in shiny foil bearing Harvard’s motto, veritas. But as Schiff said what bears repeating until the baloney sausage is rejected: “If Trump’s offenses aren’t impeachable, then nothing is.”
No law degree, no special schooling in logic, ethics, philosophy, or political science are required to understand that if the brash, impulsive, insecure, ill-disciplined, ill-educated, china shop bull, narcissist, iconoclastic, rule-breaking, norm-shattering, TV reality show host, bankruptcy-prone, spitballs-to-the-walls, conspiracy-obsessed president is acquitted, he will embark on a tweet-based, rally-manic, end-to-end campaign to win re-election (i.e. personal affirmation). And behind the scenes . . . strike that; in open contempt of all of us, he will stop at nothing—NOTHING—to assure his re-election, no matter how sleazy, how despicable, how dangerous, how illegal, how impeachable—because by acquittal in the instance at hand, he will have learned the truth of Schiff’s argument: nothing is impeachable.
If one has any experience interacting with other human beings, one can detect patterns of personality, psychological make-up, and behavior. We develop these skills from pure survival instinct. We don’t need special education or training beyond experience. In the case at hand, the subject himself has been a bullhorn and an iMax theater in projecting his make-up. This is not a wolf in sheepskin; a smiling devil wearing angel wings; a false prophet; a villain dressed in the white robes of a priest. This is a bully pig in a bully pig’s skin. Put him in a pen of mud, and as sure as he is a pig and the mud is mud, he will splutter and splatter mud all around the pen—just as he has in all the other pig pens of his life.
That’s what is plain as can be—a big pig in a big pig pen. Will enough potential voters see this to force Republican senators to see it too?
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
