gracchusdixit

The unending train wreck that is the Trump administration is piling up casualties by the carload.   In the 15 months since Donald Trump took the oath of office, an unprecedented number of cabinet members, agency officials, and political appointees have been fired or forced to resign, either because of their own scandalous behavior or to avoid scandals yet to come.  None of those who have already or will soon depart this administration is walking away unscathed, with his or her reputation intact.  Each and every one has been, or inevitably will be, tarnished, diminished, and humiliated.  

The casualties include Gary Cohn, the one-time head of Goldman-Sachs, who will never rid himself of the shame that he chose to remain silent when Donald Trump called torch-carrying Neo-Nazis “good people;” Rex Tillerson, once the CEO of the largest corporation in the world, who will be remembered, if he is remembered at all, as one of the worst Secretaries of State in our history; and H. R. McMaster, long judged to be among the most honorable and intellectually distinguished military officers in the land, who was dismissed and discarded via Twitter, like week-old garbage.  One of the few remaining hold-outs, Chief of Staff John Kelly, is all but certain to meet a similar fate, having revealed himself to be no less a bigot than the bigot he serves.  All those who serve Donald Trump, however creditably they begin, inevitably end up as maggots in a dunghill.

There have been other casualties that go beyond the personal.  One is the Republican Party itself.  Any pretense that the Grand Old Party stands for principles that can even remotely be called conservative is gone.  Fiscal prudence, balanced budgets, and free trade no longer matter to Republicans.  Like slavish courtiers serving an Oriental potentate, they have prostrated themselves before the despot who now sits in the Oval Office.  One by one, they have dropped to their knees, pressed their faces to the floor, and complied.  There is no longer even a whiff of doubt that the party of Lincoln now belongs to Donald Trump, lock, stock, and barrel.   If he goes down, it will go down with him.

An even greater casualty of the Trump presidency are the ethical “norms” that have made our democracy possible for the better part of two centuries.  Formal constitutional and legal arrangements can accomplish only so much.  They depend, for their efficacy, on implicit but universally accepted ethical standards.  These include the principles that private financial gain and the conduct of the public’s business should not commingle, that nepotism should not guide the appointment of public officials, that self-dealing and self-interest should not influence public policy.  These norms, and many others, have gone up in smoke.  The ruination began when Trump refused to release his tax returns, claiming—falsely—that he was being audited by the IRS.  This was a charade, and he got away with it.  Thus it is that the  American people have no idea what his conflicts of interest may be or by what shady means he has enriched himself and his family.

Still another casualty of the Trump era is the rule of law itself, which is the most fundamental underpinning of democracy.  By this, I do not mean law for the law’s sake—every tyrannical regime on the planet exploits the law to rationalize or enforce its oppressions.  I mean law as the embodiment of justice.  

When Trump’s chief of staff, John Kelly, said of immigrants, “They don’t integrate well; they don’t have skills; they’re not bad people; they’re coming here for a reason, and I sympathize with the reason; but the laws are the law,” he was not invoking law as the embodiment of justice.  He was invoking the law as an instrument of exclusion and coercion.  This echoes Trump’s own view of the justice system, which he believes to exist for the sole purpose of protecting him.  For months, he has been attacking his own appointees at the FBI and the Department of Justice, precisely because they have, thus far at least, failed to close ranks to protect “the boss” from the consequences of his financial and political crimes.  Since Trump is nothing if not relentless, he may ultimately get his way, and if he does, we can kiss our democracy goodbye.

Perhaps the worst casualty of the Trump presidency is our conception of what it means to be an American.  There was a time, not that very long ago, when we could disagree with one another, however vehemently, and still find ways of coming together as one people, citizens of an American republic in which our political differences were secondary to our common ideals.  That time is gone.

For my part, I will never be able to understand, let alone excuse, the 60 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump.  Their bigotry, their willful ignorance, their irrational hatred of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, their eager embrace of a man, who is a little more than a common criminal and incontestably immoral, is beyond the pale.  I shall forever hold these people in utter contempt, and I am quite sure their disdain for people like me is no less complete.

Thus, we find ourselves at a familiar historical impasse.  Our country is once again irreconcilably divided, as it was on the eve of the Civil War.  Like it or not, it is now “us versus them,” and it is time to pick sides.  All the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot put this union back together again.