There was never any doubt about the outcome of the impeachment trial. For reasons that range from ambition salted with fear, to the more nuanced “improper venue/jurisdiction,” there was no way 17 Republicans were going to vote to convict. Still, the trial, unique in American history for the number of partisans who joined the majority to convict one of their own, was necessary if for no other reason than to not let such gross abuses of power stand without any attempt at accountability.
The outcome wasn’t in doubt because the Trump cult-of-personality seems particularly frightening to those senators who face re-election in the next cycle. Personally, I think Trump, stripped of his Twitter platform and found guilty in the court of public opinion, has less juice today than yesterday, and is on a diminishing influence curve, but I understand why potentially vulnerable Republicans fear the rath of a perpetually aggrieved man. He amassed about $240 million with his election fraud conspiracy theory fundraising, and threatens to use $30 million of it to unseat his enemies.
But, as their legislative leader, Mitch McConnell, made explicitly clear in his post-mortem speech from the Senate floor, “He hasn’t gotten away with anything [pregnant pause] yet. Yet” McConnell was vehement in his condemnation, saying Trump was “morally responsible” for the Capitol riot, and may have civil and criminal penalties to pay. That speech may prove prophetic—and ultimately more politically important than the acquittal. He said he didn’t think the Senate could convict a former office holder, and went on to lambast the ex-president for his lies and deceptions. For McConnell, Trump was a useful fool; a tool he used to seat hundreds of judges, including three on the Supreme Court.
McConnell wasn’t alone: Trump’s first Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, a probable 2024 presidential candidate, also distanced herself from the ex-president. In a surprising moment of candor, she blamed herself and others for listening to him, and following him down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. Even the Wall Street Journal editorial board weighed in, explaining why they used the word “non-vindication” over “exoneration.”
As much as anything else, it was important to show the whole country the unexpurgated video timeline of a president inciting his followers, their subsequent march to the Capitol, and then the murderous riot that ensued outside and inside the most hallowed representation of democracy in the world. We needed to know that the president watched—“happily,” according to McConnell—on TV as representatives and the vice-president ran for their lives. We needed to know that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pleaded with him for help, only to be rebuffed by a vengeful president telling him, “I guess they care more about the election than you do.” McCarthy yelled, “Who the f--- do you think you’re talking to?” But still fearing him, McCarthy went to Florida the following week to kiss the ring.
The impeachment trial may be over, but there’s a Georgia criminal investigation into attempts to manipulate the election, business fraud cases in New York, and a looming federal criminal investigation into the Capitol riot that may find Trump complicit. So there may still be, as Mitch McConnell indicated, a comeuppance for him. The attorney for the Proud Boys leader has declared, “If this is a conspiracy, Trump was the leader.”
Time marches on, and yesterday’s concerns almost always fade as new ones crop up. But one particularly sticky issue ebbs and flows with the times. The Trump MAGA Movement is “conservative” in only one meaningful way. It seeks to turn back time. There is bitter resentment for social justice, equal rights, and global inter-reliance. There is nothing new about that.
Many have tried to stop progress. The Confederacy was dedicated to maintaining a slave-holding nation; Jim Crow laws tried to ensure that Blacks remained second class citizens forever; the John Birch Society tried to keep us out of the United Nations; one hundred years after the Civil War, George Wallace and the Dixiecrats tried again to leverage Southern political power into permanent White supremacy; the 1968 Nixon campaign had a name for its divisive plan: “The Southern Strategy;” White supremacist militias stormed the Michigan capitol.
It is easy to find the through line from Jim Crow to Selma, Memphis, Charlottesville, Lansing, and now Washington, D.C.
In the face of inexorable demographic change bound to make us a multicultural nation, they all tried and failed to create a monoculture; to bend history to their will, but today, in the age of right-wing conventional and social media, they are linked, amplified and emboldened.
The backlash against democratic process, globalism, and multiculturalism isn’t new, and it is worldwide.
Maybe we need to set our sights on striving again for the “Superman Paradigm” of Truth, Justice, and the American Way.