I know – the thought is so awful it’s really hard to get past the horror of the actual idea to consider what you would do if your father were acting in public and often on camera the way Trump has since taking office, most especially in the past six months. As a life-long American, how would you square up your duty to your country to protect and preserve the Constitution with sitting by and doing nothing to intercede while one of your parents does things unconstitutional and deleterious to our fundamental democratic values, again in public and often on camera?
Further, I still want to know how people who most would expect would love and care for their husband/father/brother/grandfather not do everything in their power to convince him to resign and go hide at one or another of his properties? I think Trump’s own need for self-preservation could make him choose this option, given that the only way that Trump can be pardoned for the crimes he’s committed since taking office is to be pardoned by a President Pence. The only way Mike Pence would ever be president is for Trump to resign, so Trump better make up his mind in a hurry if he hopes to have a chance to avoid federal prison for what he’s done while at the White House.
I can’t imagine saying nothing while watching someone I truly loved destroy not just himself, but much of the foundation of our federal government and global reputation. I would hate to have my father be known for all future time as the most corrupt, incompetent, narcissistic, unteachable, self-dealing, traitorous and uninformed president ever. Period. In order to feel that way, however, I had to love my Dad, which I did and still do despite losing him in 2008, two years after my Mom lost her twenty-three year battle with breast cancer. I hope I would feel the same about anyone I love, in that I wouldn’t want to see them as President of the United States, spreading bogus conspiracy theories, lying about voting by mail, or just being a huge asshole like Trump is on a daily basis. If Trump’s wife, sons, daughters, or others to whom he is related actually care about him, why do they not stop him?
The answer to this has always been obvious, while the concept is anathema to most of us: Trump’s inability to have or express feelings for anyone other than himself has resulted in him being surrounded by a family that is connected transactionally instead of emotionally. They will stay silent so long as they have something to gain by doing so. They will continue their complicity because they still think there is a benefit in it for themselves. As for the rest of us, including Trump himself, they have no shits left to give.
This behavior is short-sighted, as has much of what the Trump Administration has done. Little consideration has ever been given to what will happen later, after they can no longer prevent the Justice Department from doing Justice, or the Attorney General from being the “People’s Attorney” rather than Trump’s ‘fixer’, and their short-sightedness will be their downfall. The rest of the Trump cabal will be forced to reckon with what they did and did not do, and I have to believe that at least some of them will rue the day the jumped on the bandwagon to line their pockets.
If I can’t hold onto that hope, then what the hell is the point of all this? No more can we let ‘bygones be bygones’.
Laws have been broken, alliances have been damaged, and our democracy is in serious trouble because Trump and his lackeys were allowed to run rampant by the Republican Party that created them for that very purpose. It is not enough just to remove Trump and Republicans from office…
The Republican Party itself must be put out of our misery. If conservatives want to have their own party, they need to start again from scratch. No political party that exists in whole or in part to oppress everyone not with them does not have the right to exist in a liberal democracy. No political party that uses voter suppression in any form has a place in our dialogue. And no political party that continues to force minority rule against the wishes of the majority of the citizens is welcome to share power in our democracy.
No one around Trump gives a damn about him.
Boomer Dem-Nation 