Impeached, Bothered and Bewildered

On Wednesday, exactly a week after the attack on the Capitol and a week before the Inauguration of a new President, the current stain upon the White House named Trump was impeached by a furious U.S. House of Representatives for inciting an insurrection. He is the first President in history to be impeached twice, and as someone also observed, of the grand total of presidential impeachments, he has half.

 The Washington Post finds him “increasingly isolated, sullen and vengeful.” He reportedly made the most Trumpian of all threats against his lawyer Guliani by instructing aides not to pay him.

Only ten Republicans joined all Democrats in voting to impeach.  Still, it was the highest number in history to vote for the impeachment of a President of their own party.  

 Mitch McConnell, also playing his own characteristic political games in probably his last substantive act as Majority Leader, refused to convene the Senate to begin the trial before Trump runs out his term. If the trial is to begin immediately upon the Democrats taking the majority, it will be scheduled for part of the working days, while the Senate gets on with the crucial task of confirming the new Cabinet.

 But with National Guard troops everywhere in the Capitol complex, the House is not done with the immediate response to last week’s attempted coup, including investigating the actions of one or more Republican members the day before, in escorting people around the complex who were among those breaking in and terrorizing Members and congressional staff, on what one military veteran and Democratic Member described as “reconaissance.”

 Preparations to thwart threatened violence this weekend and next week are accelerating. National Guard presence in Washington has already been expanded to 20,000 and may be augmented again to 30,000 troops.  That means, according to a House Member, there are more American troops at the Capitol than in Afghanistan.

  Since it’s just a week until the Inauguration, the Secret Service has now formally taken over leadership. The most concern voiced on Wednesday was for the possibility of bombs and improvised explosive devices.

 Federal alerts have been sent to state capitals as well. But especially since certain Republicans, from Ted Cruz to the crazy QAnon lady in the House, continue to fan the flames, experts don’t think the violence will necessarily end after Inauguration Week. Said one counter-terrorism expert: “People are still looking at this with eyes wide shut. I mean, it is truly stunning. Misinformation and disinformation constitutes nothing less than a major public health crisis. I think this is really the consequence of where we are now after the last four years.”

 Do you have to be as old as me to see this in the light of history? The United States fought the Great War and suffered the flu pandemic. After the tumult of the 1920s there was the Great Depression that shook this nation to its foundations. That was immediately followed by the largest and most destructive global war in history. There were assassinations, turmoil and violence in the 1960s and 1970s over race and Vietnam. But in none of those decades was it necessary for there to be troops guarding inside the U.S. Capitol against a violent invasion. It hasn’t happened since the Civil War. 

 History will perhaps see more clearly how the Covid pandemic is part of this national threat to the government itself.  For more Americans have died (according to official statistics) in this covid crisis than died in combat in World War II. Covid deaths will likely equal the total number of American deaths in that war by this weekend.  And that carnage took some four years to accomplish.  We've seen it in less than one.

 And if you're looking for more Civil War parallels, getting to the number of deaths in that war--which equals or surpasses American deaths in all other wars combined-- is not really out of the question.  (That number is approximately 620,000, though recent scholarship suggests it was more like 750,000.) 

With legal and financial troubles closing in on Trump, his attention is likely to turn to pardons, especially of himself.  Though the constitutionality of a self-pardon is doubtful, he may well see it as what does he have to lose.   A CNN report suggests a batch of pardons could come today, to blow impeachment off the news.  But since Jared and Ivanka--among others-- haven't had a word to say in his defense recently, he may not be in the mood to pardon anyone, except his own impeached, bothered and bewildered self.