To Further Divide the Country

Charlottesville "Unite the Right"

Republican Senate and House members, Republican politicians generally, conservative pundits appearing on the “fair and balanced” Fox News, and evangelical pastors with their faces at once beatific and doleful, all joined in expressing unctuous concern over Speaker Pelosi’s intention to move ahead Monday with the impeachment of Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, for “Incitement of Insurrection.” The politicians, pundits, and pastors seem united in their opinion that impeachment will “further divide the country.”

For myself, I find this another example of Republicans and their constituencies lacking what I refer to as an “irony gene.” They seem immune to the fact that what they say is the exact obverse of what they do. Republicans have been going about dividing America at least since Newt Gingrich made a science of combative, take no prisoners, partisan politics. Gingrich is remembered for a 1978 talk he gave to young Republican activists at college in Georgia in which he said, “One of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty.”*

Republicans have been led for the last 4 years by the “Divider in Chief,” Donald J. Trump. They have followed him slavishly, and parroted his divisive, crass, insulting dialogue and Twitter feed. They have refused to criticize him even when his behavior is beneath contempt and his policies are contemptible. There weren’t “very fine people on both sides,” but Republicans, fearful of losing a significant portion of their constituency, were loath to call out white supremacists. And when Trump told them to "stand back and stand by," these Republicans said nothing, until they began saying, "they stole the election from you."

Well, at least most of these irony-challenged Republicans aren’t saying that incitement of an insurrection isn’t impeachable. They’re just concerned that actually impeaching the son of a bitch that did it will “further divide the country.

 

Insurrection, January 6, 2021

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* Mitch McConnell is said to have “transformed from a moderate Republican who supported abortion rights and public employee unions to the embodiment of partisan obstructionism” as a result of observing the effectiveness of Gingrich’s tactics (Alec MacGillis, “The Cynic: The Political Education of Mitch McConnell,” 2014).

Sedition

President Donald J. Trump speaking at his "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington D.C., January 6, 2021.

On January 6, 2021, Donald J. Trump, the sitting President of the United States, incited a riot that resulted in the storming of the U.S. Capital, and the successful breaching of its defenses by domestic terrorists, led by a “huge contingent of Proud Boys.” This occurred as the Congress, with Vice-President Pence presiding, was counting the 2020 Electoral College votes.

This count was to be a ceremonial function celebrating America’s democratic institution of free and fair elections, as Congress has no power to change the vote of the electors chosen by the 50 states. Joe Biden had amassed 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.

Trump told a crowd of raucous supporters on the Ellipse just south of the White House, “All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical Democrats.”

Trump went on to reiterate his evidence-free charges of fraud, made erroneous statements about how elections were run in swing states “by Democrats," and in a rambling aside bragged about his “history-making” achievements, berated the Media’s corruption, asked where Hunter Biden was, berated Georgia Governor Brian Kemp for not overturning the Georgia result, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court, and commended Rudy Giuliani as a “real fighter.”

Trump concluded by exhorting his followers, “We will never give up. We will never concede. It will never happen…" Pointing at the crowd with his black-gloved hand he said, "We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. And I’ll be with you…because you'll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong.”

And they did as the President asked them. They marched to the Capital, and stormed the Capital, and desecrated the Capital. People died.

Trump did not go with them. He was driven back to the White House where he watched what he had wrought on television.

The U.S. Capital, January 6, 2021