Abraham Lincoln. That means that, unless I read this wrong, they consider 45 to be the greatest president ever.
I want to see someone, anyone, ask a Republican member of Congress if they agree and watch them squirm. Because they will. Because it's an embarrassment. Too. Just like he is.
Well, you know, they're just angry. They're angry that 45's going to be impeached. Never mind that he should. Never mind that he took the foreign policy of this country and completely strangled it to submit to his will. Never mind that the Russians are grinning about it every single day.
Because if he has apologists within the Congress who will excuse everything he's doing and won't bring him to account, that's implicit permission--not only for 45 to keep doing it, but for Republicans nationwide to not only excuse it, but to actually inflate what he does and, in a comparison that boggles the mind, conflate it to equivalency with our greatest president, bar none, hands down.
And they don't know, nor have they ever considered, that the reason why Lincoln's greatness has only expanded through the years is that he was the direct opposite of what 45 seems to represent to those who claim his wonderfulness. Which is to say: restraint.
Lincoln didn't bait the Confederacy into war. He waited until it had committed itself beyond political salvation. Plenty of last-minute solutions had been attempted by those wishing only to preserve the Union for its own sake; nothing would please the South. It had lost its temper and once lost, could not be stuffed back inside the bottle.
And the last thing he wanted to do was use incendiary rhetoric. His inaugural address was an excellent example. He said:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretched from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Consider that soaring rhetoric against everything, anything, 45 has ever said publicly (including his comments at Charlottesville, VA, after the neo-Nazi demonstrations there two years ago). He has never possessed those better angels of human nature, not for one minute of his life. And why would he? He doesn't believe in them. He believes that life is a fierce struggle that belongs only to those who can, and should, dominate it. That, of course, especially includes him. He wants to rule everything and sees no reason why he can't. He possesses everything, strangles everything, pummels everyone until submission. And this is admirable?
Lincoln didn't shout those words, in a time when there were no methods of expanding sound. He merely spoke them and perhaps raised them to those nearby, but only as speakers always did. But he couldn't possibly have said them in anger. What good would it have done to have done so?
All 45 does is shout. He shouts to the press, he shouts over the phone, he shouts with foreign leaders sitting right next to him, he shouts to his Cabinet members, he shouts at anyone who says he shouldn't do something, regardless of what sense it makes.
And 53% of Republicans like that? They like to be angry? They like it when someone shouts for them? They want to pick fights? Wait for the hearings to report the Intelligence Committee findings to the House Judiciary Committee to begin this week. There will be shouting that will be very inappropriate. Guess which side will start it, as if to lure the other into joining them?
Lincoln didn't free the slaves willy-nilly. The Emancipation Proclamation was a politically-charged document that made sure that, even during war, some states didn't get too angry and secede, even at that late date, a year and a half after the conflict had begun. It was measured, precise, and balanced interests. It was issued with timely portent.
45 has no time for that. He says what he feels like saying whenever he feels like saying it. Apologists actually give him credit for saying outlandish things to the press because they are the press and he feels like poking at them--never mind the message he's sending to the rest of the world, either friends or enemies. Never mind the reactions that may be waiting for us upon his snarky blurtings.
Lincoln chose Cabinet members who were competent. They disagreed with him, sometimes strongly. He needed to outmaneuver a few of them who, convinced of his incompetence, actually thought they could take over the administration. But he did so cleverly, letting them overcommit themselves. What he didn't do was fire them at the first indication of disagreement. They became, instead, some of his greatest supporters. They united behind him and formed a strong federal effort to win the Civil War. It might easily not have happened without it.
45 has no time for that. You either agree completely, go all-in on saying how wonderful he is (as Gordon Sondland tried to tell Marie Yovanovitch), or hit the road. You become a lapdog or else. Never mind that, as even Paul Ryan used to say, 45 didn't know anything (his emphasis) about governance--and still doesn't. 45 really is incompetent, and bathes himself in it.
And his slavish, mindless followers, dismissive of all history, think that this is all about being an outsider and showing people how things should be done. They have adapted, in spite of their own lives, a sense of closed-off thinking that only the present day, the present moment, is all that matters. The government is him, only him. Everyone else is the Deep State, even the military brass, now that their objections to his lawlessness during war have been registered.
This is the real problem. This is when emotion overrides any sense of propriety, any measurement of anything that is said to anyone else. The challenge belongs to the Democrats now; the Republicans, or at least a majority of them, have lost the measured sense of what government can and must do. They no longer care. They will spin things (they already have, with 123 pages of escapist nonsense) to make it look like the Democrats own the problem, but they do and they know it. What's more, they'll point to the CNN poll with glee (Wait and see 45 himself do so, too, at the next rally; I'm already cringing), completely without regard to what it really means. They'll try to qualify it with deflection--you know, it's a different time now--but they know they can't. That, too, is complete nonsense. If all they can do is make excuses, that's a pretty poor excuse to keep someone around who causes this much distress and unhappiness amongst us all, violating the Constitution notwithstanding.
And that's the greatest danger of all. Because they will do exactly what 45 wants them to do now. If impeachment won't move them, nothing else will. I have no idea how long the Democrats will keep their calm and poise, like Pelosi and Schiff, believing that within our system, solutions can be found. But all must come to the conclusion that there are certain ways of acting and settling things beyond which only fighting can happen--real fighting, with real weapons. We are inching into that position.
If you aren't sure about that, just wait until the impeachment hearings are finished, and wait to see what happens if 45 loses the 2020 election, as counted by the individual states, regardless of what else the Russians have in mind. If Republicans don't have to agree that breaking laws matter and need accounting, then other laws will be broken haphazardly, by sheer choice, by others who should know better (a.k.a. the rule of law will be shattered) at every level of governance, not just in Washington. Pretty soon, not nearly enough of those otherwise assigned with their enforcement will feel themselves connected to a greater good to do so, unless it would be on their terms, done their way.
We have to keep thinking. The time to end that can never be over. The alternative is too awful to embrace. But it's time we consider it. Lincoln managed to save the Union, but at a horrible cost. 45 is his evil opposite, whose very presence threatens that very Union. That 53% of Republicans can't or won't grasp this any longer defines the very challenge, the very danger, with which we are now confronted.
Be well. Be careful. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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