"Acquitted"
Our grim, dark future
Well, I’m not going to mince words: shit’s about to get real grim, real dark.
There was no doubt that the Senate would acquit President Donald Trump in his impeachment trial. That conclusion was foregone. So why go through with it? I’ll let Josh Marshall answer that:
This is why: because some shit’s bigger than the momentary cycle of “winning the day” and other meaningless trivia that seems to occupy rampant swathes of Official Washington™.
And yet: it’s exceedingly difficult not to come away with the conclusion that we are deeply, surpassingly fucked. As Bree Newsome put it:
Let me say that again, and expand on it:
“The election is not a solution. Please make peace with this reality now, so we can all adjust accordingly. People who don’t give a damn about the Constitution and impeachment will not give a damn about the election result. They just gave Trump a green light to do whatever he wants to hold on to power.”
Bree (whom I respect greatly) goes on to say:
“I’m going to keep saying this many different ways. The November election will, at best, be an opportunity for us to mass mobilize and demonstrate our opposition to this dictatorship via a ballot count. The election alone won’t settle it because they will rig it and/or refuse to leave.
Everyone who simply says look forward to November 3, 2020 without consideration of:
the resistance we will have to mount in the next several months to ensure there is an election;
and the resistance we will have to mount after the election
doesn’t fully grasp what’s happening right now.” (cleaned up for clarity)
Once more: the election is not a solution. It’s a vehicle to get to a solution, but it’s not a solution, let alone the solution — which, not to pick on Neera Tanden, is what she and so many other people are stating tonight.
Which makes sense, because that message is the beating, quivering heart of both Pete Buttigieg’s and Joe Biden’s campaigns for President. Vote for me, they say, and I’ll make things better. Hell, if you don’t believe me:
Without responding to what Mayor Pete™’s bot is saying there, his campaign (and Biden’s, too) is one that asks nothing more from voters than their vote. It basically treats your vote as a permission slip for you to get back to the endless brunch mimosas you indulged in between 2009-2017. That’s it.
[sidebar: Actually, no, I can’t let this go. It’s so emblematic of Buttigieg’s unbridled ego that he’s effectively comparing himself to Abraham fucking Lincoln here. We’re watching the Republican Party blithely cement autocracy in broad fucking daylight, and Buttigieg’s talking about how he’s the guy to “bring us all together” or some shit. I’m sitting here wondering how many more people will die before it’s all said and done, and this dude is over here talking about charting a bold new path forward like nothing’s happening. Good fucking grief.]
And maybe, just…maybe, if the Senate had performed its Constitutional duty, this might be okay. But, as Lamar Alexander made clear last night, that wasn’t going to happen. So we’re back to the position I share with Bree, namely: stop treating the November election as some kind of natural law! It’s really, really not.
There’s no such thing as a system that will objectively deliver just outcomes and results when it’s run by unjust, corrupt people. There’s no document — however much we imbue the Constitution with the kind of mystical power seen only in the Marvel Cinematic Universe — that is greater than the will of powerful people.
I know the last 200-plus years of history have conditioned us to think and feel that way. I get it. But this past week has to disabuse us of this notion. Trump’s acquittal, combined with William Barr’s corruption of the Justice Department, will lead to a wildly unchained Republican Party, focused on nothing but the perpetuation of its power.
I can already hear the responses. Nah, man. This crew? They’re too sloppy to do that. Oh, my sweet, sweet summer’s child. Sloppy’s got nothing to do with it. They just have to be ruthless, which is precisely what they’ve been the last three years and change.
If you’re curious as to how this looks like, let me introduce you to the United States of Mexico between 1950 and 2000, under the rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI in Spanish). Elections were rigged and the systems of power were carefully arranged to perpetuate the power of the PRI, but the appearance of democracy was kept and, to a degree, stage-managed.
Elections continued, there were multiple parties, you name it. It just so happened (what a coincidence!) that the PRI best reflected the “will” of the Mexican people, and so it held on to power. And it did so for the better part of seventy years, in case you were wondering just how long this sort of thing could last.
What has me despairing, last night and this morning and tomorrow and the weekend, convinced that it’s all over but the largely meaningless shouting is this the blasé response from so many Democrats. This is a nine-alarm, red-alert, code-blue INSERT-MAXIMUM-EMERGENCY-CLICHÉ for American democracy, and instead people are acting as if everything’s hunky-dory, nothing to see here, move along please.
Over in Iowa and, soon, New Hampshire, you’ve got Buttigieg dismissing impeachment and talking about unity, you’ve got Biden blathering about whatever random crap gets him heated, grabbing people’s lapels and demanding they go vote for someone other than him, you’ve got Amy Klobuchar gabbling about how she can bring people along when she’s not abusing campaign staffers.
Over in Washington, you’ve got Democrats thirsting to go back to cutting deals with this administration, attending the State of the Union, and going through all the motions of normal governance. And I’m over here at my desk, wondering if I’ve lost what’s left of my goddamn mind.
People: You cannot correctly argue that the Trump Administration is overthrowing Constitutional democracy, and then act like it’s all normal until November comes along.
The only two campaigns that offer the chance for mass mobilization we need to preserve the dying embers of American democracy are Bernie Sanders’ and Elizabeth Warren’s. Nobody else’s do. Neither Biden nor Buttigieg are interested in the slightest bit in mobilizing people to win political power, except to the degree it results in their election to office. Certainly, neither is interested in mobilizing protest, and both see mass mobilizations as inherently threatening (as do most institutional Democrats, and I don’t mean just elected officials here).
The next year will be horrible, far more so than we can imagine. The odds are extremely likely that we’ll fail, and we need to reconcile ourselves to the idea that we almost certainly will. Most of the time, the bad guys win. That’s the way of history.
But here’s the thing: this, right here, is the moment everyone talks about in history books. Either you're willing to stand up, or you're not. It's fine if you're not, but then you don't get to ask who's going to do it.
The answer is you and me, that's who. We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. Let’s roll.
I love all of you, and I have no idea how the hell we’ll get through this, or if we will, but I do know that the only way through is with love and kindness and compassion.