It is estimated that 15 to 20 million Americans think violence would be justified to return Trump to office.
Set aside for the moment that anybody, let alone 20 million anybodies, is willing to commit violence, go to jail, die, for that guy. That is something most of us will never understand. Folks going to the mattresses for the most self-centered guy on the planet. Inconceivable! And, yes, Inigo, I do know what that means.
Anyway, there’s a reason for this phenomenon, and one of the reasons is the drumbeat promotion of violence by Trump and his minions. Lindsey Graham went on national television yesterday and threatened “riots in the streets” if Trump is indicted. They have no more defense for his actions, so it’s down to threatening violence if Trump is forced to submit to the rule of law. Trump “truthed” Graham’s threat on his fading Twitter-wannabe platform. Where millions of his addled followers took note.
John Adams was a lawyer. He would have hated what Trump has made of his country. He famously said, of the creation of the American system of government, “We want a country of laws, not of men.”
What did he mean?
One of the things the Americans hated the most about the monarchy under which they lived was that your relationship with the king was often all that mattered when it came to preferment or get-out-of-jail-free cards. The king’s family and friends got the castles and high positions and immunity when they broke the law. Piss him off, and your head just might roll.
Essentially our entire system of government was designed to avoid relationships outweighing the rule of law. To avoid the “who” of your identity outweighing the “what” of your actions. Every Who down in Whoville would be equal before the law. No Grinch running free.
One of the key things we’ve learned with the advent of Trump, and his utter contempt for any laws that don’t suit him at the moment, is that you can design a government as perfectly as you like, but when the folks running the government choose not to honor the intentions behind the law, “the spirit of the law,” the law reverts to what it essentially is, just strokes of a pen on paper.
If Trump is not held accountable, the country created by folks like John Adams will prove to be just another nation where men of position and power feel no need to submit to such pen strokes. The ideals of the founders will be trumped by the brash bleating of a demagogue. The American experiment ended by one of the most ridiculous figures ever to mount the world stage.
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William Svelmoe’s Racing with the Clown Car: Satire in the Decade from Palin to Trump is now available here.