The media’s word for the week was “unprecedented.” Yes, the indictment of a former United States president would be a first, but would the government response be the most important part? Perhaps the unprecedented and most important part was the underlying behavior by an American president that prompted the anticipated charges.
After all the hype, there was no indictment, no arrest, no perp walk, no violent rally, no nothing. When there is, if there is, the country will survive an indictment with equanimity. Regardless of the name of the perpetrator, indictments, arrests, trials, and convictions are commonplace. The response of the American justice system to bad behavior is understood even if the name of the perp is unsettling.
What was unprecedented in a way that was shattering—and threatened political and civil norms—was the behavior of the 45th president of the United States while in office. What we are having trouble surviving is the continued bad behavior that rightfully drew the attention of law enforcement. That was far more devastating than an indictment would be.
From the days before he was elected, it was unprecedented that a man of privilege would pose as a victim. It was unprecedented that a man elected the leader of a country would demean and discredit that country in his inaugural address. Holding a revered government position, it was unprecedented that he would seek to dismantle the traditions and attack the institutions that made America great.
It was unprecedented that he, the most powerful man in the world, would sink to attacking weaker and more vulnerable people; unprecedented that he would threaten revenge and retaliation on those who displeased him ever so slightly. It was unprecedented that any man who rose to the heights of our government would understand our government, its laws, and traditions so imperfectly. It was unprecedented that the one behind the Resolute desk would tear, shred, and trash his government like an enemy of it.
It was unprecedented that he would see the White House as an ATM machine, our secrets as medium of exchange, and his supporters as suckers to bilk. Unprecedented that he would try to overthrow a government in an attempt to remain head of that government. The name for all that was unprecedented—and also unthinkable and unacceptable.
His behavior spawned more than one mini-me. As long as an anticipated law enforcement response was withheld and a political response was hobbled, others saw it as a model, a template for running for the presidency. The governor of Florida won 60 percent of the vote only after voter suppression and gerrymandering. He is at war with Mickey Mouse while President Biden is in a war to defeat Putin. Puffed up from a trumped-up victory, Ron DeSantis is coming after our children. Will the warrior in white boots be able to defeat some sixth-graders? DeSantis is proving he can out-Trump Trump.
DeSantis called the death and destruction of a people and their country a “territorial dispute.” A territorial dispute is a disagreement between two or more states about which one state exercises sovereignty over a certain territory. Invasion is the violent breach of the borders of a sovereign state for the purpose of conquest. A territory is not a sovereignty; a commitment to control or destroy is not a dispute—it is a war.
Redefining the war minimizes it and places it inside the Ukrainian border and outside of international concern. It aids and comforts the enemy as it obfuscates the actual goal of DeSantis.
He wants attention. He wants to tilt the game in his favor. Verbal shock and awe helps him achieve his actual goal, which has nothing to do with Ukraine. Flying immigrants from Florida to Massachusetts, burning books, stifling curriculum, and coining phrases like “Florida is where woke goes to die” are all tactics without principles, words with emotional impact uttered to enrage and convince, cynical words crafted to help DeSantis beat Trump in a primary. The tragedy? A man facing possible indictment for bad behavior is the fellow DeSantis is emulating. Beat Trump with Trumpisms. The truly damaging part is if Trumpism is gaining a foothold in our politics, our public discourse, our thinking.
Trumpism is a belief in being above the law: I can shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without consequence.
Trumpism is contempt for truth and science: Take a horse de-wormer and wash it down with Clorox to cure COVID.
Trumpisms are contradictory, oxymoronic: I am so powerful I am above the law and yet please send money I am being victimized by the law.
As long as a Trumpism convinces any number of American voters to act to keep Trump in power, to help DeSantis win a Republican primary, to keep their coffers full, they will use them and let the devil take the hindmost.
What really changed in the Republican Party was not Trump but a realization made years before Trump. The Republican Party woke (that’s all the word ever meant—became aware) to the realization that they were a minority party. Did they respond, “We must find a way to attract more voters because we are elected to serve the people”? Nope. They said, “How do we ignore majority rule and still grab wealth and power?” That was the sound of the Republican Party leaving democracy and slamming the door behind them. That was the first step in a long road to undermine democracy, the right to vote, right to privacy, a fair field and fair donations, equal protection under the law, because democracy did not serve them. Recent elections show their ideas do not sway the majority. It also shows they don’t care.
Trump gave minority rule a voice, and the others fell silent. Trump demonstrated that all the rules could be broken without consequence and the mini-me(s) fell in line. So, the unprecedented act of indicting Trump will be less likely to cause disquiet among the majority than not indicting him. If Trump goes to jail, DeSantis slinks off the national stage and returns to Florida where his political aspirations go to die, then hopefully, the Trump playbook will go into the incinerator.
