Many people close to me voted for Joe Biden. Because I didn’t loathe Trump it made little sense to me at the time, and it makes less now. Biden was and is (to me, anyway) obviously frail and a shell of the Joe Biden of years past, and smart people in the media claiming he was fine, he has always stuttered, did nothing to allay my concerns. Joe Biden? Really? Well, at least he isn’t Trump, the argument went.
I’ve been around long enough to understand that political parties always seek to change the rules, ad hoc, when they are in or out of power, but I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the level of disingenuous bullshit that was shoveled during Trump’s tenure. It was staggering, and history will one day report it. Though the southern border was more secure and we were reaching a modicum of peace in the Mid East, the economy was chugging along and the Covid crisis was being handled, the media climbed on the crazy train and peddled a fiction for four years. Multiple fictions. And they sold them so hard, like television pitchmen selling Shamwow or Pocket Fisherman, many believe to this day that there was Russian collusion, that Trump is a bigot, that their civil rights were threatened, that he had Lafayette Square violently cleared so he could make a photo op with a Bible, that there was something nefarious about a published phone call he had with the Ukrainian president, that he became President for personal gain, that he encouraged people to inject bleach, and on and on and on. Four years of non-stop lies. We are still being told that Trump supporters are all white supremacists and far more dangerous than the Taliban. People still buy into the lie. In effect, the Democrats tried, and are still trying, to make being Trump, or support for Trump, a criminal offense.
It is perfectly okay to dislike someone who runs for high office, for any reason or no reason at all. Personally, I never had much use for Obama. I never hated him or thought him evil, but believed (and believe) him to be an empty suit, who made speeches that sounded great, but were so full of lame cliches and either/or dichotomies they didn’t mean much. Other people think he’s great. I have no problem with that. I only have a problem when people claim it is racist to think he’s a boob. It isn’t. It’s also okay to like and admire someone and yet understand that they would make a terrible executive. I felt this way about Jimmy Carter. Bright, kind, humane, and absolutely awful at the job of being President of the United States. The converse is also true. It is entirely possible to dislike someone, but to look past their flaws and see that they are the better choice. No one is perfect and few people are genuine monsters. Most of us fall well within “ordinary”, a set that includes Obama, Trump, and Biden. This is why adhering to the rule of law—One Law For Everyone—is so damn important.
Multiple crimes were casually committed by those who enjoy the status quo and wanted Trump gone. FISA warrants were faked. Leaders in our intelligence community openly lied to Congress while on camera. Adam Schiff read fiction into the record, exactly as if it was real, and when caught claimed it was simply satire. The DoJ prosecuted those close to Trump (Michael Flynn, George Papadoupolus) for crimes the FBI created; crimes that critics of Trump committed regularly and with impunity (James Comey, James Clapper, John Brennan). These things really happened. In order to see Trump removed, all standards of fairness were put aside, starting with the refusal to prosecute Hillary for an offense that would have put any service member behind bars, but that continued after the 2016 election and destroyed the credibility of the press and our faith in “experts” and leaders. Today service members are punished for publicly criticizing the Commander in Chief. In 2019, they were celebrated. Alexander Vindman is selling his book today.
The point is only that the nation made a crappy deal. As a nation we went about our lives and accepted too much fakery. We turned a blind eye to blatant double standards. We allowed the powers that be to foist a narrative and install a man who is too feeble to do the job. Now we will all pay for this error. Were that this was the only blind alley we’ve allowed ourselves to be led down. But it isn’t. There are so many more. Fake history. A fake race war. Fake oppression.
I’m careful to say that we own the sorry state of affairs, because we do. It is too easy to just blame a handful of crazy people on Twitter, academia, activists who want to win at any cost and by any means required, idiots in the media, big tech. We all allowed it to happen, though, and now the results will fall upon all of us. It won’t do to watch Afghanistan crumble in on people we abandoned and then split hairs to differentiate those with blood on their hands from those with only some blood splashed on their shoes. This is where our nation is, few indeed think it a good state of affairs, and every American owns a part of it. Some, of course, own a measure a bit larger than others for burning all standards of fairness on an alter of wokeness, but we all had a hand and we all will live with the results going forward.
Fortunately, the fix is easy and obvious. We all just put down our pet theories, gripes, and agendas and back slowly away, and then we all must demand a return to the rule of law for everyone, without regard for the color of one’s skin, the letter following the name, or one’s job description. Weaponizing the process was a huge mistake. Today, right this moment, by the exact standards that were applied to Trump, Joe Biden should be facing impeachment. His phone call with the Afghan president was at least as onerous as Trump’s with the president of Ukraine (and considerably more so), with thirteen dead heroes to show for it. This is not to say that Biden needs to be impeached, but only that clapping like trained seals when the process is corrupted because you like the desired result is a deal with the devil.
A little bit of honesty is all that is required.
To get that, however, will require serious turnover among our political, academic, and credentialed classes. Not impossible, but it begins with each of us demanding it happen.