Republicans and the death of shame: The perils they alone could never fix…
Thoughts On final days
“I can give you my word,” Milley said. “The best I can do is give you my word and I’m going to prevent anything like that in the United States military.”
“Well,” she said, “I hope you can prevail in the insane snake pit of the Oval Office and the crazy family as well. You’d think there’d been an intervention by now. The Republicans have blood on their hands and everybody who enables him to do what he does has blood on their hand… because there’s nobody around with any courage to stop him from storming the Capitol and inflaming, inciting an insurrection. And there he is, the president of the United States in there.”— — Peril, by Woodward and Costa, Prologue (p. xxiii)
Speaker Pelosi is tough and smart. In the citation above taken from Peril, she rebukes Mark Milley’s contention that he had things under control. She is asking the obvious question — -after January 6 how is Trump still in charge of the government he has just tried to overthrow? Her question went unanswered. Within the highest levels of American government, courage was a scarce commodity.
The two most recent bestselling books chronicling the end of the Trump presidency give us a more critical view of this period. In I Alone Can Fix It, written by WAPO reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, similar recurring themes and competing interests within the administration are shown to both mitigate and inflame the corruption and ineptitude. It was far worse than we had thought. In Leonnig’s and Rucker’s book, it is clear that many “insiders” willingly agreed to be interviewed for the book for the purposes of rescuing their tarnished reputations. Inexplicably, the authors also were able to interview a willingly talkative Trump in an extended sit-down that according to them exceeded the allotted time set by the Trump side, his need to be heard and listened to is that strong.
Peril, written by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, will likely be viewed in the future as the first draft of current political history. Many authors of history write about what has happened, and who did it. These authors have gone further. They have chronicled a historical anomaly that until 2016 we had failed to consider. The rise of an autocrat, while not outside the realm of possibility, caught us by surprise. The surprise was not that an illiberal dummkopf would best a more prepared and experienced Hillary Clinton, it was how and why it happened. As Leonnig, Rucker, Woodward, and Costa note, Trump is certifiable. He is crazy. The fact that he was elected president and has acquired a following that includes other nuts like him, in addition to some of our friends, brothers, sisters, and has hollowed out an entire political party — — is about us.
Bad, mad, and sad
The callousness and disregard for the nation of those in the administration who acted on behalf of Trump ignoring the Constitution are hard to explain unless we take into consideration what motivated them. Like most puzzles, the solution lies in its simplicity. This is not the first time a nation has fallen for a madman. History is replete with Hitlers, Mussolinis, Stalins, and any number of inbred English monarchs. In all cases, their power requires loyal enablers who sit beside them and fluff the tender egos of their psychosies. The power Trump wields now a full eight months after he was deposed is stitched together with a caboodle of the grievances held by the most contemptible among us-mainly fear and hate.
The coalition of racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, and assorted religious bigots has existed throughout history. Hatred is as human a trait as its opposite. Like a virus, their hatred needs willing hosts to survive. They have no real bonds with one another. The likelihood that the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and right-wing conservative religious groups can co-exist in some future alignment is about zero. Right now, their “glue” is a common hatred — -of blacks, Jews, Democrats, women, etc. along with the fear of losing unearned privilege. “Owning the Libs” is an expression for the least common denominator that would define a governing coalition. That is where the enablers and sycophants come in. Lindsey Effing Graham loves power far more than he hates anyone. Mitch McConnell loves power way more than he embraces Trump. These are hosts.
Both Peril and I Alone… tell the story of how evil ensnares and corrupts its quarry. Trump is the shiny object — as Woodward and Costa note, the sane people left standing in the administration recognized his madness. It is what animated Milley and Esper to try to hold off a “Wag the Dog” catastrophe in the waning days of the administration. For William Barr, James Mattis, John Kelly, Mike Pence, and others who seemed to push back in the final days, it is not because they gained some newfound insight about what was going on all along, rather it was because they recognized that the jig was up. After the election, there was scant time to try to rescue their tattered reputations. Peril makes this point better than I Alone…, but clearly, theirs were acts of self-service not sacrifice.
Rudy Giuliani is perhaps the most egregious of the offenders because he is portrayed as Trump in knickers- a mini me. His madness draws its fire from the bottle, his depravity fueled by greed and a need for relevance long lost from his days as America’s Mayor and mob prosecutor. Rudy’s selling out to be BFF to a rich pantload would be less sad if Rudy weren’t willing to settle for so little. How can we forget the Four Seasons Total Landscaping fiasco, or the streams of age-masking “Clairol for men,” dripping down his face? The FOX News clown shows-all in service to a nut job — -were just enough to get him involved in a potentially devastating lawsuit and disbarment. For anyone questioning how one’s crazy uncle could dress in MAGA street apparel, Rudy provides a clue. Greed and a fear of losing relevance is reason enough for angry white men fume and march. The MAGA army that assaulted the Capitol Police and desecrated the Capitol, were the same fat cowardly bullies who wielded the sticks and stones in our schoolyards. Their strength is in their numbers, in the knowledge that “higher-ups” were rooting them on.
“Sorry, Charley!”
The main characters in Peril and I Alone Can Fix It are described as men with deep-seated insecurities. Their need for being “consequential” hid their fear of becoming irrelevant. It cleared a path for what was worse — the madness and the hate. There are no heroes working in Trump’s White House. But the two books reveal a deeper, darker, tale. It begins with those whose genius is their mania. These are men driven by base desires and a need to fill gaping holes of self-doubt. Their leader was chief among them. Trump clearly was envious of his predecessor. He sorely wanted the affection he sensed Barack Obama received while he was president. Obama had the temerity to tease Trump for his racist “birther” campaign before a mocking crowd at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011:
And I know just the guy to do it — Donald Trump is here tonight! (Laughter and applause.) Now, I know that he’s taken some flak lately, but no one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. (Laughter.) And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter — like, did we fake the moon landing? (Laughter.) What really happened in Roswell? (Laughter.) And where are Biggie and Tupac? (Laughter and applause.) But all kidding aside, obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. (Laughter.) For example — no, seriously, just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice — (laughter) — at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team cooking did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn’t blame Lil’ Jon or Meatloaf. (Laughter.) You fired Gary Busey. (Laughter.) And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. (Laughter and applause.) Well handled, sir. (Laughter.) Well handled.
— Whte House Archives
Touchè! Obama’s retort was smooth and delivered with a velvet glove-a skill the seething Trump did not possess. The quip hit squarely and Trump resented Obama’s rebuke.
So Trump gathered around him human versions of StarKist’s unappreciated Charley the Tuna, who mistook refinement for flavor. The nexus connecting most of the president’s choices was their status as wannabe nobodies. Their position on the political food chain was the antithesis of “best and brightest” available. The Trump administration was a composite of worse and worser, of gilded competence, chosen by the man who could only feign the traits he aspired to. Trump’s meager skills were suited for the streets and not the White House. We learned, however, that he was gifted with a bizarre charisma that would attract others, the seemingly sane, to join his band of miscreants.
In Peril and I Alone… what leaps from the pages is the truthful recording of events that fail to absolve Trump and his associates from their actions. The Pences, Millers, Barrs, and such were not induced by momentary fevers. In the end, Trump’s madness is not his excuse, and it cannot be theirs — -or ours. The choices made by all the president’s men and their leader are due to a fault and not a sickness. In reading between lines, it is obvious that their later mea culpas as walls were literally crumbling around them are all done to atone for what they were caught doing. For Donald Trump and his base of enablers, their intent was not to medicate themselves but to inflict pain on others. Their shared narcissism turns self-love on its head, mistaking power for license:
“There are always men who take their own measure against greatness, and hate it not for what it is, but for what they are. They can envy even the dead. …(T)he power such men have to rouse in others the sleeping envy they once had a decent shame of; to turn respect for excellence into hate… Vanity begets it, vanity covers it up.”
— Mary Renault, The Persian Boy
Trump’s acolytes and the bulk of his base confuse greatness for its opposite — an oversight that blinds them to the truth. What the books make clear is that making America great was never their intent, was never a job for such losers.
Originally published at https://vincerizzo.substack.com on September 26, 2021.
