The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
Introductory Note: I wrote a trilogy of OLD Philosopher essays a few months ago about the potential resignation of President Trump. My premise was that it would be greatly preferable for Mr. Trump to resign his office, rather than to be impeached or indicted and/or convicted of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” to which the Constitution refers in its section on impeachments.
The slowly growing number of anti-Trump Americans are deluding themselves into thinking that the Mueller investigation or other factors may lead to a Congressional impeachment trial in the near future. I opined then, and I opine again, that is a very dangerous position to adopt. It probably is best for the nation that Donald Trump finishes out his four-year term as President, and that the American electorate chose someone else to lead the nation beginning in 2021.
However, if the American people and their elected representatives in Congress believe it is imperative to remove the President prior to January of 2021, then so much pressure must be brought to bear on Donald Trump that he himself will come to see that he has no other choice than resignation. For the time being, it is more important for all other Americans to realize the extreme delicacy of our political impasse than for our President to realize it. For the time being, he is incapable of understanding how chaotic America has become. And he is the primary culprit of the chaos.
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American democracy is under a constantly growing threat. World stability is being chipped away on a steady basis. The essential cause of the chaos is widely recognized.
Every day, literally billions of private conversations are conducted among American citizens and among other citizens of the world. Millions of words are written or spoken every day in world media and letters-to-the-editor. There has never been anything quite like it before in world history.
In America, two 24/7 cable news networks relentlessly attack the President of the United States every single day, and one news network relentlessly defends him every day, along with a stalwart press secretary, whose attempts to deflect criticism are at once highly commendable for her and increasingly infuriating for us. Newspapers, magazines, and other television news organizations weigh in on World Topic Number One.
For Donald J. Trump, the subject of this continuous brouhaha, it couldn’t get any better than this. The world’s supreme narcissist could not be more elated by what is occurring everywhere. Prior to running for his party’s nomination for the presidency, and then, much to his astonishment, after actually winning the office in a democratically-determine election (even if he lost the popular ballot total by nearly three million votes), Mr. Trump could not be more pleased. The very thought of all of it keeps him up nights and get him up early in the morning, conducting an inordinate percentage of his presidency by means of a non-stop series of ill-conceived, ill-timed tweets.
Fundamentally, it does not matter at all to the President what anyone is saying about him, just so long as he is the topic of conversation. He feels personally wounded by every negative assessment of him, but his ebullient narcissism nevertheless enables him to revel in the controversy, because the controversy is about him. In his mentally derailed mind, that is what makes it all worthwhile.
Many pundits have claimed that our President is a very intelligent if also very unpredictable politician. He has a carefully planned political strategy, they say. He may be intelligent, but, in biblical terms, he clearly “knows not what he does.” He is too mentally unstable to realize the damage he is inflicting on the nation he was elected to lead. He is so unhinged that he is unaffected by what a shamble he is making of the entire American government.
Furthermore, he seems incapable of acknowledging how badly he is eroding American foreign relations. He is so intent on trying to Make America Great again in his own image that he has no concern for what the rest of the world is thinking. In many words and on many occasions he has boasted that he does not care what anyone else thinks.
Support for Donald Trump seems to have settled in at about one-third of all the people who are incessantly polled. It may go lower, but it is highly unlikely that it shall ever go higher. His boorish behavior precludes that.
Two-thirds of the American people disapprove the President’s performance in office. Of that category, a growing percentage apparently are convinced that the chief executive of our land must be removed from office.
But how? In what manner? And who should take the lead in the removal procedure?
In terms of our historical political process, the easiest and safest means of eliminating the Trump presidency is to eliminate Trump as President in the 2020 election. If the Republican Party regains a sense of its own best history, they may refuse to nominate Trump as their candidate in the next election. Should that happen, he shall probably run as an independent candidate, and without doubt he would be summarily trounced. But if the GOP continues to bow to their putative leader, as they have been so obsequiously doing recently, and they re-nominate him, he will still be trounced.
In either of these hypothetical cases, the Trump base without doubt would be enraged. They are far more committed to their man than they are to their man’s purported party. Nevertheless, should either of these hypotheses transpire, the Trump base would be forced to acknowledge that Trump lost in a democratically-determined primary and/or general election. As zealous as they are, they could not fight the outcome of a properly conducted election.
For the legions of anti-Trump Americans, there is the widening anxiety that the nation may not be able to withstand four years of a Trump presidency. Four years of Trump might lead us into a morass far deeper than the yawning chasm he has already managed to create. Can we safely endure much more of this?
It is imperative that we fully understand how volatile the situation is in which we find ourselves. Far too many anti-Trump people do not seem to grasp the enormity of the peril represented by the nature of the support of the pro-Trump Americans. Slightly to alter one of the most memorable lines from any movie in the past half a century, they are mad as hell, and they are determined that they are not going to take it anymore. In addition, thousands of these people are quite literally armed and dangerous.
It would be appropriate to call the most extreme examples of the President’s base “Trump’s Trumps.” They are his trump cards, his ever-ready aces in the hole. They are prepared to spring to his defense in whatever manner they, or he, might deem appropriate.
Trump’s Trumps truly believe that American government, particularly the federal government, has been stacked against them, personally, for decades. They have no doubt that their champion is correct in virtually everything he says and does. He sees contemporary America exactly as they see it. For them he can do no wrong.
Among anti-Trump citizens, there is undisguised talk throughout the land of impeachment. There are rumblings of Mueller-engineered charges of criminal malfeasance that may have occurred either before, during, or after the 2016 election. If necessary, the emoluments clause of the Constitution may be employed to bring down the President. The Anti-Trump forces are salivating in anticipation. We are faced with a constitutional crisis that must be solved within a few months or a year, it is claimed.
The termination of the presidency of Richard Nixon unquestionably was a constitutional crisis. The nation, and finally, when it all collapsed around him, Nixon himself understood that. With the 1974 initiation of impeachment hearings drawing ever closer in the House of Representatives, Nixon had the necessary political savvy to resign. The nation was spared the agony of a President being driven from office by Congress.
The impeachment of Bill Clinton was also a constitutional crisis. He attempted, among other things, to convince the American people he “did not have sex with that woman,” even though it became obvious to all but the most fanatic of his fans of that he had not been truthful with us. Clinton was officially subjected to a congressional impeachment trial, but by two close votes, neither of which approached the necessary two-thirds majority against him, Congress chose not to convict Clinton.
A presidential impeachment or indictment of Donald Trump in 2018 would illustrate a very different kind of constitutional crisis than the impeachment trials of Andrew Johnson in 1868 or Bill Clinton in 1998, or the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. The country would not have been torn apart had Johnson or Clinton been removed from office through successful congressional impeachments. Furthermore, Gerald Ford led us through a remarkably smooth transition after Nixon resigned, even though his pardon of Nixon almost certainly cost him the presidential election of 1976.
However, should impeachment proceedings even begin again Mr. Trump, or should he be convicted of crimes or misdemeanors, Trump’s Trumps will see to it that blood is spilled. Most of the people in the Trump base are not violent. But there is a sufficient minority of them who would resort to armed terrorism without hesitation. They honestly believe all of the outrageous statements their misguided messiah makes. And they are willing to defend him into a fiery Gotterdammerung, if need be.
If a presidential impeachment or criminal conviction of Donald Trump occurs, police will be killed. Soldiers will die in terrorist gunfire. Government buildings will be torched, neighborhoods may go up in flames, countless people will be injured in the ensuing conflagration.
The Sixties might be as nothing compared to what will happen if Trump’s Trumps are sufficiently provoked. The riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. could be mild in comparison. The complete outcome obviously cannot be accurately predicted ahead of time, but its potential is so risky that the nation may be forced to avoid impeachment or indictment at all costs.
Think about it. Stop hyperventilating about what is happening and instead contemplate what might happen. Ask yourself how a third of American citizens still maintain even a shred of allegiance to this sadly deranged man. They are not also millions of narcissists. In truth, very few of them are violent by nature. Instead, they are ordinary people who feel extraordinarily disenfranchised by American politics and culture. They believe they have been systematically and cynically taken advantage of by virtually everyone who does not perceive reality the way they perceive reality. Furthermore, they firmly believe that only Donald Trump understands their position.
There have been many populist waves throughout American history. We survived all of them. However, we must also admit there has never been a populist outcry like that which made Donald Trump our President and which provides a resilient foundation for his extremist views. That is because there had never been a populist as hugely charismatic who also was as mentally unhinged as Donald Trump.
The insane success of our President has transmogrified a large group of American citizens who are somehow enchanted by the unique nature of his insanity. They are captivated by it on a daily basis, either by reading his tweets or by watching him on Fox News. Some of them will eventually lose their enthusiasm, but not enough of them, and not soon enough.
No longer is the primary concern how we shall deal with Trump. Rather it is how we shall deal with Trump’s Trumps. If he is impeached, indicted, or removed by the emoluments clause or by an Amendment XXV action of the Constitution, a small but significant number of Trump’s Trumps may violently rebel. Such a rebellion cannot be foreseen with certainty, but should it occur, the results would be fearsome, even if also unforeseeable in toto. They are sufficiently odious that they must be avoided.
Politically, there may be less total damage in allowing the President the finish out his four-year term, as damaging as that is certain to be. If, however, Congress and the American people determine he must leave office before January 20 of 2021, then Donald Trump must be convinced by whoever can convince him, that he must resign. Only Republicans, and very few of them, can succeed in accomplishing that gargantuan challenge. Therefore if the drumbeats for impeachment or criminal conviction become too overpowering, whatever friends Mr. Trump has left in the GOP must step in to cajole the President to resign. Impeachment or legal conviction is much too fraught with other perils even to contemplate.
Trump being Trump, He needs to perceive for himself that for his own sake it behooves him to resign. He will never do that for the good of the nation or the world, because he is incapable of doing anything of behalf of anyone other than himself. He is too enthralled and stimulated by the constant narcissistic attention for him voluntarily to step down. It is illustrative of his extraordinary ability that he continues to convince his base and himself that he is really acting on their behalf, even if that is largely false.
However, if the President can be persuaded that he will end up in prison or lose his financial empire, even Donald Trump may choose to relinquish his grip on the most powerful political office on the planet. Besides, he never truly thought he would be elected President anyway, despite his many machinations to win it, some of which may have been illegal. It was the spotlight he so single-mindedly sought, not the presidency per se. No one could have captured the spotlight more masterfully than he.
Donald Trump does not understand the presidency. He never did. He is incapable of grasping the immensity, complexity, and responsibility of the office.
It would violate the twisted Trump nature to go quietly into the night. He would need to understand that if he did not resign, he would be charged with criminal offenses that likely would put him behind bars in a federal prison. Further, he and all members of his family would be forced to give up control of the Trump Organization. Those two factors do matter to him a great deal. And unless he relinquished the presidency, he would be a convicted felon. Furthermore, in comparison to his present financial status, he also might end up rather impoverished.
If, somehow, he realizes for his own good that he must resign the presidency, he will do so. After all, Donald Trump has always acted on what he thought was good for Donald Trump. Even the most deranged of madmen, if pushed into an inescapable corner, will, it is hoped, surrender. As the gloomy Prince of Denmark said, ‘tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
-December 23, 2017
John Miller is a writer, author, lecturer, and preacher-for-over-fifty-years who is pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC.