Impeaching the Orange Loser Won't Remove the Real Threat

Neighbor of mine still has his Trump Pence sign in his front yard.  He won't ever remove it.  That makes him a clear and present danger to American Democracy.

DR Tucker at Political Animal:

The greatest threat to our institutions comes from those who choose to embrace nihilism and ignorance at the ballot box—a problem that will remain with us long after Trump has left the White House.

Those who voted for Trump—those who put this madman into power, and who will be eager to put future right-wing madmen into power—threatened our institutions. Those who voted for Trump bear full responsibility for the havoc he has inflicted upon this country. Those who voted for Trump owe an apology to everyone who will suffer as a result of his actions.

Is it too harsh to regard the people who voted for this man as citizens who, with extremely rare exceptions, sought a “safe space” from an increasingly diverse country and a culture trending leftward? Is it too snobbish to regard these voters as the sort of people who, when they say they want “good jobs” to return to this country, actually mean they only want one specific demographic to have access to “good jobs”?

Donald Trump did not make himself President. A significant portion of the American electorate begged for a candidate like Trump—someone who scorned expertise, someone who believed that talking tough constituted leadership, someone who believed America fell into degeneration in the years following Brown v. Board of Education. Trump is the natural consequence of a generation of folks that watched All in the Family and actually thought the Archie Bunker character would make a one heck of a president.

The folks who voted for Trump knew exactly what they were doing. It wasn’t desperation. It wasn’t confusion. It was a willful and deliberate attempt to turn the clock back, to “deconstruct the administrative state,” to live out a fantasy of privilege, prejudice and power.

When Trump attacks our institutions, he is doing so with the full and total imprimatur and approval of those who voted for him. They like what they’re getting. Progressive nightmares are the same as their dreams.

It’s easy to put this all on Trump. It’s easy to say he’s out of control. It’s harder to countenance the idea that those who voted for Trump wanted chaos and disorder, wanted national and international harmony destroyed, wanted to eliminate all vestiges of progressivism and enlightenment in this country. No one wants to believe their neighbors hate them.

But they do. And they always will.