Impeachment Is A Kobayashi Maru (and we should still do it)

The day that the fuller version of the Mueller report dropped, I realized that the impeachment situation is a Kobayashi Maru scenario for opponents of Donald Trump. For those who don't know, Kobayashi Maru was a training exercise for Starfleet in the Star Trek universe where prospective captains were put into an impossible situation. They could try to rescue the civilians aboard the namesake ship, but would be destroyed by the enemy. The point of the simulation was not to guess the correct course of action, but to show how officers would react in bad circumstances.

Impeachment is a Kobayashi Maru because there are two options: to allow a brazen criminal to continue to occupy the presidency, or to exhaust political capital in what will be an inevitable failure to unseat that president. As has been obvious from day one, Republicans will follow Trump to the gates of Hell. They happily defended his breaking up of migrant families and tossing their kids into cages. They signed their deal with the devil, and now there's no going back. In any case, he is the key to their wildest dreams of unfettered capitalism and Christian dominionism. Even if ten Republican Senators defect (which will never happen), the Senate still would not be able to unseat Trump.

A lot of folks, including in the Democratic Party leadership, have made this calculation. They are concerned that this inevitable failure would boost Trump, allowing him an easy path to reelection in 2020. They are more rightly concerned with how focusing on Trump takes air away from appeals on issues like health care that are the party's winning advantage.

I've been thinking long and hard about this, but impeachment needs to be done. If failure is guaranteed either way (which it is), then doing the right thing actually becomes a lot easier. The pragmatic option doesn't exist. The question becomes simply this: are we going to give a proven criminal president a pass, or not? I do not see how we can live with ourselves if we refuse to carry out the Constitutionally mandated remedy for this situation.

It can also be carried out in a way that does not backfire, or where the consequences are at least mitigated. The message on impeachment can be intertwined with the "bread and butter" issues. Investigating the Trump finances (which aren't even part of the Mueller probe but are by far where most of the crime goes on) will dredge up all kinds of stuff. The message gets pretty easy: "Your tax return went down last year, but Donald Trump set up a system where people like him don't have to pay taxes." Any serious look into his business empire is going to turn up all kinds of stuff (just listen to the Trump Inc podcast), revelations that can be capitalized on, so long as Democrats run an economically populist campaign. This will be crucial, because with the economy growing they need to not just talk about "jobs," but about compensation, health care, child care, etc.

Ever since Trump's election, the country's politically apathetic soft middle has yearned for a "return to normal." This I think is secretly one of the Democratic party's biggest advantages in the 2020 election. If you spend time talking to so-called independent moderates, they tend to frame things in maddeningly imprecise generalizations. Last time around it was "I don't like either candidate" and people who deep down didn't like Trump ended up casting their vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, which in key states was effectively a vote for Trump. One of those garden variety suburban dipshit opinions could easily turn out to be "I'm just tired of Trump. I just don't want to have to care about politics." In that case, impeachment might actually be able to help Democrats.

And speaking of the soft middle, political corruption is something that most voters dislike. It's the reason Trump kept talking about "draining the swamp." It turns out, of course, that this was not about ending corruption, but invoking the kinds of metaphors for the opposition beloved by fascists. Impeachment hearings will dredge up things that are public but which have been allowed to leave the headlines, as well as brand new stories.

The danger, of course, is that the soft middle white suburban dipshit opinion after the Senate clears Trump could easily turn into "I guess Trump did nothing wrong and those Democrats ruined my life by putting all this stuff in the news that I didn't want to think about." That won't end so well.

Be that as it may, impeachment has to be attempted. Not just because the president has been proven to abuse his power (the basic litmus test of impeachment), but because if we take our political ideals seriously we MUST take action. And though failure may be inevitable in the short term, in the long term the Republicans will never be able to shake the stigma of their support of this criminal. Future generations will look back and know who was in the right.

I am reminded of another time in American history when a political faction held the country hostage against the demands of justice. In 1860 Lincoln gave his famous speech at Cooper Union in New York City, where the prairie politician moved his skeptical east coast audience by reminding them that slavery was wrong and nothing could ever change that. He ended his speech thus: "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

We know we are right. We know our duty compels us. Time to act.

Trump at Gettysburg

[Editor's Note: something imagined in response to the president's recent call to a military widow.]

Four score and seven years ago…I invented the word “score” to mean 20 years by the way… our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation…very true, very true… conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…but people are saying, I won’t say who the are, but people are saying that might be fake news…Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure…but we will endure, because we are the best, we are the strongest…We are met on a great battle-field of that war…very great, the biggest, the best…We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives…even though they knew what they were getting into…that that nation might live…very true, very true…It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this…Trump always does the fitting and proper thing, but those dopes in the fake news media won’t report it…But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground…but we can have the greatest celebration, the best…The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract…but I am sure there are some very good people on the Confederate side, too…The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here…just kidding, everything I do is the biggest and most important… but it can never forget what they did here…very true…It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced…even if they knew what they were getting into…It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain…even if they knew what they were getting into, it’s still a shame…that this nation, under God…that’s right, I said God, the Democrats won’t say it but I will…shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth…but the fake news media needs to be stopped from ending it first, people. And those NFL players who won’t salute the flag, I say fire them! And wasn’t this a great speech people? It will get the highest ratings, believe me.

Completing the Circle: Lincoln's Tomb and My Love Affair with History

One day about a year ago while I was sitting at my desk in the midst of a hectic day, I experienced one of those rare memory recalls that are just as vivid as they are unexpected. It didn’t wash over me so much as stab my heart with a realization almost thirty years in the making. I was finishing up writing my last lecture on the Civil War with some material about Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Looking for visual material, I chanced upon a photo of Lincoln’s tomb, and was suddenly, unwillingly transported back to the summer of 1980.

It was sunny that day when my family, on vacation, visited the Lincoln-related sites in and around Illinois’ capital, including New Salem, which I particularly enjoyed. Having spent the whole day learning about Abraham Lincoln, we finished it all off, appropriately enough, with a visit to his tomb. At that time it had fallen into severe disrepair, and I distinctly remember the many cracks in stone steps where I sat despondently.

I had just been inside the unnaturally cold marble crypt, its eerie silence oppressive as I gazed upon the sarcophagus holding Lincoln’s dead body. My mother, bless her, never sugarcoated the reality of death for me when I was young, something that I am eternally grateful for. Right there she matter-of-factly related to me the details of Lincoln’s murder in Ford’s Theater at the hands of the scoundrel John Wilkes Booth.

This may sound implausible, but I think at that very moment the inherent unfairness of life first impressed itself upon my mind. It just didn’t make sense to me that such a great person could be shot down in cold blood. According to my parents, as I sat inconsolable on the decaying monument’s steps, I asked them if Abraham Lincoln still had his beard in heaven. (My mother never gets tired of that story.)

And so, over thirty years later, now teaching others about Lincoln’s death, it felt as if some great, mysterious circle to my life had finally been completed. For the first time I truly know the exact moment that ignited my lifelong fascination with history, an obsession that goes back to my earliest memories and which will define me until the day I die.   So many things I once cared about intensely matter little to me today, but history has stuck hard, and it will never go away.  After years of study and multiple diplomas my understanding of the past has certainly become more sophisticated, but the past retains its power to prick my heart and rend my soul as much as it did those many years ago.