The Young Generation of Democrats Did Such a Stellar Job of Prosecuting Trump, They Should Be Given the Reins of Power Immediately
Feb 12, 2021
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I have a confession to make. I was deeply, deeply impressed by the Democrats managing Trump’s second impeachment. Their case for the prosecution wasn’t just stunning. This was everything that I’ve wanted from American politics, my whole adult life. Courage, intellect, passion, reflection, history, truth. It was raw, real, andfierce.
My friends, I wish the Democrats were like thisevery day. Abouteverything.Not just impeaching Donald Trump. But matters of seemingly small policy. Aboutgiving America a New Deal. Aboutinvestingin a Marshall Plan for a ravaged country. About America’s ills, from structural racism to bigotry to poverty to an imploded middle class to the spectre of fascism. About giving every Americans the things they desperately need, from healthcare to childcare to retirement to dignity.
I wish the Democrats werealways like this.
So why aren’t they? I’ll come to that. First, a little discussion and context.
I’ve long regarded American politics as one of the world’s most dismal, stupid failures. Go to any Parliament in any other country, more or less, and you will hear people passionately debating things that matter. Stop into America’s Congress, and you’ll see idiots spitefully defending the right to carry an AK-47 to Starbucks…while everyone else dozes off and dreams of a fat consulting paycheck.American politics is made of indifference, when it’s not made of the stupidest ideas in the world.
It’s not just my opinion that American politics is a dismal, stupid failure. It’s afact. America’s Congress became political theatre, like the Roman Senate before it. It has fake, scripted, kabuki-style debates about “ideas” which are such self-evident failures the entire rest of the world runs away from them in horror. Fake debatesover dead ideaslike “trickle down economics” and “deficits” and “tax cuts” for billionaires and corporations. And then those dumb, dumb fake “debates” get turned into bills which areliterallywritten by lobbyists.
This isn’t really democracy. It’s something much more akin to Soviet style rule by failed elites serving dead ideologies right down into the grave. And worse,everyone knows it. That is whynobody much in America trusts the governmentor politicians anymore, who rank just above serial killers in the public imagination. Everyone knows the whole sad, stupid spectacle isjust there for show. The only real purpose of the fake theatrical spectacle of American politics is to give the gloss of legitimacy to an exercise in open, obvious corruption, which exists for the benefit of the super-rich and the ultra-right.
American politics iszombie politics.It’s fed on dead ideas, it reeks of the stench of corruption, and it keeps on rising from the grave to eatyourbrain, too. We allknowit’s corrupt and fake, which why it lacks any conviction, intelligence, logic, passion. It just goes through the motions, dead-eyed, of preying on what’s left of a society. All that’s in order to sustain the old exceptionalist myth that “America’s the world’s greatest democracy!” Sure, if you believe thatserving billionairesand cronies and fascists over the average person is “democracy,” while bombing nearly every other poor country on earth along the way.
All that brings me right back to the Democratic prosecution of Trump. It was stunning because it was theoppositeof all that.There wasn’t a single moment of stupidity, ignorance, dishonesty, malice, cowardice, fakery, aw-shucksing good-ole-boyism, appeasement, complicity. It was the polar opposite of what American politics has become, was allowed to become, and what we all expect it to be, dumb, brain-dead, awful, and a big, stupid life.
Let me highlight a few moments that I thought exemplified all this.
I wasblown awayby Jamie Raskin. I don’t say that lightly. I am never blown away by American anything — politics, art, film, culture, ideas. But Raskin impressed me deeply. Hequoted Voltaire, putting American politics — finally — in an international context. He explained the idea of America in the best way I have perhaps ever heard it expressed. He gave a fiercely smart argument for the prosecution. But all that is almost besides the point.
Raskin didn’tpander.He didn’t treat the witnesses to this debacle — who are the real audience, you and me, not the GOP — like infantile idiots with an IQ lower than Donald Trump’s current Twitter following of zero. He didn’t pitch a dumbed-down hokey corn-fed appeal to the lowest common denominator. He educated, enlightened, and informedall of us. He expected all of us to be grown-ass adults with the capacities to think for ourselves. He treated us like intelligent human beings — not morons with more guns than books.
That is aremarkable achievement. It is a remarkable stance to take, for American politics. To treat people like intelligent human beings, and so give them a deeply, thoroughly intelligent argument to chew over?
Raskin’s fierce intelligence is something that American politics has desperately needed all our lives.Because do you know what happens when you treat people like idiots?They become idiots. And that’s how, in large part, Americabecame an idiocracy, where QAnon followers and people who think the Bible means “be a racist carrying a Glock-19!!” have far, far more power than they ever should.
Then there was Stacey Plaskett.A former prosecutor, she presented the detailed, forensic reconstruction of the “riot” — aka the coup on Jan 6th — whichshocked and stunned the world. It’s a remarkable achievement to, with all the context and baggage of being a Black Woman in America, to to shock and stun the world, my friends. How did she do it? By being theoppositeof a demagogue. She stayed focused with laser-sharp precision on the facts — of which there were an arsenal. She maintained the absolute composure of a prosecutor managing the case of a lifetime: the defense of a democracy.
What do demagogues do? They rile people up with lies, tell big enough lies that they lose whatever capacity for reason and self-restraint they had left. How do you fight them?With the truth. You stay calm, cool, collected. And you tell the truth. In such detail, with such precision, that it’s overwhelmingly obvious that itisthe truth.
And that is what Stacey Plaskett did. That too is a remarkable achievement.It’s not to be understated. The detail in that reconstruction — timelines matched up to real world events revealed by unreleased footage — was astonishing. To tell this story, and tell it well,matters.
I could go on. I could end up writing a book. But let’s zoom back out to the bigger picture.
When was the last time these things — intelligence, truth, and courage — mattered in American politics? As far as I can reckon, a very long time ago, and maybenever. The opposite has defined American politics — even on the “left,” which is really, of course,just a slightly less hard right.
What are the Dems notorious for? Caving. Compromising.Appeasing. Not telling the truth, but helping Republicans cover up their ugly acts. For treating even intelligent Americans like idiots, repeating the false mantras ofSoviet-style American right-wing thinking— tax cuts, deficits, trickle down, etcetera, an endless list, as if we’re not smart enough to know they’re dumb, dumb lies at this point.
The Republicans are known for stupidity, lies, and violence. But the Democrats are known for aiding and abetting that stupidity, rage, and aggression.They do so by compromising with it, fighting for it, cowering before it, sweating nervously while trying desperately to sell itto the rest of us. If you think I’m kidding, ask yourself why it is to this day that a Democratic President hasn’t supported public healthcare, childcare, retirement, anything. The answer is because they believe in Republican ideas, because the Republicans havebroken their spirit and mindsand body politic with abuse and harassment and intimidation.
The problem, though, is that that leaves a whole society without a working politics. When one side is stupid, violent, and untruthful, and the other side imagines the best way to deal with it is to compromise — you are left without truth, intelligence, and courageinpolitics.
And so the obvious happens. Trumps rise. Mitch McConnells elevate them. Even worse demagogues, like Josh Hawleys, inherit their mantles.
All that is aided and abetted by the weakness of a Democratic establishment made of Schumers and Pelosiswho seem to have forgottenwhat really fighting for a democracy is.Itisn’tsaying “OK, we’ll fund the camps if you stop separating families” or “OK, you can have your Gestapo, but just don’t use it disappeartoomany people.” It is drawing real and bright red lines. Made of courage, truth, and intelligence.
Is this making any sense? Here is my conclusion.
The Democratic impeachment team is the future of the Democratic party.Either that, or it doesn’t have one. They should be handed the reins of power, now. Pelosi and Schumer and Hoyer and the rest are abject failures at this point. America is one of the mostright wing nations on earth— and that means, in the current context, that it’s ruled by stupidity, lies, and violence. I don’t have much sympathy at all for the old guard of Democrats. Their grand strategyfailed. What was that grand strategy?Appeasement. If we compromise enough with the bad guys, give them cover — then maybe they’ll go away.
They didn’t go away. They doubled down — right down to a bloody, hard coup.
Give the younger generation of Democrats the reins of power. Give it to them now.They are what American politics has been missing for too long, our entire adult lives. The last time it had these things? Maybe back in FDR or Eisenhower’s day. But since then? The Democrats gave up on intelligence, passion, courage, truth, conviction, big and bold steps towards ever higher levels of all of them.
The Democrats made a deal with the devil, long ago. It’s time to unmake that deal, now. Yes, there’s always a price. You have to go through hell to get your soul back.
But isn’t thatwhat America just did?
UmairFebruary 2021
