Civil Commotion

The tribalism is so deep that Trump seems incapable of dropping below 40 percent in the national polls, and is competitive in many swing states. The cult is so strong that Trump feels invulnerable. If Trump survives impeachment, and loses the 2020 election, he may declare it another coup, rigged, and illegitimate. He may refuse to concede. And it is possible the GOP will follow his lead. That this is even thinkable reveals the full extent of our Constitutional rot.

Trump has fast-forwarded “regime cleavage.” He is appealing to the people to render him immune from Constitutional constraints imposed by the representatives of the people. He has opened up not a divide between right and left so much as a divide over whether the American system of government is legitimate or illegitimate. And that is why I don’t want to defeat Trump in an election, because that would suggest that his assault on the truth, on the Constitution, and on the rule of law is just a set of policy decisions that we can, in time, reject. It creates a precedent for future presidents to assault the legitimacy of the American government, constrained only by their ability to win the next election. In fact, the only proper Constitutional response to this abuse of executive power is impeachment.

Andrew Sullivan

Well said, and absolutely correct. Trump must be removed not as the losing electoral choice, but as an explicit matter of national defense. The government must defend its own legitimacy — or it has none, and that is Trump’s goal.

Bruce Gerencser slices and dices an IFB preacher who feels he doesn’t receive the deference he is entitled to expect.

He is the “man of God” and is to be respected at all times. If God and his man are as tight as Domelle alleges, I’d be fearful too. When you believe the preacher has a direct line to God, it makes sense to keep your mouth shut and obey his edicts. Either that or run as fast as you can out the back door of the church never to return. If you are heaven-bent on going to church, there are kinder, gentler expressions of faith than those found in IFB churches. Don’t waste another moment being psychologically traumatized by a man who confuses his place in life with God’s.

Some thoughts, in no particular order.

• When Pastor Bubba is discovered to be helping himself to the Children’s Choir, congregations all but invariably rally to the Holy Man and drive-off his victims; this is a well-known and –documented fact (including by me). That fact says much about who is sitting in most churches — and pastors get far too much deference.

• Every flavor of Christianity hangs upon a single, indispensable metaphysical claim: Y’all are no damn good, y’all were born no damn good, and y’all can never be any damn good; the only way to avoid the eternal punishment you deserve is to join our club. Boiled-down, that’s the Christian message. You can point to the tens of thousands of books, and millions or billions of sermons with their elaborate circumlocutions and obfuscations, but that’s Christianity’s bottom line.

  No happy, satisfied adult is going to accept such nonsense; they’re going to laugh in the Holy Man’s face. The people who accept it are the troubled.

  Your happiness is against the preacher’s interest.

  Now, to be clear, I am sure that the majority of preachers mean no harm, that the majority of preachers never think to themselves, “The food on my dining room table depends on the unhappiness of my congregants.” But it does, and the cultish scripts they learn in seminary and mindlessly repeat cause unhappiness, e.g., “Always serve Jesus first and give your family the leftovers.”

Again, the smartest thing you can do is stay out of church and take your family to the park Sunday morning. If an Invisible Friend wants to get in touch with you, He can find you there, too.

The one path he [McConnell] cannot allow the Senate to follow is to hold a trial in which the House sends over its prosecutors to blather about the president’s telephone call and quid pro quos for a few weeks, after which the Senate, entirely predictably, falls far short of the two-thirds vote needed to convict and remove. That way is all pain and no gain, except for endorsing the precedent of sham show trials.

Radio host Hugh Hewitt

There is a lot of this kind of talk around, and I can think of only one explanation for it: Trump’s partisans know he’s guilty.

The press’ relentless exposure of Trump’s squalid, reckless, and deeply anti-American behavior verifies that we do indeed have freedom of the press; that’s why he insists upon calling it “fake news.”

No. It is a struggle to overcome and subvert your mind.