Who knows what would have changed Republican minds
Violence flows in the American bloodstream. I cannot say if modern technology and gunnery have made it worse but judging by the reaction of Republican senators at the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, they like violence, they really really like it.
Even when they saw fresh video of the attack on Republicans and Democrats alike, realizing that they themselves could have been beaten, shot or hanged by the rioters, they did not seem repelled. The screams of the police officer as he was crushed by the mob, the officer Tasered until he had a heart attack, the bravery of Officer Eugene Goodman as he saved Sen. Mitt Romney and vice-president Mike Pence from threat of death, it moved them not.
Why? It’s more than professed loyalty to Trump. U.S. entertainment and daily life is so filled with visuals of violence that it seems Americans believe sticks, stones, flagpoles, guns and spears don’t hurt people. They don’t in the movies.
In real life, Sen. Rand Paul was once attacked by a neighbour in a fight over lawn care. He suffered six broken ribs and had part of his lung removed. Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise was once shot through the hip by a gunman and plugged with shrapnel, suffering pelvic damage and a broken femur. Neither have the bodies they once would have had; they know violence is not a cartoon.
Yet they still backed a depraved president and his call to government insurrection, to the yahoos’ degradation of the Senate and House chambers on Jan. 6 that made the U.S. a worldwide laughingstock. We shan’t soon forget those beardy barbarians breaking through the gates.
Democratic impeachment managers hinted at what could have happened that terrible day but they should have spelled it out clearly.
What if one of the Capitol rioters had had an automatic rifle and the wit to know which nearby door led to which chamber? Senators and congresspeople could have been mowed down in enclosed rooms, as James Holmes did in a Colorado movie theatre in 2012, as Adam Lanza did, shooting toddlers to pieces at Sandy Hook that same year.
It could have been so bloody that they wouldn’t have had a quorum for the impeachment trial.
Would this have changed their minds?
Now we turn to Pence, that wretched vice-president who spent four years looking up fawningly at Trump like a dog waiting for biscuits that never came. As Indiana’s governor, Pence attempted to force women to arrange funeral services for their aborted fetuses. In 2019, he surveyed migrants held in cages at the border and not allowed showers. He smelled them and did not say, “This is monstrous. Give them toothbrushes. Let them shower.”
Pence didn’t sell his soul, he gave it away long ago. And Trump sent a mob out to find him and hang him, in the company of his wife and daughter, and as Pence ran, didn’t rescue him or tweet mercy.
Trump hired some bargainbasement lawyers to defend him, three ragged remnants. Bruce Castor blithered on like someone in a bathrobe trying to find the Cocoa Puffs in the kitchen at the cottage they just rented. David Schoen shouted, always a mistake after violent videos like the ones shown. You can’t drown out images like that.
The third defender, personal injury lawyer Michael van der Veen, had actually sued Trump last year, accusing him of having no evidence of the voter fraud he claimed. (Americans sue the same way they eat burgers, avidly.) On Friday, he falsely blamed Antifa for the insurrection and said Democrats were violent in their language too, showing a collage of them saying the word “fight,” to what purpose I do not know.
When Democrats “fight,” they don’t put on animal pelts and horned helmets and invade the seat of government. They sign petitions and facilitate workshops at which the coffee urn runs empty and the biscuits taste like crackers, it’s wearing.
Van der Veen called the impeachment trial “constitutional cancel culture.” This makes no sense at all. Is the judicial system then “criminal cancel culture?”
All three Trump lawyers failed their charm-the-jury class in lawyer school, and were almost unable to speak extemporaneously, keeping their heads down as they read from their notes, which was why I could only remember them later by their hair.
As for violence, I’m again trying to understand why Trump Republicans don’t object to it intellectually or even viscerally.
Perhaps Americans see the world as simple, a fight between good and evil, black and white. And what is the simplest answer to any question? A bullet.
As Democrats revealed, Trump planned that insurrection for a long time.
He thought violence would be the end of the matter, a bullet to the head of a new government. The Democrats seek impeachment to help fend off what they know will be the next co-ordinated spasm of extreme insurrectionist violence.