Impeach the motherfucker!

Impeach the motherfucker!

I have worried, like many others, that an impeachment trial would encourage sympathy for the devil. We remember the backlash to Clinton’s impeachment. Though opposition to him tried to paint him as a scoundrel, while congressman went after him as an immoral lowlife, his approval ratings went through the roof. Among other things, many people felt that having consensual sex with a young woman was not a crime – and besides, lying about sex was not a big thing either (said Jerry Seinfeld, “Who doesn’t lie about sex? People lie during sex”). The country seemed to be doing just fine under Clinton’s leadership, and impeachment proceedings only encouraged public support for the philanderer-in-chief. So an impeachment of Donald Trump, it is feared, could lead to sympathy for Trump. After all, who doesn’t lie about colluding with Russians to fix the American election? Or obstructing justice? Isn’t that what any of us would do, given the circumstances? Impeachment could make a martyr of the man, and gather many of the populace in his defense.

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is right, then. We need to be very cautious here. After all, there are only two more years of the Trump presidency, and he will be gone before long. The numbers indicating that a president has only the approval of 40% of people, also show that before long, no matter what happens, Trump will only be a single term president. Why impeach him when he is clearly on the way out? Why challenge him, when there is, at bottom, nothing to challenge, apart from perfidy, irrationality, and the corruption of office, which Trump has used to enrich himself?

But whatever the political calculus, it is time for American government officials to say Trump, ’s behavior in office is unacceptable. It is time to say that a president cannot act the way he has, using his office for self-enrichment, jeopardizing the freedom of the press, coddling up to foreign dictators, harming our relationships with genuine allies, promoting racism, and violating all the standards of decency, morality, and equanimity that America requires of people who hold the office of the presidency. I say, impeach the motherfucker. We having nothing to lose but our chains.

Let him stew. Let him lash out at his opponents. Let him hold temper tantrums at the prospect of being held accountable for his misdeeds large and small, and for his having besmirched the office of the president. But impeach the motherfucker.