Notice that I said “a fatuous Andrew Sullivan” rather than “the fatuous Andrew Sullivan”, because I think that, at times, Andy can be pretty gosh darn cogent—when, it seems, the stars are properly aligned—but only then, I would say, for it appears that when the heavens are seriously out of whack, as they must have been when Andy came up with this one, Andy is likely to go off on any number of disagreeable tangents, most particularly and most offensively this one, his most dubious conviction that a second term for El Donaldo would be, you know, bad, but maybe not, you know, bad bad—not that much worse, perhaps, than a second term for soft on immigrants soft on woke senile man walking Joe Biden, aka “the aimless one”.
The gist of Andy’s grist is this cascade of rhetorical posturing re the events of January 6, 2021:
Did he seriously think he was going to prevent certification, and remain as president? Seriously? Was it a genuine insurrection — an attempted coup, supported by a plurality in the country, secretly backed by rogue elements in the military and a majority in the Congress and the Court — that could have kept Trump in power? Or was it a coordinated but bizarre riot that got out of control, to support a coup based on a theory concocted by a bunch of fringe nutters, with no serious support from any other relevant actor?
To be honest, I think it’s somewhere in the middle of the two: a grotesque, disqualifying outrage against our democracy, and yet also pathetic, lame, and driven by Trump’s psychotic egotism — and cowardice.
Bottom line for Andy (I guess): What’s so bad about having a pathetic, lame, cowardly sociopath in the White House for another four years?
Well, to be honest, I can think of a lot of things that could easily happen with Trump in the White House that would significantly disfigure American democracy for decades to come, in a manner that this country has never yet endured. And I also think that “cowardice” is catching. The simple fact is, Trump invited a mob to descend on Washington on January 6 for the specific purpose of intimidating Vice President Pence and Congress, in the “classic” manner of the French revolutionary mobs, to howl and shriek until, at the very least, Joe Biden had failed to obtain certification as president elect, launching the country into entirely uncharted political waters, with Trump at the helm. This was his goal from the very first, and he came much closer to it than most people are willing to recognize. As Vice President Pence has pointed out, repeatedly, the most important act that avoided chaos was not his decision to refuse Trump’s demand that he, as Vice President, should “count” the electoral votes according to his own unfettered discretion and award Trump the presidency by vice-presidential fiat, or, failing that, claim that the results from enough states were “contested” as to deny Biden the presidency, but rather Pence’s decision to refuse the Secret Service’s request that he be moved to a “safe” place during the riot. If Pence had decided that discretion was the better part of valor, the count would not have proceeded. Disaster was averted only because Vice President Pence had the courage not to be sensible.
Even as it was, a majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against Biden’s certification when the vote count finally took place, and, after a few days of “confusion”, the cowardly Republican establishment, led by then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, fell into a stumbling lockstep behind their Führer from which they have never emerged. In the space of two months, Trump had manufactured the greatest crisis in the history of American democracy since the southern succession in 1860 through nothing more than an unrelenting outpouring of grotesque lies that lacked the slightest grounding in “facts.” But tens of millions of Americans believed in those lies for no other reason than that Trump uttered them, and thousands of Americans smashed their way into the U.S. Capitol in order to terrify the U.S. Congress into obeying Trump’s will, to Trump’s very evident delight.
According to Mitt Romney, Republicans in both houses of Congress feared for the physical safety of themselves and their families if they voted against Trump, Mitt going to the extent of shelling out $5,000 a day for security for his family, before they moved back to Utah. And, somehow, Mitt couldn’t be bothered to share this perhaps relevant tidbit with the American people until late 2023. Brave, Mitt, brave! But perhaps not brave enough! And the same might be said for Mr. Sullivan!
Afterwords
In the days immediately following January 6 there was plenty of first person testimony confirming beyond any doubt that Trump was delighted by the riot, and there would be plenty more if so many “prominent” Republicans weren’t terrified of Trump. There is absolutely no doubt that Trump wanted, and was delighted when he obtained, a swarming, lawless, intimidating mob and was only thwarted from achieving his goal by Pence’s determination to see Biden’s certification through.
I have attacked Trump “normalizers” like Mr. Sullivan over and over again. Why people insist on thinking that the way to deal with a monster is to deny that he is one is beyond me.
