Aristotelian Catharsis
Taking the "Fun" out of Republican politics
Our erstwhile president, Donald J. Trump, is not a man to let what he calls “a one-sided witch-hunt” prevent him from seeking reelection and taking another giant dump on democracy and the American people. Calling the Select Committee to investigate the January 6 Capitol attack a “rigged deal” and an ‘insurrection hoax” and denying all evidence against him, an unrepentant Trump rages against the congressional committee he has labeled the “Unselects,” contending that “There’s no cleaner example of the menacing spirit that has devoured the American left…They’re con people. They’re con artists. Every one of them is a radical left hater, hates all of you, hates me even more than you, but I’m just trying to help you out.”
In reality Trump’s wild, incoherent rants without evidence amount to nothing more substantial than the delusional, debunked claims of a narcissistic megalomaniac, irrational denials and invectives directed at the committee emanating from a real con man and demagogue who cheated his devotees out of $250 million in donations surreptitiously raised for a phony election defense fund. Evidence shows that Trump used the money for personal business expenses and future campaign promotions instead. As the evidence collected by the Committee piles up, the majority of the American people seem to have had enough of the narcissistic King Baby who served as president for those unforgettable four years that seemed like twenty, and have welcomed the Committee’s findings as the much needed elixir of catharsis. The tragedy of the Trump presidency has been sufficiently Shakespearean in its horrendous impact on democracy to evoke Aristotle’s take on the word as the purgation of emotions such as fear and pity experienced by a theatrical audience watching a tragedy unfold, in this case, the American people as they continue to witness the evil antics of The Donald and his Republican cronies as they pervert the Constitution and the institutions of government into a fascist, farcical drama of authoritarian thuggery.
The mounting incriminating evidence against Trump includes a taped phone call Trump made to Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger in an effort to convince him to “find” 11,780 votes to overturn President Biden’s victory in the state, a criminal act that was part of a wider scheme involving a Republican plot to send 16 fraudulent elector slates to congress in order to subvert the 2020 election results. In addition, on February 14, 2022, Heather Cox Richardson reported on her Substack blog Letters from an American that New York attorney general Letitia James alleged “that there is ‘significant’ evidence that the Trump Organization manipulated asset valuations to obtain loans and avoid taxes. Now Trump’s accountants appear to be working with her office and have said that Trump’s past ten years of financial statements ‘should not be relied upon.’” Say what? Happy Valentines Day Donald!
In other Trump revelations, it looks like The Donald is finding out the hard way that size does matter. According to the February 14, 2022 Guardian newspaper, using statements from Trump’s accounting firm, the “New York attorney general’s office claimed, among other issues, that the company had misreported the size of Trump’s Manhattan penthouse, saying it was almost 30,000 square feet, nearly three times its actual size, and inflated the value of Trump golf clubs in West Chester county, New York, and Scotland.” The Guardian also reported on February 7, 2022 that “Trump is facing a total of 19 legal actions—half of which allege improper conduct during his presidency.” In addition to six criminal investigations into financial crimes, Trump faces charges for his role in the January 6, 2021 insurrection, election fraud, and sexual misconduct.
The January 6 Congressional Investigative Committee vice chair Liz Cheney called Trump’s scam of raising money from small donors under false pretenses the “big rip-off,” conduct that former federal prosecutor Michael Zeldin said could be in violation of the fraud statute. The accumulation of damning evidence against Trump presented by the committee moved former U.S. appellate court judge J. Michael Luttig to warn that “Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a continuing clear and present danger to American democracy.”
Based on these and numerous other reports it appears that right-sizing Donald Trump’s narcissistic ego is going to be a painful process. Screaming “Witch Hunt,” one of his favorite tropes in defense of charges against him over the years, POTUS non-grata also took aim at Hillary Clinton, suggesting that she deserves the death penalty for allegedly spying on him during her 2016 presidential campaign. Heather Cox Richardson speculated that while “fear of what it means for him that his accountant has dropped him might have inspired Trump’s rants about executing Hillary, the same does not hold for Rep. Jim Jordan(R-OH), who on Sunday’s Fox & Friends broadcast agreed with Trump that Clinton’s aides had spied on him, and implied the punishment for such alleged espionage should be death.” Jordan’s statement is in concert with many of his Republican cohorts who have also voiced their preference for violence in settling political issues. In response, Lee Chemel, a commentator on Richardson’s blog thread asked the question foremost in many readers’ minds: “How does ‘death to Hillary’ talk not become an incitement of violence, a felony?” We’ll see what happens as the fight to preserve democracy continues…
It’s ironic that Republican Liz Cheney, the daughter of Dick Cheney, a war criminal and architect of President George W. Bush’s preemptive war in Iraq, would arise in the heat of the investigation of the January 6th insurrection and defend the Constitution, actually upholding the sacred oath she took when sworn in as an elected representative of the American people. “Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.” Wow, that’s quite a statement in the context of the lingering stain her father and his partners in crime left on the body politic. But as Stewart Brand once said, “History proceeds by ironies,” many with the degree of impact as Liz Cheney’s stalwart stance in this watershed moment in America’s political evolution.
Robert Hubbell, writing about the January 6 Committee’s hearings in the June 10, 2022 Today’s Edition Newsletter, noted the effectiveness of the Committee’s presentation in “establishing Trump’s criminal intent in attempting to remain in office unlawfully.” His assessment made the case beyond a shadow of doubt about Trump’s complicity in the assault on the Capitol and clarified the issues in focus. “In one of the most chilling disclosures,” Hubbell wrote, “Trump said that the protesters chanting ‘Hang Mike Pence’ might ‘have it right’ and that ‘Pence deserves it.’ Let’s pause here for a moment of reflection. A sitting president of the United States expressed sympathy for the desire of insurrectionists to hang the sitting Vice President. After that revelation, how can any person of conscience or goodwill continue to support Donald Trump? Trump’s statement is grotesque, reprehensible, and cowardly.”
Adding fat to the legal fire consuming the former president, on June 19, according to The Guardian, Adam Kinzinger, a republican member of the committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol said on ABC This Week that Trump’s actions amounted to “seditious conspiracy” and “criminal involvement by a president.” Kinzinger added that Trump also failed to uphold his oath of office. “Kinzinger’s decision,” The Guardian further reported, “to go on the offensive against Trump—whom many Republicans still support vehemently—isn’t without peril. On Sunday, he recounted how someone had recently mailed to his home a note threatening to execute him, his wife and their five-month-old son.”
As summer arrived in the Swamp, the plot thickened. Despite the fact that Trump has confessed his guilt in public regarding the charge of violating the 12th Amendment, which forbids sending ballots back to the states, the DOJ has still failed to act. As Robert Hubbell reported in the June 20, 2022 Today’s Edition Newsletter, “Trump asked Pence to invalidate the first election and grant him a ‘do-over’ in five states Trump lost. Trump’s comment is nothing less than an admission of his criminal culpability for seditious conspiracy. Trump then supercharged his admission by engaging in witness tampering, saying that he was ‘very, very seriously’ considering granting pardons to January 6th insurrectionists if he is reelected.”
With so much evidence out in the open, many people are wondering why the DOJ doesn’t act. “What’s Merrick Garland waiting for?” many of my friends and neighbors have asked recently, some speculating that Garland might be a closet Republican. “Garland must be waiting for Hell to Freeze over,” quipped Seann O’Donnell, a man known in the neighborhood for his cynical humor, “but that’s not likely to happen now because of global warming, a phenomenon most Republicans don’t believe in.”
On June 28, 2022, events conspired to increase the likelihood of an indictment. According to the testimony of White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson at the January 6th committee’s hearing, Trump and his cronies actively planned the attack on the Capitol. Hutchinson also testified that an angry and violent president Trump was not above expressing his personal frustration by throwing dinner plates at the White House walls and even furiously lunging at a Secret Service agent who refused to drive him to the Capitol at the height of the violence. Secret Service agents at the scene dispute her claim, admitting that Trump was angry, but maintaining that he did not lunge at the agent as Hutchinson claimed. (This issue has opened another can of worms, raising the prospect of widespread corruption in the Secret Service. “As with the missing Secret Service texts,” Robert Hubbell wrote in Today’s Edition Newsletter, July 22, 2022, “there are no call logs, photos, emails, or texts to or from Trump during his 187-minute failure to act. The complete absence of evidence regarding the actions of Trump and the Secret Service on January 6th, gives rise to a reasonable inference that corrupt actors in the former administration and the present Secret Service leadership have engaged in a massive cover up.”)
The outrageous behavior on the part of the Trump Republicans reveals that they apparently want to secure the rights proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence exclusively for themselves by instituting a very small corporate controlled government (fascism) funded by taxes levied on the poor that derives its unjust powers from the consent of a corrupt congress, an illegitimate Supreme Court, and of course, the King Baby himself, Donald J. Trump.
On June 29, Robert Hubbell reported in Today’s Edition Newsletter that “Hutchinson’s testimony provided sufficient evidence to indict Trump for seditious conspiracy and made clear that Trump is an emotionally unstable person not fit to occupy the presidency. “ Hubbell further concluded that “Trump and his enablers planned to use violence on January 6th to interrupt the count of electoral ballots” and that “Trump should be indicted and convicted for seditious conspiracy.”
I cite Robert Hubbell frequently in my writings because his work comprises an excellent ongoing assessment of the threat the Republican Party of Trump poses to American democracy. His commentary, despite the severity of the Republican menace, is always upbeat and encouraging as exemplified in the following statement made on July 13. “The only way democracy will end is if we quit fighting to preserve it.” As I wrote on his thread in response, statements like that are why I recommend Today’s Edition Newsletter to people I encounter who are losing patience and hope as they attempt to cope with the incessant barrage of lies and felonious assaults on liberty by the GOP of Donald Trump. The Republican Party has declared war on We the People and those of us who vowed by oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic must stand firm in our resolve and never yield to the bullying tactics of the fascist forces now attempting to subvert the rule of law and seize power. Looking at the situation through Hubbell’s “lens of hope” is always a welcome balm at this chaotic moment in American history, a stalwart reminder that the flame of democracy has burned in the hearts of men and women throughout the ages and will never die.
But we must remember that in a crisis like the one we now face, the quest to restore the nation to sanity also depends on our willingness to hold the Republican operatives who plotted to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States of America accountable for their actions. Such behavior cannot be tolerated. It is criminal, unconscionable and totally unacceptable. If justice is not served regarding this matter, there will be no path forward toward a free and happy destiny. Hubbell is right in saying “Someone should drag Steve Bannon before a grand jury,” an appropriate suggestion that should also include Pat Cipollone, Ginny Thomas, Mark Meadows, and numerous others including at least 140 members of congress. Trump and his supporters have boldly demonstrated their intentions to place their hold on power above the will of the majority of voters in their criminal efforts to pull off their coup d’état and destroy what’s left of America’s experiment in representative democracy. Their actions have been seditious and treasonous. Ignoring these continuous Republican assaults on the traditions of democratic freedom and the laws of the land is not only bad for morale, it also undermines the credibility of the nation’s institutions of governance.
Heather Cox Richardson, one of my favorite Substack authors, wrote in the July 15 edition of Letters from an American, “While U.S. leaders after the Civil War thought their best hope of building a nation based on racial equality was to avoid prosecution, scholars who study the restoration of democracy after an authoritarian crisis are very clear: central to any such restoration is enforcing the rule of law.” My concern as an ordinary citizen is that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice will fail to hold the leaders of the January 6 attack on the Capitol accountable, specifically Donald Trump and his close advisors and political supporters. If the DOJ does not uphold the idea that no one, regardless of their rank in the hierarchy of power, is above the law, then the Committee’s investigations into this grave matter are a waste of time. So far, the Committee’s findings indicate that vigorous prosecutorial action is clearly warranted to redress the harm done to the American people by the criminal behavior of individuals at the highest levels of government. The DOJ must now act accordingly in order to maintain the sanctity of the Constitution and the integrity of the nation’s institutions of democracy.
