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To those who wish us well by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 24, 2017

To those who wish us well
by Tom Sullivan


Still image from Ghandi (1982).

Resignations will continue, it seems, until the president’s attitude improves. (Breath-holding is ill-advised.) Yet it is reassuring in these dark times to see some people in and around Washington still have principles, even if some displayed judgment so poor as to join this festering, fetid administration in the first place. Daniel Kammen is not one of the latter.

Members of the president’s American Manufacturing Council are not the only ones abandoning the Trump ship in the wake of his “both sides” response to the violence in Charlottesville:

Daniel Kammen, an energy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, resigned Wednesday from his position as the State Department’s science envoy.

Kammen, who was appointed to the position back in February 2016 and has served in many federal roles for more than 20 years, said his decision was tied to President Trump’s “attacks on core values of the United States.”

“Your failure to condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis has domestic and international ramifications,” he said. “Particularly troubling to me is how your response to Charlottesville is consistent with a broader pattern of behavior that enables sexism and racism, and disregards the welfare of all Americans, the global community and the planet.”

The first letter of each paragraph below spells out I-M-P-E-A-C-H.

Kammen is not the first to employ that device. USA Today reports that when 17 members of the President’s Committee on Arts and the Humanities resigned, their August 18 joint letter spelled R-E-S-I-S-T.

His behavior will not improve. Not even after the eventual riot his Justice Department fails to charge him with inciting. If the federal government could not convict the Chicago Seven hippies it accused of conspiring to incite a riot, chances of a president seeing charges for inciting one are nil.

But the president’s Phoenix rally proves that’s where he is heading, so don’t express shock when it comes. Charlie Pierce has already had enough of the president’s incitement against the press and of his fans who lap it up:

I have no more patience, and I had very little to start with. I don’t care why you’re anxious. I don’t care for anybody’s interpretation of why you voted for this abomination of a politician, and why you cheer him now, because any explanation not rooted in the nastier bits of basic human spleen is worthless. I don’t want any politicians who seek to appeal to the more benign manifestations of your condition because there’s no way to separate those from all the rest of the hate and fear and stupidity. (And, for my colleagues in the Vance-Arnade-Zito school of Trump Whispering, here’s a hint: They hate you, too.) I don’t care why you sat out in a roasting pan since 5 a.m. Tuesday morning to whistle and cheer and stomp your feet for a scared, dangerous little man who tells you that your every bloody fantasy about your enemies is the height of patriotism. You are now the declared adversaries of what I do for a living, and your idol is a danger to the country and so are you. Own it. Deal with it. And, for the love of god, and for the sake of the rest of us who live in this country, do better at being citizens.

But even when the riot is over, will they? Will they despair, as the Hindu father in Ghandi?

Nahari: I’m going to Hell! I killed a child! I smashed his head against a wall.
Gandhi: Why?
Nahari: Because they killed my son! The Muslims killed my son!
[indicates boy’s height]
Gandhi: I know a way out of Hell. Find a child, a child whose mother and father have been killed and raise him as your own.
[indicates same height]
Gandhi: Only be sure that he is a Muslim and that you raise him as one.

Our damaged president certainly will not. The elusive pivot is never coming. Isn’t he more likely to lob more accusations after the next Heather Heyer and pivot to bragging about the new Oval Office wallpaper he picked out himself?

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Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer, at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

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