Trump must be destroyed

In case you’re not treating yourself to the spectacle of Trump’s current press conference, you can follow along with Daniel Dale here.

Trump seems even more low-energy, disjointed, and incoherent than usual, which is saying something.

He’s an old unhealthy man, whose narcissism is eating him alive (No narcissist can ever be happy or satisfied for more than fleeting moments, which are soon overwhelmed by the baseline self-loathing that dominates his psyche).

Trump needs to be destroyed, and the way to do that is to attack him relentlessly, and in particular to mock him, since mockery — especially in regard to his most evident failings and vulnerabilities — is the thing a malignant narcissist can least stand. (The Republican party must also be destroyed, but one thing at a time).

A sports metaphor: Trump came into power because of a whole bunch of lucky bounces and bad calls, which were then rationalized as evidence that he had some sort of mystical ability to take advantage of the dysfunctions of American culture and politics. This led to an unfortunate unwillingness on the part of many of his opponents to recognize his fundamental personal and political weaknesses (exacerbated, of course, by the absence of any real legal mechanism for removing a radically unfit president prior to the next scheduled election).

There was never anything mystical about it: he got lucky, and he cheated. And now his luck is running out.

That’s why it’s critical that Democrats push forward against him all fronts, especially impeachment. This drivel from Frank Bruni illustrates, as if it needed further illustration, the uselessness of the liberal-centrist pundit class, with its constant handwringing over the delusion that a sufficiently talented politician — let’s call him Johnny Unbeatable — will somehow “heal” a divided nation:

But while an impeachment’s impact on November 2020 is unknowable, its effect on us as a nation is almost certain. A dangerously polarized and often viciously partisan country would grow more so, with people on opposing sides hunkering down deeper in their camps and clinging harder to their chosen narratives as the president — concerned only with himself — ratcheted up his insistence that truth itself was subjective and up for grabs.

That’s not a reason to blink, but it’s a reality to brace for. At a juncture when we so desperately need to rediscover common ground, we’d be widening the fault lines. Bringing the country together afterward would call for more than a talented politician; it would demand a miracle worker. None of the Democratic presidential candidates qualify.

The country can be brought together after the traitors and criminals that make up his administration are brought to justice. Until then, total political and cultural war.