It’s ironic, really. On June 1, 1950, Margaret Chase Smith, a freshman senator from Maine, spoke against Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s inflammatory and anti-American rhetoric, the first senator to do so.
For Trump to be impeached, at least 17 Republicans will need to stand and support Trump’s impeachment, or will they all bend over and do the will of another McCarthy, who promotes inflammatory and un-American rhetoric?
Richard Miller
San Luis Obispo
This article appears in Feb 11-21, 2021.
I seriously doubt news commentators’ claims that, collectively, Donald Trump’s ardent supporters deep-down truly believe his implausible (even by many other conservatives’ standards) assertions of mass voter fraud.
Long before election day, Trump was saying he may not respect a Biden win, as though preparing his voter base for his inevitable refusal to leave office.
Post-election, just the loss itself was/is touted as sufficient proof of the unverifiable claim Trump was cheated from a victory due to atypically massive electoral-ballot fraud.
Contrary to mainstream commentators’ assertions that the Capitol Hill rioters really believe that Trump had won the election, it is possible most of the latter maintain that ‘Trump was cheated’ as an excuse for their attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s (apparently quite) legitimate electoral win—or at least make it as unpleasant as possible, as we saw on Jan. 6.
The rioters (and Trump) may have been enraged enough at his defeat by the supposedly ‘socialist’ Biden, they were now going to raise hell.
Or perhaps those supporters consciously or subconsciously believe that he has to remain in office for some perceived greater good—perhaps to save the nation or even to do ‘God’s will’—regardless of his democratically-decided election loss.
It may be a case of that perhaps most dangerous of ideologies: the end justifies the means.
I’m not equating Trump or his base support to any of history’s genocidal maniacs, but the most frightful example of that philosophical justification is/was the pogrom, the primary implementers of which know they’re committing mass murder yet still genuinely perceive it all as part of an ultimately greater good.