Permission and consequences: Why impeachment, and conviction, matters
All the way back in the summer of 2016, about a month after Donald Trump had clinched the GOP nomination for president, a video surfaced. While I can’t even begin to imagine how many things I’ve seen and forgotten since then, I doubt I’ll ever forget this. In Arizona, a 30-year-old, shirtless white man covered in tattoos screams at a group of Latinos, dispensing a handful of lazy, hateful stereotypes. That much I’d actually forgotten. It’s what came next that’s seared into my brain, that not enough people understood at the time, that’s led us to this tipping point in American democracy upon which we sit so precariously perched.
The man, knowing he’s on camera for this performance, turns and looks into the lens, unleashing a single word in a primal, guttural yell: Trump!
Perhaps this rings a bell, now.
There was something so illustrative about the use of “Trump,” not as a name, or even as a verb (yes, this is really for sale on Amazon), but as an interjection. It emoted Donald Trump as both a feeling and an ethos: resentment, anger, entitlement, a healthy dose of xenophobia to be sure, but also something else, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on at the time, but which has become much clearer as time has passed. It was about permission to say and do the things you’re not supposed to say and do in polite society and — crucially — the impunity from consequences.
Trump, as long as he’s been on anyone’s radar, has always been the avatar of the obscenely wealthy businessman as a lifestyle brand. But Trump the politician offered something much deeper than a sham education or overpriced steaks to make you feel like you could also one day appear rich and successful. That he launched his campaign by saying Mexico was “bringing crime. They’re bringing drugs. They’re rapists,” and wasn’t held to account for it, opened the door. His comments that he could “stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody” and not lose a single supporter furthered it. But when the Access Hollywood tape — a scandal far worse than many that had derailed other presidential hopefuls — failed to keep him from ascending to the presidency, the message had become clear: He could do or say whatever he wanted without consequence. And with him now in charge, his supporters believed that entitled them to the same treatment, all the way up and through last week’s storming of the Capitol, based on the lies of widespread election fraud that he has steadfastly refused to abandon.
It’s not just that they believed they were doing the right thing. It’s that they believed — and, to a degree, understandably so — that they wouldn’t face any consequence for their actions. Why would they?
Trump has happily equivocated in his public statements after tragedies throughout his presidency, from his muddling remarks about “very fine people on both sides” of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, to telling last week’s rioters that “we love you, you’re very special.” In the middle of a presidential debate, he told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” which they unsurprisingly took as a statement of support.
Compare that to the silence regarding slain Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, killed in the riot last week.
It is clear that those who stormed the Capitol last week did not think they would suffer any consequences for their actions. You don’t have to take my word for it. Just look at those who took part, many not making the slightest attempt to hide their faces. They posed for photos, gave interviews, told reporters their full names and where they were from. While there is surely a healthy crossover between this group and the anti-mask crowd, the fact that many broadcast their participation on social media goes beyond anything relating to coronavirus.
It was only after the fact that the reality seemed to set in for some involved. Both the man who proudly kicked his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk and the one who cheerily stole her lectern were apparently compelled to shave weeks worth of facial hair between the riot and their arrests. The pronounced change in demeanor in each set of photos suggests that both men are perhaps beginning to absorb the consequences of their actions.
But history will not remember the name Richard Barnett, nor Adam Johnson. Judgment is too often left to this ambiguous idea, history, even though we understand the importance of the present in defining and chronicling the events that will shape the way future generations learn about our time. The history of this time must not only include law enforcement’s eventual holding of those who stormed the Capitol itself to account; it must also include our government’s account of how it preserved its democracy.
If that point needed to be driven home any further, a man carried a Confederate flag into the Capitol, something that never even happened during the Civil War. Further, it was reported Wednesday that the rioters destroyed a display honoring civil rights champion John Lewis. Could there be any greater reminder of our past failures to ensure the lessons of history carried through the generations?
Ironically, only someone as cynical as Ted Cruz, one of the lawmakers whose participation in this anti-democratic process deserves its own recourse, managed to find a throughline to try to support his unsupportable cause. Cruz attempted, on the Senate floor that day, to use the Hayes-Tilden compromise — despite his full knowledge of a complete lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud — as precedent to set up a needless commission on the election. The actual outcome of Hayes-Tilden, though, was the beginning of the Jim Crow South, effectively absolving the seditious South of their responsibilities to the laws of the United States, freeing them from the consequences of their actions. How fitting.
The government struck a horribly unjust compromise that day, one for which we are still, right up through the events of last week, paying the price. Cruz’s precedent actually makes the case against himself, and against Josh Hawley, and Trump, and every other lawmaker that has perpetrated the unsubstantiated claim of voter fraud. It demands that they actually be held accountable, without compromise, for the future of our democracy.
Those in government and in the media speaking out against impeachment are doing the country a great disservice. There must be real, lasting justice for these transgressions. While Godwin’s Law — the idea that any online argument eventually turns to Nazis — should remain top of mind to ensure such comparisons are warranted, there is actually a parallel to Adolf Hitler that should be observed, here.
Hitler’s failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch landed him in prison for treason, but he served less than a year of his five-year sentence and, after the press laundered his rehabilitation, he was able to rise to power as Chancellor just a decade later. The failure to permanently ban him from public office ultimately led to his self-declaration as leader of Germany and, well, you know what happened next.
That’s why every public official involved in propagating the lie of election fraud and instigating America’s own failed putsch on the Capitol last week must be removed from public office and never allowed to hold it again. If history is to be our guide, this is not only the requisite punishment for these actions, but the one we must demand of our leaders to preserve our democracy.
That certainly includes Representatives Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs and Mo Brooks, if they indeed helped plan the Stop the Steal rally that devolved into the riot. But it also includes Senators Cruz and Hawley. For those downplaying the idea that what these men engaged in rose to the level of sedition, well, let’s go right to the penal code itself (emphasis mine):
If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
The official Electoral College certification is largely ceremonial, but it is, in fact, the legal process by which we make the results official. Needless to say, storming the Capitol Building and overwhelming the security guarding it, leading to the death of one of the officers, qualifies as taking government property by force. The men who encouraged this mob to do these things — through words, tweets, and raised fists — must be held to account for those actions.
Some of the private citizens involved have begun to pay consequences, both legal and professional, for their actions. West Virginia State Rep. Derrick Evans has resigned after livestreaming his actions. But it’s not enough to wait for corporate culture to act, or for these decisions to be entrusted to those who perpetrated the actions. That’s still a form of permission. It must not be left to the whims of men who have already proven they’ll sell any conviction for more power.
Let’s be real about the severity of these consequences, especially in comparison to what was being talked about online and chanted about in the crowd. Nobody is calling for hangings in the town square, as the crowd in the Capitol did that day. Nobody is calling for life sentences. Nobody is calling for what those who orchestrated the putsch were promising. But there must be real accountability. Permanent removal from office is mandatory, and criminal trials with real prison time should be on the table.
The real reason anyone is against this has less to do with democracy and more to do with the Trumpian ideal of permission, and the implication of freedom from consequence. If Trump — and Cruz, and Hawley, and everyone else still supporting the election fraud lie, fomenting anger — is actually held to account for his actions, then anyone might be. They might lose their impunity, might be held to the same standards of law and order they love to trumpet.
That must happen. The ethos of impunity must be extinguished from the top, cut off at its head and applied justly down the corpse of Trumpism, through the lawmakers who abetted and encouraged this attack on American democracy, all the way to the perpetrators on the ground. It is the only way to extinguish this fire; to ensure that there is no question of whether anyone has permission to attempt such actions; to be clear about the consequences for them; to keep something even worse from happening in the future. There can be no healing, no reconciliation until the permission of Trumpism is erased, until justice has been served.
