Come on, some of you do. Some of you, the ones who want the press (what you call "the media") to leave our president alone, who want Congress and the courts to get out of his way, to give him a chance, that's exactly what you want. If you're one of the people--and they exist, they've said as much--who think that the only truth comes from the unsecured devices of God's servant Donald Trump (with Breitbart supplying the only valid exegetical commentary on the gospel), that's exactly what you want. You want a boss, not a president, someone to fire people and slam down phone receivers on startled allies.
You want some swagger and some smack. You want some payback, a new sheriff with a big iron on his hip that he's not afraid to use. A shot-caller. A man of action, like James Bond or Han Solo, shooting first, not necessarily playing fair.
Look, it's OK if you feel that way. This is still America after all, and Lord knows you have been abused. Maybe not exactly in the way you believe you've been abused, but you've been abused nevertheless. People with power haven't played fair with you, because--hey, they were in power. They didn't have to.
Now maybe you think you can get a little of that power for yourself. Good luck with that. (Because that's how you get to be an alleged billionaire. By helping out the little guy.)
On the other hand, maybe it just feels good after years of having to watch your mouth and pretend other folks from other lands were just as good as you. Maybe it just didn't feel right being told you need to be tolerant of that which you didn't understand, that which seemed downright nasty and alien to you (or perhaps elicited an irreconcilable tingling in the places you don't scratch in public). All these years of having to listen to them complain about how their "rights" had been abrogated by the indifference of power might have grated on your nerves. Maybe just a little?
Just between us, you can say it. Consider this your safe space where everyone's facts are due equal respect.
Because sometimes it makes sense to have one guy in charge, right? Like Clint Eastwood telling everyone what to do without having to explain anything. Because sometimes you don't have time to explain, sometimes you just have to put your trust in the Terminator when he tells you "Come with me if you want to live."
Of course, the Terminator, his ratings aren't so good now. Maybe he's not a good example for our brave new world. After all, he was an immigrant, he was from the same part of the world as that guy to whom some people are always comparing POTUS, and his father was a member of the Nazi Party, joining the brownshirts six months after Kristallnacht. (Which shouldn't have anything to do with how we view Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wasn't even born until 1947, but probably would were he even eligible to run for action hero in chief.)
Anyway, desperate times call for the suspension of habeas corpus and the roundup of the usual suspects. We can't afford the usual deliberative hemming and hawing of a democratic republic when we're faced with imminent threats to our way of life. Right?
That's pretty much what some of you have been saying. After all, what's a president to do when, as one Twitterer messaged me, 90 percent of the mainstream is "militantly" against him?
I won't argue that percentage. But most of us used to think that there was nothing particularly wrong with being in the mainstream, because by definition that's where most of us are. But shouldn't it give us pause when 90 percent of the mainstream anything aligns against something? For sure, the "media" contains some charlatans and a lot of lazy order takers, but it mainly consists of worker drones doing their best to ferret out what we used to think of as news--what citizens need to know about the world and their agents.
With some pretty important exceptions--and someone really should ask Frederick Douglass about this--for most of our history Americans have always argued over fairly unimportant things. Things like the proper rate of the capital gains tax. It's never been a politic thing to say out loud, especially in a newsroom, but most of our elections have been about which lobbyist gets to pick up which check.
Until now, it's been the consensus that not even our chief executive is above the law. Presidents have, by custom and rule, been required to be transparent about their business dealings and their tax returns. This president isn't--and by my lights some of you have been a little too eager to apologize for him. While I understand his tax returns are probably complicated--my tax return ran to 140 pages last year--I don't see that as any reason for him not to release them. I might not be able to understand them (I'd make a run at it), but I bet my CPA neighbor could. I bet a lot of you could.
And we used to agree that the president had to respect the other branches of government and knew that they also had a part to play in the running of the country. Granted, this Congress doesn't seem to have earned much respect--both the Democrats and Republicans need to remember that most of the country didn't vote for this president, and that the 2018 mid-terms aren't that far away.
It's not too late for Trump to destroy the GOP. He also could destroy the Democrats. Maybe those who voted for him from an impulse to anarchy were on to something. He really could monkey-wrench the American machine and turn us into the tribal society some of his followers and advisers explicitly want.
For the record, I like it here. I don't want to see the dream derailed, though I have no superstitious confidence that it won't be. I have little faith in members of this Congress to push back--the Republican party has turned into a cynical cabal of careerists and the Democrats are simply incompetent. Trump may be actively trying to undermine the legitimacy of the judiciary. We know he's undermined the legitimacy of the press. (And they helped.)
Which means it's on you. You can fight for freedom, or you can have your dictator. Which is apparently what some of you want.
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Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@arkansasonline.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.
Editorial on 02/07/2017