I Don’t Care What President Trump Has Done, Is Doing, Nor Will Do
Because he is the President of the United States and that’s all that matters
Shocking! Isn’t it?
At a minimum President Trump should be impeached — even if he is not convicted, and removed from office the first time. The political sagacity to do so on more than one occasion is quite befitting. Last year in December, a resolution to impeach Donald Trump failed 58–364 in the House of Representatives. At the current rate of presidential indecorum and incompetence of the moral and ethical kinds, every month there should be a resolution considered to impeach the president. If not — and clearly it is not — then too many Americans have placed the power of their vote in the hands of a group of representatives in Congress whose moral callousness screams “I don’t care what the president has done, is doing, and will do”, because he is the President of the United States.
“Of course the president ought to be able to expect loyalty, he is the chosen president of the United States by the American people, and he is the chief executive. If they’re not loyal to him, who the hell are they supposed to be loyal to?” — Newt Gingrich
Umm…the constitution maybe!
And this matters for what now?!
Now if that doesn’t sound like the onset of tyranny, then I guess I don’t know what tyranny really is. In the context of our government I look to the constitution and what the framers were possibly thinking at the time of its authorship.
Like Plato and Aristotle, our nation’s founders worried about tyrannical government. Recognizing that tyranny could come from a single powerful ruler or from “mob rule,” the founders wrote into the Constitution mechanisms to prevent tyranny and promote the rule of law. They separated the powers of government into three equal branches of government: the executive (the president), the legislative (Congress), and the judicial (the Supreme Court). Each branch can check the other to prevent corruption or tyranny. Congress itself is divided into the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House, elected for two-year terms, is more likely to be swayed by the passions of the people than the Senate, elected to six-year terms.¹
It is apparent that President Trump has assumed the mantle of tyrant, but have we considered enough that the “mob rule” aspect that he conjured up during his campaign had already invaded the House of Representatives and has infiltrated the Senate?
And what about that mob rule? According to analysis provided by psychologists and neuroscientists the psychological traits that make up the present mob rule mentality discernibly in the current administration and within the republican base is made up of a submissiveness to authority also known as Authoritarian Personality Syndrome². The particular mob they represent though is driven by a phenomenon called deindividuation coined by psychologists and described as such below.
When an individual joins a mob, they experience a phenomenon known as deindividuation. Deindividuation is the loss of self-awareness and restraint.³
Think tariffs, and trade war. Think tearing up the Iran nuclear deal. Think Paris Climate Agreement. Think erosion of Obamacare — your essential human health services and safety net. Think limitations on transgender rights in the military. Or better yet just think!
The behavior is further described as a bunch of random people that may have a combination of these sub-identities or descriptors such as racists, blue collar workers, libertarians, the rich, those with no college education, the politically incorrect, conservatives, or the evangelicals — you know “the shake things up crowd” — as a mob that has literally lost its mind and is remarkably inspired by negative groupthink ideology.
But wait the constitution was written to prevent this mob rule from making this singular ruler a reality. What happened? Well this is where it goes back to moral callousness — this “I don’t care” emotion sparked by a vulnerability of ignorance that wards off the values of empathy and unity in exchange for the shrinking away from civil and democratic responsibility.
Moral callousness is a kind of insensitivity to the care, concern, needs, or wellbeing of others. Callousness often has a strong undertone of selfishness; one puts her self-interest ahead of the interests of others. Here, too, there may be a progression. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) argued that all people have a duty to help some others at some times. When one’s own definition of “some others” and “some times” shrinks, a person becomes more callous, more unwilling to act in ways that meet the needs of others, despite recognizing those needs.⁴
This moral callousness can be blatant with the NRA and our lawmakers insouciance towards common sense gun control measures that make it a privilege and not a right when it comes to guns — just like driving a car is a privilege that requires license and insurance to mitigate its misuse. The March of Our Lives happening today as thousands gather in Washington, D.C. is a massive consequential callout of what can only be described as moral callousness towards the innocent victims of gun violence — to which the mob rule seems apathetic to truly caring about.
Our leading representative-in-chief has shown that he doesn’t care about anyone who simply agrees to disagree with him in his own cabinet. Evidently there is no compromising with a tyrant. It is the Trump way or the highway. Now these aren’t just ordinary people — well some are less than ordinary but I digress — most are in fact flunkies who saw opportunity with going along with the mob because they cared little about the minority’s stake in a democracy, even though they were entitled to more than just a small representation due to the popular vote.
When it reached the depths of going against oneself, or having moral indifference, then and only then did resignation become a hard truth and reality for them. Even so looking at this growing list of casualties below, a Pyrrhic victory was had by Trump and his mob rule.
The strength of Trump’s rebounding resilience and mob rule appeal is this moral indifference described as “the complete absence or silencing of moral emotions. Without these moral sentiments or emotions, our moral systems cannot exist.”⁴
I cannot emphasize this enough but we are living through an existential crisis, where our values of moral and ethical responsibility is shrinking away from humanity by a motivated ignorance, and this need to be right in something gone terribly wrong. We continue to ignore Donald Trump’s attitudes and behaviors as if there has got to be something right about it — as if there is some prophetic significance to Trump’s incarnation as president. This is simply a mistake or a miscalculation. You can acknowledge that mistake by supporting the issuance of a few resolutions for impeachment. Congress can issue a number of impeachments if they wanted to right now. We can deal with, and deliberate his conviction and removal now, easily, before its too late.
Because the longer we wait the more uneasy it becomes.
