Impeachment is a dream. Get over it and fight effectively.

Before diving in, let me point to where my scratch essay, making six points about the "anonymous hero op-ed write," has been revised and published on MEDIUM, pointing out that even the most fervent Trump supporter must admit one blatant fact, that Trump has been a crappy judge of character... given how many times he howls "betrayed!" (This is the one point you can make to a Mad Uncle and he'll have no response, no fox-ism, nothing.)

Key point: our response to the op-ed "hero" has to be -- "thanks... but look at who appointed you, and try some humility. You are blatantly not qualified to pick and choose which GOP positions to support."

From the somewhat ridiculous to the generally sublime... Rebecca Solnit, one of America’s best journalist-historians, is almost always on-target, offering well-supported news and surprises… even though, in this case, she and I reach different conclusions. She starts by pointing out how the daily storm of Trump tweets deliberately distracts from an avalanche of related depredations that get masked, such as this under-reported gem:

“...the legal counsel at the Department of Transportation, Andrew Kloster, formerly of the Heritage Foundation, tweeting on August 22nd that a Hollywood actress was a succubus melding together satanism and the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah in one loopy tweet, a perfect marriage of antisemitism and misogyny.” 

"Or that “climate change research proposals in the Department of the Interior were being reviewed by a character named Steve Howke, who’s sole qualification (seems to be) being an old high-school football buddy of Secretary Zinke’s from Whitefish, Montana.”

(The day after Ms. Solnit posted that, a policy analyst working for the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security resigned after emails showed that analyst Ian M. Smith had been in regular contact with known white nationalists, including Alt-Right leader Richard Spencer, and Jared Taylor.)

Seriously, dial in to this and other Solniticisms and see someone who “out-rachels” MSNBC’s Maddow. Solnit’s long list of rightwing ethical and criminal atrocities, many of them barely noted by news media, will convince any sane American that we’re in the hands of a mafia. An international organized crime syndicate.

But that’s kinda the point. The blatancy of it all is so thuggish, boorish and ultimately stupid, that I’m reminded of Hannah Arendt’s appraisal of the Nazis’ evil banality. They achieved power through bullying and cheating and complicity by cynical oligarchs, but also because all the smart folks and modern people were complacent. When that complacency wore off, the modern world ponderously gathered itself, converged and smashed the Nazi thuggery to dust.

Ms. Solnit would respond: “Great. Then stop being complacent and smash! Impeach now!” But I disagree, at least in part. Thanks to the Trumpian grotesquery, no modern-thinking American is complacent, anymore. But it’s wrongheaded to demand a spasmodic, Verdun-style frontal assault on Donald Trump, himself. That is mistaking a symptom for the disease – a common error that could cost us dearly, especially if – in lancing an excruciating boil -- we then lapse into relieved celebration, ignoring a far worse cancer below.

Look, it’s plain that Donald Trump represents an existential problem… every action that he takes either serves a cynically rapacious world oligarchy (including gambling tycoons and the Russian Mafia) or else feeds fuel to a dangerous eighth phase of the recurring American CivilWar. Only here’s the deal. Everyone can see this. The members of every fact-using profession… including the intelligence communities, law enforcement and the FBI, civil servants, scientists, and the U.S. military officer corps. Yes, that includes the crewcut men and women who are now – in their millions – condemned by the mad-right as a conspiratorial “deep state.”

They can see it all, and these skilled, decent people are doing what they can. No president in history has ever been so hemmed-in, isolated, cauterized and, indeed, rendered rather powerless.

Oh, Trump’s appointments – especially judicial – will be daunting cancers for decades. (You expect any different from Pence?) His deliberate destruction of every strength that won us the Cold War and gave the world its greatest era of (flawed) peace and progress, should make any patriotic mind shiver… as our ancestors quailed after setbacks like Bull Run, Fredericksburg, Pearl Harbor, Kasserine, Selma, or Kent State. But those ancestors gritted-teeth and bore down for the long haul, knowing there’d be no quick fixes.

As I point out elsewhere, impeachment is not just a long-shot fantasy. Even if successful, it would likely do far more harm than good, putting Two Scoops Trump into a reality show mode that he’d enjoy vastly more than his daily torment in the Oval Office. You don’t think he’d milk that martyrdom, helping turn this phase of civil war red-hot? (Indeed, my biggest dread is that the Putin-Mercer-Adelson-Murdoch oligarchy, tired of the harm he’s doing to their political apparatus, might order a “Howard Beale” hit, igniting the whole nation in flames. God bless the U.S. Secret Service.)

Impeachment and removal would rob much of our growing coalition. Many of those crewcut “deep state” public servants would let themselves be soothed into relief and renewed complacency by a crooning President Mike Pence, promising comity and renewed respect for professional castes. This might even please some leftists, who are now equivocal over all the retired officers and short-haired ‘blue dogs’ now crowding into the Democrats’ big tent. 

But screw anyone who favors ideology ahead of victory over confederate treason.

Above all, the boil we see in front of us is blocking something far worse that would replace it. The Trumpian White House leaks like mad, rendering it largely impotent! Only the very deepest mafia stuff goes un-revealed, so far. But a Pence administration would be tightly disciplined, filled with dedicated dominionists who are focused on shared goals, much of it revolving around their firm belief and relish in two sacred tomes: The Fourth Turning, by Strauss & Howe (beloved of Steve Bannon), and the Book of Revelation’s gory, hand-rubbing anticipation of an end to all human endeavor, all freedom and argument and striving, an end to all new children, and an end to the United States of America. And either way, we are so fucked.

I recommend “Mike Pence's plan to outlast Trump.” Seriously. Also the NYT’s Frank Bruni points out that Pence "adds two ingredients that Trump doesn't genuinely possess: the conviction that he's on a mission from God and a determination to mold the entire nation in the shape of his own faith, a regressive, repressive version of Christianity. Trade Trump for Pence and you go from kleptocracy to theocracy." (Not scared by that? Read Robert Heinlein's prophetic novel Revolt in 2100.)

And again, see my reasons why impeachment should be kept in reserve. A last resort, either for emergency or else once the nation reaches a post Civil War consensus.

Looking back to the recommendations of Hannah Arendt, who studied deeply how to oppose Nazi-like mafias and thuggeries, I’d distill this wisdom.

(1) Wake up; this is serious, worth your time, your effort and risk.

(2) Wake others. Form coalitions that welcome refugees from the madness.

(3) Don’t be stupid.

(4) This could be a long haul.

I respect the heck out of Rebecca Solnit and I urge you all to read her, possibly in preference over me!  Still, when we get to specifics, “impeach now” is dumb. It’s impatient. It ignores the coalition-building and grinding envelopment that Churchill and FDR and Marshall used, to achieve victory over monsters.

And it’s a dream.  Wake up.

==  Suspicion toward every elite… except the most dangerous one  ==

The trick of the Scottish-American Enlightenment -- though not the Franco-German wing - was suspicion of all authority, or SoA. It was essential because we are human and whenever any group gets solitary power... even idealistic technocrats like many of the engineers who became managers and then politburo mavens in Beijing... you will fall for every temptation of authoritarian delusion. It's how we're made. Oh, some lords are better than others. But the meaning of the American Revolution was "we should do without lords."

Hence, our SoA propaganda - in every Hollywood film - created a reflex that's kept us free, though we often disagree over which "elite" is striving to seize too much power. 

Leftists assume it's aristocrats and faceless corporations.  Rightists assume it is snooty academics and faceless government bureaucrats. (You see both tyrannical modes portrayed in diverse films.) Libertarians should aim their SoA at both and all directions! But most of them have, alas, been suborned into being tunnel-visioned, rightist tools.

Now, it's perfectly reasonable to sniff suspiciously when any elite says "leave it to us!" And Technocracy - rule by those with smarts and knowledge and credentials - is certainly one hypothetical dictatorship by a snooty elite.  

Except for China though (and Beijing may be exactly that, under a communist/mercantilist veneer), when has technocracy ever been a substantial authoritarian-oppressive mode? There are no plausible scenarios by which it could happen in the West. 

Is it okay to sniff suspiciously at "fact-people?" Sure. As it was okay to sniff at excesses by labor unions. But when unions have been plummeting for forty years, the intensity of screeching against them becomes highly suspicious.  Especially when the billionaires financing this hysteria have been getting more powerful and benefiting outrageously for those same 40 years. 

What kind of Suspicion of Authority instinct is it, that cannot notice: "Hey, I am marching with fervor for the only elite in society whose power, wealth and influence have been skyrocketing to atmospheric levels for decades, and is now approaching levels not seen since 1789 in France."

Face it.  Suspicion of Authority has been healthy for us.  It kept us free. But traitors have discovered how to metastacize it into a cancer that attacks every elite except the very one that took power and crushed hopes in every other human civilization. The same one that cheated, stymied all progress, cheated, murdered, cheated, stole and cheated across 6000 years. The very same one the American Founders rebelled against, who Adam Smith denounced as market destroyers, and who got a million poor southern whites to fight and die for slavery.

So, is Fox saying we should apply fierce, hate-drenched SoA toward all other 'elites' - science, teaching, journalism, civil servants, every fact using profession... including now the "deep state" FBI and officer corps... all elites except one? The only one that is actually, actually rising to obligate and near total power? 

What a coincidence! Those other 'elites' are the only forces in society who could possibly stymie that total coup, and they just happen - all of them -- to be eeeeevil!  All of the folks who know stuff, in their diverse tens of millions, yes, all of them.

Welcome to the essence of the confederacy, folks. Plantation lords and the populist-numbskulls who march and die to protect the lords' privileges. It is the same, recurring national fever, our perennial curse. And we must gird ourselves to do as we've done before. 

Stop it. Politically. With malice toward none. With charity for all and binding the national wounds. Knowing that if the sickness wins this round, that is not how we'll be treated.