Stuarts thoughts  11/14/2019

Trump Hatred or Trump Fear

We frequently hear the term “Trump haters” applied to those who oppose Donald Trump.  While many of us in this country truly dislike the “`persona” of Donald Trump, we see a man with serious personality faults and are often ashamed of the notion that he is representing our nation to the world. However, in  my opinion, this is not why his political opponents “hate” Trump.  In fact, it is not the man they hate, it is the idea that this “outsider” came upon the scene in 2016 and “upset their applecart”. This was, to them, a great tragedy that threatened their collective dreams of achieving great professional power and wealth.  In this sense, the emotion “hate” in characterizing the situation and Donald Trump is, perhaps, less appropriate than the emotion, “fear”.

In my opinion, the Washington political establishment is incredibly fearful that they are loosing their grip on the “Washington Scene”.  The political establishment consists of politicians in both major parties, the Washington Bureaucrats or, as they are collectively sometimes referred to, “The Deep State”, and the Washington Press Corps.  A clue as to why they are so fearful of an outsider bursting upon the scene can be found in the confession of one long-time senator who, upon retiring, admitted that the primary goal of politicians coming to Washington, is to remain there for as long as possible, i.e., continuing to win elections.  Why? Because, in their view, Washington is the seat of national wealth and the longer they stay there, the more of this wealth they will be able to garner for themselves.  Thus, after being elected to congres, their primary goal is to continue winning elections and, as such, becomes the first consideration and focus of all future efforts with the interests of the people often taking a back seat.

It’s a straight forward plan, get to Washington, stay there as long as possible and accumulate as much wealth as you can.  The Washington Establishment recognizes this truism and, in this sense, one hand helps the other.  Donald Trump is an outsider who came in promising to drain the “swamp “and the swamp life is terrified.  The establishment quickly coalesced around the perceived need to expel this interloper as quickly as possible.  It seems obvious to me that when the Democrats announced their strategy of blocking and opposing all plans and initiatives of the new President that they were operating out of fear.  For three years now, they have done little, if anything,  to help solve national issues.  They have only engaged in activities aimed at getting rid of Trump. They refused to accept the results of the 2016 election and have opposed everything the President wanted to accomplish, including objectives they previously supported such as immigration reform.

Their desperate attempts to build a case for impeachment have been pathetic and unfortunately have led to corruption involving some of most trusted federal agencies, i.e,, The FBI and Department of Justice.  Their recklessness and, frankly, often illegal activities seriously threaten the stability and integrity of our nation.  It is this despicable behavior that I personally object to and find at least as bad, if not worse, than the Trump persona.  This behavior has likely fractured, for all future election cycles, one of the major pillars of our democracy, i.e., peaceful transfer of power followed by a coming together of all parties to work together in addressing national issues.  

If the current impeachment effort being pursued by the democrats results of Donald Trump being convicted of a Truly impeachable offense, i.e, treason, bribery or other high crime or misdemeanor, then their behavior since 2016 may be justified.  On the other hand, if the impeachment exercise is ultimately viewed as political warfare, the concept of Presidential impeachment will be forever damaged and is likely to spring up  in the future whenever an opposing party feels desperate.