Why I’m Underwhelmed By Impeachment — And I Bet You Are Too

Impeaching a President For Corruption But Not, Say, Concentration Camps Isn’t Justice. It’s a Travesty of It. And Americans Know It.

by Umair Haque in Medium, November 14, 2019

The long awaited spectacle of impeachment finally began. And the nation emitted a collective yawn. The pundits were outraged. How dare people be…bored…with impeaching this President! My God!

And yet I think the reason is eminently obvious. Let’s begin with the Trumpists. They are bonded to their father figure like wounded children to a protector. Their bond is unbreakable. That’s somewhere between 30 to 40 percent of Americans. They’ve cheered on everything from concentration camps, to ethnic bans, to kids in cages in those camps, to “family separation” aka genocide, to the abuse of power for personal gain, to purges, to demonization and dehumanization.

In other words, this group of Americans is something very much like Weimar Germans — so furious with collapse, they are easily seduced by fascism’s glittering temptations. To them, the “problem” is immigrants, gays, women, refugees, Mexicans, Muslims — those impure and filthy subhumans are why these “real” Americans find themselves in fresh poverty, in decline, not living the comfortable middle class lives they expected. They reflect America’s long, sordid history of slavery, hate, racism, and violence. That, combined with fresh poverty has always been a recipe for fascism — and in America’s case, that was never truer. Because that list above — camps, raids, bans, etc — is bona fide fascism.

Then there are the rest. The other 60 or 70 percent of Americans. What about them? Well, they might be exploited — but they are not stupid. They aren’t so easily misled. They might not often say it, but they know it. This man, their President is a fascist. He is an alleged sexual predator. He is an abuser. He is a mafia lieutenant in a bad suit. He is everything a monster in a human being can be. He snatches children away at night. He tears babes from mothers’ arms. He demeans and devalues the intrinsic worth of people as animals and vermin. Just how un-American is all that?

This group of Americans is disgusted by the President. Not just at a political level — because he’s corrupt and venal and dictatorial. But at a human level. Because he is rancid and spoiled and repellent and vulgar and grotesque, as a human being. Because he is everything that he projects onto the vulnerable and powerless: he is the aggressor, the criminal, the violent one, the hateful one. He is the infection in our society, poisoning it.

This group of Americans rejects not just the President’s politics — a kickback here, a favour there — but everything that he is. His values. His aspirations. HIs ideals. If they can even be said to be such things. They find his taste in home decor tacky for a very good reason — because it reflects a man not just without taste, but who seeks aggression and power over. But that isn’t all they’re repelled by. They reject him as a human being.

This group of Americans — the majority — find the things this President has done deeply and profoundly troubling. Not just, again, at a political level — but an existential one. The long, long checklist of fascism accomplished under this administration makes this group of Americans shake their heads, baffled, and ask genuine existential questions, laced with despair, fury, and rage. Is this really who we are? Is this what we have become? The kinds of people who snatch children, put them in cages, and then torture them?

Is this really us?

Now. Consider impeachment in the light of all that. What is “impeachment”, really? Well, it’s a long, long series of questions about…none of the above. It has nothing to do with the true horrors this administration has committed in any way whatsoever. Instead, it has to do — endlessly — with a…scandal about favours-for-money. Sure, we should be thankful that at least that much is considered a crime. It should be. But how thankful should we really be? Should we prostrate ourselves at the Democrats’ feet for…the lowest possible bar?

I don’t think Americans boo their President at baseball games — what could be a more American symbol than that — because he’s a minor league corrupt politician. They boo him at baseball games because they think that, at a human level, he is a monster. He is not the kind of person an American should be.

And yet the Dems are impeaching a fascist, a kleptocrat, a thug, a monster, for…corruption, not concentration camps. For minor-league personal gain and influence-peddling — not for crimes against humanity. Not for crimes against history, futurity, society. Not for violating the long-cherished ideals of America, the Constitution in the truest way, the sense that every life has inalienable rights — in way so horrific, they’ve taken the world’s breath away. So sure, many of us “support” impeachment — while rolling our eyes at how feeble this level of justice really is.

Because remember. Congress has the power to define “high crimes” however it likes. Why is it that employing a bona fide white nationalist — or numbers of them — isn’t a “high crime”? Wait — why isn’t putting kids camps a “high crime”? What about tearing them away from their families? Why doesn’t all that matter? After all, the last living Nuremberg Prosecutor says it does: he says those are the precise definitions of crimes against humanity.

But our Congress is not up to that task. Of trying a fascist for fascism, a kleptocrat for kleptocracy, a monster for horror and atrocity. It is only capable of trying a President for…minor-league corruption. And that is all our media can cheer on, too — and then cry foul when we all roll our eyes at it. Hence, we the people are ambivalent. We “support” what little justice we can get — while we know we deserve far better. And we feel a kind of anger and disappointment at that.

All that tells us something very crucial about the priorities of DC insiders — and how they differ from those of Americans. The DC insiders cheering on impeachment really don’t think of the truest horrors this administration to be worth consideration at all. They don’t care about them at all. What they care about is insider baseball. It’s not horrific to DC insiders that American has concentration camps, or that it has put close to 100,000 people in them, or that many of them are children without parents. It only matters that the President doesn’t get rich in ways the establishment doesn’t approve of.

So impeaching this President for corruption only really reveals a deeper layer of corruption in DC. Not just political corruption — but moral corruption. What kind of people don’t consider concentration camps a truer crime and greater horror than minor-league corruption? DC insiders, apparently. And that reveals that they don’t care that power isn’t abused in profoundly disgusting and horrific ways. They only care about who has power, really — and whether it’s one of them. It’s ironic — corruption, revealed by the pursuit of corruption. But it’s also tragic. That DC insiders — from Democrats to pundits to pollsters — don’t care one tiny bit about the true moral and existential crimes and depravities of the last few years. That isn’t just a shame. It’s worthy of contempt.

That’s what what I feel when I see these impeachment hearings. Disgust. Anger. Rage. Disappointment. And a searing sense of contempt. Not just at the President — but also at the opposition. Who didn’t care enough to even think about the question: “what are the real high crimes here? If the last Nuremberg Prosecutor says crimes against humanity have been committed — don’t those count as ‘high crimes’? Wait — why aren’t we impeaching a fascist for fascism and an authoritarian for authoritarianism and a monster for preying on children? What the hell is wrong with us?”

And I suspect that a whole lot — a whole lot — of my fellow Americans feel just the same way. It’s not just that impeachment bores them — endless questions by men about a byzantine scandal that you’d need a degree in just to keep track of. It’s also that that scandal is the least monstrous thing this administration has done, by a very, very long way. Next to camps, raids, purges, dehumanization, and cheering on violence…minor-league corruption is like trying to get Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin for not stealing a little money. Sure — you might even succeed. But you’ve only really defeated yourself even if you do.

Because then what you’ve really said is that the true horrors don’t matter to you as much as the lowest-hanging fruit. What you’ve really said is that you can’t protect your society, then, from predators and fascists. You are too weak and too frightened. All that you can produce is a travesty of justice — not justice. You can try a monster for his misdemeanours — but not his felonies.

All that is what this impeachment really is. Sure, we should all thank the Dems for holding the President to account, and “support” it. But we should also hold them accountable, too, in a larger and deeper way. Why couldn’t they impeach this President for the things that mattered far, far more? For those oldest and noblest American values — equality and freedom — under threat? For the felonies of fascism and authoritarianism and hate, not just the misdemeanors of corruption?

You see, the day that we began putting children into concentration camps, we put America in those camps too — those American values began to die right there with those kids. It’s true those values have always — always — been exercised imperfectly. But they have never been as abused as they were in the last three years — at least not since the end of slavery and segregation. Even I question the fundamental American values of truth and justice and freedom and equality, whether America’s really been committed to them. But I have no doubt those values are noble things. And so I have to have contempt for an opposition party that doesn’t seem to care about them being torn apart in the truest ways.

You see, we need a catharsis for these feelings. Of shame and fury and despair and rage that have engulfed as a society. Of being the kind of people who have genuinely monstrous things done by their leaders. But this impeachment doesn’t give us that catharsis. It doesn’t give us a reckoning emotionally or morally, with the true weight we’re carrying. It doesn’t let those feelings that we have done unspeakable and horrific things come shuddering out. They stay right where they are. And so we roll our eyes. The details of the scandal roll and on and on. Some nights, we see those kids in those cages in our sleep. Who have we become?

Let me put all that this way.

Those truest American values. Those old and noble things, which we Americans think shine a beacon to the world. New Gestapos, who check papers in public. Concentration camps full of kids in cages. Raids in towns and cities and offices. An atmosphere of intimidation, in which hate crimes have surged. People dehumanized as animals and vermin. The celebration of violence against the vulnerable. America’s values — what is left of them — are ripped apart to their last shreds by these things. But a minor-league corruption scandal? Sure, it threatens those values — a tiny little bit. But let’s have the priorities of sane, morally and emotionally mature adults.

Corruption is a crime, yes. But concentration camps and kids and rages and hate? They are existential threats to whatever’s left of America’s value. They are the kinds of things monsters are made of. Nazis who laugh at genocides. They are the highest of crimes a society can possibly have. They are of a degree so different from corruption, they make it look like a misdemeanour.

Sane Americans, I think, understand that: we are trying a President for his misdemeanours — corruption, not his felonies — fascism. They are the majority. The silent majority — true. But the majority nonetheless. And so when they see a fascist being impeached for garden-variety corruption, but not for the unimaginable violation of concentration camps in a democracy…I’d bet they feel a lot like me. Mostly, it’s unbearable, because it sanitizes away the true crimes, erases them. It’s horrific, because it legitimizes all the terrible things this administration has done, as not worthy of a genuine challenge and indictment. And it’s eye rollingly pathetic, to see an opposition so weak that they choose to politely ignore crimes against humanity.

I think decent people feel ashamed and disgraced by what this impeachment doesn’t do — but should have: trying a President for his relative misdemeanours, not his felonies, his highest crimes of all. So it’s not just “boring” — as the DC insiders are suddenly lethally concerned about. It is something much worse than that. It is shameful and disgraceful and demeaning — to us, to America, to the world, to the future, to try a President for his lowest crimes, not his highest ones.

My fellow Americans, I think, feel that, on a human level. Just looking at this corpulent, violent, bigoted, hateful man who somehow became President. They reject him as a human being, not just a politician. They loathe everything that he is wants, needs, says, does — because it is all inhuman and all fetid with the stink of a man who loves himself above all things. They scorn his absolute moral weakness, his cowardice, his cruelty, the breathtaking vanity of a man who preens at abusing little children. They have nothing but contempt for his utter lack even the most basic virtue — not just his incompetence at playing by DC’s rules. They despise him at the truest level a human being can: existentially — for the monster he is — not just for violating the rules of DC insider politics. They know that whatever mistakes we have made in our past — we must be better than this pustulent sickness of a man, because he is the lowest thing that a human being can be.

I think most good and decent Americans feel that deep in their bones, even if they can’t or don’t know quite how to say it. So how do you think people…who feel like that about a man…feel watching that man not be tried, be held to account…for the very things…they loathe and despise and scorn most about him? I bet that they feel many things — not just “boredom.” They feel disappointed. They feel sick and disgusted. They feel angry and ashamed. And above all, I think they feel disgraced.

This impeachment is a travesty of justice. It doesn’t do the justice a broken America needs to recover its sense of humanity, dignity, and self-respect. To tell the world: we are not the kind of monsters this man is. He is not one of us. We are not like him. We reject him at the most profound level a society can: as a human being. It fails to do that justice to any of that — and settles, instead, for what meagre justice it supposes it can get. Wait — wasn’t one of those old American virtues bravery?

And that, my friends, is why though sane Americans may be thankful that this impeachment taking place, they’re also…underwhelmed. Why they’re rolling their eyes at it. Not because it shouldn’t happen. But because much more should have. Because they are seeing a man tried for misdemeanors, when he has committed felonies so large they disgrace us all. So they are disappointed, and disgusted by what it deliberately, politely ignores, leaves out, and omits. They know that impeaching a fascist for corruption is a little bit like trying a monster for stealing a cookie — while ignoring the fact that he snatches children at night, when nobody is looking, and their mothers wake up screaming forever, and we will all have to watch that go on…while remembering justice for all that was never done. Even the self-entitled, ugly American the world rolls their eyes at…isn’t OK with that. History will remember this impeachment not as justice, but as a travesty of it.