I’m sitting in the airport at Helsinki, which has free wi-fi. So I’m going to try to “improve the shining moment” by throwing something quickly together.
I’ve been extremely busy here in Finland and, on one day, in Estonia, and I’ve been largely cut off from the internet and almost entirely cut off from the news.
But the headline today in my airport hotel room was that Nancy Pelosi has given the green light to possible impeachment proceedings against President Donald J. Trump.
I have mixed feelings about this. I didn’t vote for Mr. Trump. In fact, on the night he accepted the Republican presidential nomination, I separated myself from my life-long membership in the party. I thought (and think) him a man of defective personality and low character. I’m appalled that so many people on the political right blithely overlook those things. As I say, I can understand those who support him as the least of available evils, speaking in terms of policy. But I cannot comprehend seeming conservatives who effectively serve him as cheerleaders. In this light, I’m unsurprised that he might be impeached. I thought him unworthy of the presidency and unsuited to it from the start.
That said, I dread the divisiveness of impeachment, and — as things look right now, though they could change — I doubt that even an impeachment would result in conviction. That said, though, I also recognize that the impeachment process was designed in order to be used.
I have little to say about the specific issue with Ukraine. I haven’t been able to follow it under my current circumstances. But the thought that Mr. Trump might have attempted to use his ofice for personal gain certainly doesn’t strike me as implausible.
I understand “Trump derangement syndrome,” as I see it among many of the political left and in many mainstream news outlets. He irritates me so much that, though a life-long news addict and political junkie, I scarcely listen to the news any more. I dream of going an entire day without thinking about Donald Trump. But there’s been too much. It’s all Trump, all the time. As a reality star, he’s managed to take over our national discourse, and it’s incredibly irritating.
But I also understand something of those who voted for him. They’re sick and tired of being sneered at by their betters, by the bi-coastal elites, as racists and rubes and religious fanatics. (Some of them are those things, of course, but most are not.) So Trump was a chance to put a finger in the eye of the contemptuous elite class. I’m not unsympathetic to that. But resentment isn’t a good basis for policy.
That said — again! — I’ve liked some of the Trump administration policies, and I’ve particularly cheered its judicial appointments. Trump’s pledge to follow the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation on judicial appointments was the one thing that tempted me to support him.
Posted from Helsinki, Finland
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In