Letter to the Editor: Who let the beast out?

Supporters of President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol. (Jan. 6, 2021) Photo courtesy of Tyler Merbler/Flickr

President Trump was impeached for incitement and sedition. I do believe that was the least of the political harms he has inflicted on us.

In 2016, the day after he was elected, he claimed that he lost the popular vote only because 3 million illegal aliens voted for his opponent. He established a commission to investigate this allegation but disbanded it before it could produce a report.

Over the next four years he repeatedly and forcefully made plain that he would never accept the results of any election he did not win because any he lost must have been rigged. This was studied, consistent and deliberate but because he did it openly and always obliquely, we all assumed it couldn’t be a crime.It was though. It was the worst political crime an American citizen can commit against our constitutional form of government and it wasn’t even mentioned in the impeachment on the floor of the house today.

It was an attack on faith. The one central, irrational faith that sustains the Republic. The one irreplaceable precious thing on which we all depend. Treason and sedition injure the Republic at its periphery but are soon mended. Corruptions in the administration of the law are soon discovered and punished. Insurrections are soon put down. This thing, though, this monstrous campaign, strikes at the very heart of the faith that every citizen must have, that we are all ruled through consensus and with our consent. This faith is the very basis of our government. Not much else matters.

Mr. Trump lit a fire in which he incinerated trust in elections and we have all been inhaling its toxic fumes. Had he been declared the winner in this election I do believe that Democratic voters, half blinded by the smoke, would be in reluctant rebellion, just as Republican voters are now. All of us have had our faith so corroded that it is unable to sustain us in our hard citizen’s duty of accepting an electoral result which we intensely and with reason dislike.

This didn’t just happen. It was done to us all, of every political persuasion.He may have left the nation ungovernable. Many in his administration are hoping he has. They would welcome chaos and violence and anarchy as cleansing. Mr. Trump has hinted at this but I grew up in Africa and have seen that slouching beast. It was sighted prowling round the Capitol last week. You won’t like it.

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Thank you,

Andrew Smallwood
Cordova

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