The Impeachment of Trump: The Unbearable Stench of White Supremacism

What almost no one wants to talk about is the bitter truth underlying the “partisan divide” and the fatuous claims about American democracy.

US President Donald Trump speaks before a meeting with Guatemala's President Jimmy Morales in the Oval Office of the White House December 17, 2019, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP)

Donald J. Trump, 45^th President of the United States, has been impeached by the House of Representatives, and not a moment too soon.  He was never fit to occupy the exalted office that he has held for the last three years and, many are saying, may well hold for another four years after the election of November 2020.  Many of the commentators who fill the airwaves in the United States were until recently describing him as “unpresidential” and the slightly less timid ones called him “unhinged.”  These were very mild and almost guarded critiques of a man who boldly characterized Mexicans as “rapists”, women as “pigs” and “dogs”, and brazenly declared that he could stand in the middle of New York’s Fifth Avenue and shoot someone dead without losing any voters or facing any consequences. The House of Representatives has done its duty.  Jerome Nadler, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that it was necessary to impeach Trump to prevent democracy from being handed over to a dictator. The Democrats uniformly argued that the President could not be permitted to sacrifice the national security for his own gain and that he had abused the power of his office by enlisting the aid of a foreign government to investigate a political rival ahead of the Presidential election next year.  Trump also stood accused of a second charge, namely that he obstructed Congress by withholding documents, engaging in outright lies and prevarications, forbidding anyone on his staff or cabinet from testifying, and failing to respond to Congressional subpoenas. All of this is indubitably true. Many Americans, even some who secretly may not be wholly unsympathetic to Trump, will crow about how the impeachment represents the triumph of American democracy .  The world will be reminded that the will of the American people has prevailed though, as everyone also knows, it is nearly a foregone conclusion that Trump will be acquitted by the Republican-led Senate.  But all of this should fade into insignificance if one is willing to go beyond the limited conceptual framework that informs the politics of the Democrats.  What does, for instance, their outrage at “foreign intervention” mean when we consider that the United States, under Republican as much as Democratic Presidents, has intervened in dozens of elections in foreign countries and engineered the removal of democratically elected leaders around the world? Detractors and admirers of Trump alike are describing the impeachment of Trump as “historic”.  Trump has already been gloating about his impeachment as not merely “historic” but as something “unprecedented” in American history, as the greatest witch-hunt ever launched in this country.  He has even argued that the unfortunate women—and some men—who were tried as witches at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692-93 and then hanged received more due process than he has.  This is, needless to say, errant nonsense—much like nearly everything else that comes tumbling out of his mouth.  Getting impeached is, in Trump’s books, something of an achievement, and surviving it, which he surely will, is going to be chalked up by him as a yet more momentous accomplishment.  All this is possible because Trump is the best living example of a grave problem for every ethical person:  how does one make someone who cannot be shamed accountable to others?  How can one respond to a man who feels that he cannot be disgraced, who, rather perversely, might be likened to the lotus leaves that stay dry even when water drops on them.  I say perversely for the obvious reason that the lotus has, in every culture and across time, been viewed as a symbol of purity.  Trump is as far removed from purity as can be imagined, but nothing seems to touch him. Let it be said clearly:  There is nothing in the impeachment of Trump that is “historic”, and not merely because Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were also impeached.  (Nixon resigned before he could be impeached and after the Watergate tapes went public, making it clear even to his supporters that he had lied outright.) By far the most important fact in the present proceedings is that not a single Republican voted in favor of the articles of impeachment.  Commentators are describing this as the “partisan divide”, and nearly everyone is agreed that the divide has grown sharper in recent years.  It is quite immaterial exactly when the gap between the Democrats and Republicans started widening further, and how far the election of Barack Obama, whose election was unfathomable to white racists who felt that the America that they knew had vanished before their eyes and had to be “reclaimed”, contributed to the emerging political climate. Opinion | The Citizenship Question: Unsettling Facts And The Ethos Of Hospitality Some people may think that the partisan divide is “just politics”, but could it be that it means something much more?  Should we simply go along with the narrative that America is divided between the red states and the blue states, mainly the coastal areas versus the large hinterland, the urban educated with higher-paying jobs against those in the heartland with lower-paying blue-collar jobs?  It may be entirely coincidental, considering how important committee assignment are parceled out, but the three Democratic figures most closely associated with the impeachment proceedings—Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi; Adam Schiff, Chairman of the Intelligence Committee; and Nadler—all represent New York or California, the two states that Trump (who is himself a New Yorker) and Republicans deride as ultra-left, “out of touch” with the rest of America, and elitist.  They have no idea what a “left” political party really looks like, but the only question is this:  does this widely accepted narrative disguise something greater that is at stake? What almost no one wants to talk about is the bitter truth underlying the “partisan divide” and the fatuous claims about American democracy.  The Republican Party is not just made up of a few relentless bigots, racists, and “white property-holders” as they used to be called in the days of the “Founding Fathers” and slavery.  It is a party, in every respect and without exception, a party of unrepentant, degenerate, spiteful white supremacists.  Racism lies at the very core of the Republican Party, which is not to say that there are no racists within the Democratic Party. One can be “progressive” in some respects and be entirely retrograde in other matters.  But the Republican Party is distinguished by the fact that its entire leadership, as is demonstrated by their unstinting support for the white supremacist Donald Trump, lives and breathes racism. And what is true of the leadership is also true of the faithful millions who gather at his rallies and who are seen, on TV screens, standing dutifully and happily behind the Führer.  America will soon need a new word for these storm-troopers. BLOG: Populist Barbarism: Killings In An Authoritarian State Will the impeachment of Donald Trump make any difference?  To be sure, one can play the game of political calculations and discuss endlessly which party will gain more from this outcome when the country goes to the polls a year from now. But this is precisely the trivialization of the grave issue at stake that we must resist.  Feminists may argue that sexism and misogyny are the most persistent problems before Americans, just as Marxists may be inclined to say that the enormous economic and still widening gap between the super-rich and the poor presents the greatest challenge to Americans (and around the world).  They would be within their rights to think so, but the singularity of the Republican Party, which has inherited the thinking of the slave-holders who forced the secession of the Southern states that led to the Civil War, resides in its deep-seated adherence to the ideology of white supremacism.  The impeachment, to this extent, means nothing at all.  It will mean nothing until the virulent white racism that lies at the core of the story of America is extirpated, root and branch, from the soil. (Vinay Lal is a writer, blogger, cultural critic, and Professor of History at UCLA) Disclaimer: The opinions, beliefs and views expressed by the various authors and forum participants on this website are personal and do not reflect the opinions, beliefs and views of ABP News Network Pvt Ltd.