On the use of force and the utility of impeachment; intentions vs. consequences
We are currently in the throes of a food fad based on adding bacon to everything, but while we love the sweet, salty flavor, we don’t think much about where the meat came from. And when we do think of pigs, we imagine the tame farm animals; all pink, rotund, and cute. But these were bred from a much scarier creature.
The wild boar is a large, powerful beast, more than capable of goring a human to death, and more than willing to do so when enraged; it is easily enraged. Boars have a thick, protective hide, dense bones, and lots of muscle, and once they get angry, they do not quit.
Traditionally, wild boar was hunted with long spears from horseback, the better to keep those deadly tusks far away from human flesh. One characteristic feature typically found on boar spears is their crossguard, whose job is to keep the impaled boar from pushing itself up the shaft to attack the person holding it. Think about that for a moment.
As you might imagine, the wild boar is not an animal you can control through pain. And yet the strategy of pain compliance is all too often taught for defending against other humans. In particular, it has become a mainstay of “women’s self-defense”.
Most of us have seen carefully-staged videos of tiny women stomping on a large, male assailant’s instep or bonking him on the nose or twisting his wrist, causing such agony that the man gives up. It works in the videos so it must be true, amirite?
In reality, this approach is not necessarily a good idea. When the assailant is timid and unsure, expecting no resistance and perhaps unaware of the line they’ve crossed, a bit of pain might actually dissuade them, like shouting “no” but harder to ignore. But a motivated opponent, especially one who is already riled up and running on adrenaline, one unwilling to take no for an answer, may hardly feel the pain as painful and is likely to react by escalating further.
Like the wild boar, pain just makes him angry and more violent, pushing him past the point of no return. And given that the victim is fighting off someone bigger and stronger, this could end badly.
Am I suggesting that she just take it? No, not at all. Resistance isn’t futile, but it has to be based on damage, not just pain. Twisting a wrist is one thing, breaking it is another. The defense strategy that works is to take away their ability to harm, not count on psychological discouragement. To put it another way, taunting the boar is suicidal, but shooting it dead works.
Which brings us to impeachment. If we could cause Trump damage, not just pain, with impeachment, we should. So if we could follow up that impeachment in the House with conviction in the Senate, expelling him from office and exposing him to arrest for his various felonies, it would be worth doing. This remains the case even if it means incidentally providing fodder for the right-wing persecution complex.
But we can’t. The corrupt, traitorous Republicans control the Senate, and they wouldn’t convict Trump even if he confessed to the entire nation. We cannot harm Trump with this, only cause pain. And while I don’t have any hesitancy about making Trump’s life less pleasant, this is as counterproductive as smacking a boar’s snout.
If the House attempts to impeach him and either fails outright (currently likely, given the lack of support among even Democratic Representatives) or succeeds only to be blocked by the Senate, how will this damage Trump? It’ll cause him some pain, but the fascists in America are already enraged past the point of being discouraged by pain.
Instead, they will be encouraged by our show of weakness. We’ll have taken our best shot to no effect. They will see that they have nothing to fear from us, so they’ll rush to the polls, feverishly excited to re-up the fascist-in-chief’s tour of duty and hog wild about crushing “libtard snowflakes”. Meanwhile, dejected, fickle liberals will stay home and cry like sore losers, while the populist left makes a feast of Democratic misery in the primaries, further weakening the DNC and aiding Trump.
I’m sorry to say that impeachment was never the answer. Like election, impeachment is a political process, not a judicial one. It represents the will of the people, but only a minority of citizens support it. Not only is impeachment unpopular, but it’s becoming more unpopular; support dropped 12 points among Democrats between January and July of 2019, even as Trump’s approval rating has plummeted.
It’s fine to cause Trump pain through public hearings about his crimes, but the goal has to be to motivate the left, discourage the right, and appeal to the middle. That’s how we won in 2018. It’s how we will win in 2020, and when we win, Trump loses more than his job. He’ll move from the White House to the courthouse to the big house to the graveyard of history, where he belongs. It’ll be “That’s all, folks” for him.
History does not give consolation prizes for good intentions; only consequences matter. We might think we’re doing the right thing, but if the results aren’t right, then we were wrong. The moral high ground is already ours; we don’t need to do anything just to retain it. What we need is to use it to remove the party of white supremacy from power. Nothing short of that—no symbolic victory or good intentions—will do. We need to bring home the bacon, not just rile up the boar.
Well said.
Lots of my friends on social media support impeachment. I hate being seen as a wet blanket on their enthusiasm, but I argue against it. Of course I would love to see Trump impeached, charged with crimes, and convicted, but that’s not going to happen, no matter how much you want it.
The main point I try to get across is that if we impeach we MUST NOT FAIL, because failure would be a political disaster for us. Like an epic disaster because Trump and his followers will capitalize on this failure and paint it as a yuge victory, every day, forever. We can only attempt impeachment if we’re 99 percent sure of success. We’re actually around zero percent sure because the senate would never go for it.
So. Just. Don’t.
I think it comes down to a lack of nuance. The analogy I’ve offered, on Twitter, is with capital punishment.
With capital punishment, there are two distinct issues:
1) Are there people who deserve to die for what they’ve done?
2) Are we, as a society, capable of identifying and executing just these people without killing innocents?
The answers are yes and no, respectively. Yes, some people deserve to die, but we don’t deserve to decide. It’s enough that we sometimes have to kill in the heat of the moment to protect victims, but this is killing in cold blood, with no upside past vengeance. And, historically, we have proven that we execute the wrong people.
Likewise, impeachment comes down to two questions:
1) Does Trump deserve to be impeached and convicted and expelled?
2) Does the attempt to impeach him at this time have a net positive expectation?
Again, yes and no, respectively. The list of good reasons to impeach Trump is huge, but the failed attempt will not help us.
When you break it down like this, you can acknowledge the strong emotions behind the first question but distinguish it from the decision-making in the second. It’s a little bit of nuance, but it goes a long way.