Over the past four years, we have watched more than just a presidency implode; we have watched an almost endless stream of men and women bend over, exposing their moral and ethical backsides to Trump, and take his abuse over and over and over, with nary an expression of discomfort at the assault on their humanity (or whatever shreds of it remain).
I remain totally baffled by the eagerness with which those men and women—many of them once-respected members of university faculty, corporate leaders, long-time public servants—refuse to walk away from such untenable positions having, in my opinion, made the terrible error to take their appointed shovels with the sole duty of mucking out the Trumpian stables.
What we witnessed in four years is unfathomable degrees of willing desire to take on such abuse as would, in any domestic situation, ring alarm bells triggered by inhumane emotional destruction and torment. I truly believe that. And yet, time after time, Tweet after Tweet, Trump assaults his appointees, his political party faithful, his judges, his country and our Constitution with the vilest of lies, the darkest of innuendoes, the wickedest of gaslight, and the heaviest of greasy conspiratorial chains. And he keeps on with his Torquemada reign of terror despite (or perhaps because of) the dwindling time left to him to extract the last ounce of vengeance against his known and unknown enemies.
And yet…and yet…no hand of reason or justice has yet to reach out to him and stay his irrational, destructive, insane behavior. Not one hand among all those who have had the power to do so. Not one. Instead, those who might have had any chance of turning Trump’s headlong rush toward national impalement on spears of lies, deceit, and calumny have done nothing. No…they have done worse than nothing: they have taking up his fiery rakes of racist rhetoric and political division and spread his Augean manure over every social norm they could find.
What I don’t get in all of this is how…is why…any man or woman who once stood outside the system in their otherwise normal roles as citizens dealing with all the day-to--day routines that occupy most of us would, for a moment, allow themselves to become slavering, servile, sycophants to a clearly deranged, totally unhinged man like Trump?
Is holding on to a Senate seat that important? No. Is a White House title more impressive than any other form of meaningful work? No. Is Washington DC the be-all-end-all? No. It’s just a placeholder, a lovely town when you’re not beholden to any one ideal or any one abuser.
So what if Trump throws a tantrum, or threatens, or blackmails? So what? Take a walk and let the chips fall where they may in your life.
Speaking only for myself (though I hope many of my friends and colleagues are with me on this), if any employer, no matter how elevated in title, verbally abused me, socially embarrassed me, or otherwise hung me out to dry in full public view, I would be out of that building as soon as I could collect my thoughts and take my family photos off my desk. I also like to think I never would have taken a job for such a boss in the first place.
I know that last paragraph to be true because I left government service for just such a reason—under similar circumstances. In all my 35 years as a federal employee—on the Hill and in the Executive Branch—I had only three employers who either openly mistreated their staff or privately sought to undermine certain employees.
One was a U.S Representative from Florida whose insensitivity to the personal crises of his staff made my choice to leave a very easy and sensible one.
The second was a Cabinet secretary whose personal desire to embarrass me in public was so effective I had to be hospitalized.
The third was a special assistant to a Cabinet secretary who, by dint of his need to prove his superior position, not only caused me substantial legal debts in order to fend off his attacks, but, in the end, with a single insult spread across the office email, caused me to stop what I was doing and type out my resignation from that Department and the federal government. I never looked back, and never felt I’d made the wrong decision.
Abuse is abuse is abuse. And if you stand for it once, you will stand for it over and over and over. Until your moral and ethical bones are picked clean by your tormentors. And the skeletal remains that were once you will find it most difficult to re-flesh yourself in any sort of skin of pride or dignity.
So it will be for those below ground creatures who chose to stick with Trump until the bitter end. From Mitch McConnell to Lindsey Graham to Kayleigh McEnany to the 126 Members of Congress who chose a despot over democracy, they will eventually discover that their choices to endure abuse and wreak abuse upon others will consign them to the boneyard of lost souls. Many were the times they were shown the exit signs but chose to stay; many were the times they went home scalded by their dear leader, but rose again the next morning, ready to put their hands in the boiling pot once more; many were the times they faced their demons and decided to live with them…consort with them…rather than cast them out.
The push broom of history will soon sweep away their names and the motes of dust that remain will settle underfoot of the ceaseless and unblinking parade of time.
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