I keep reading comments in news stories and on social media stating that many of the 74 million people who voted for Trump are either “good people” or “smart people.” That may be true. Over the last four years a number of people that I’ve known for a long time came out in favor of Donald Trump. Some of those people are devout Christians. Others are avowed conservatives. Still others voted Republican all their lives and were not keen on Hillary and certainly were not excited about voting for Joe Biden.

But without exception, all of these good and smart people were somehow fooled about who Trump was, and who he turned out to be. Some of these folks recoiled upon seeing Trump supporters swarm the Capitol. Then came news that Capitol guards were killed. Others were injured or had their lives threatened by the unruly mob chanting, among many slogans, “Hang Mike Pence!”

The anger driving the mob was a direct result of Donald Trump’s persistent claims that the 2020 election was stolen. That led to slogans such as “Stop the Steal” and when Trump spoke before the crowds in Washington, D.C., he exhorted them to take action “Because you will never take back our country with weakness.”

So at that urging, the mob stormed the Capitol. Those people were fools for Trump.

Millions deceived

That’s the difference right there. Millions of people were deceived into thinking Donald Trump would be an effective President. Some point to his “policies” as successful, a defense copied and pasted in social media memes as a defense of Trump’s supposedly positive action as President. The list of supposed successes includes a laundry list such as tax cuts (which clearly benefitted the richest Americans) the Middle East Deal (which cut Palestinians out of the picture) and a few Republican-ish items on the Wish List of discrimination such as overhauling immigration policy (resulting in nearly 6000 children separated from their families) and building the wall (a massive debacle with funds appropriated from military budgets to construct barriers through environmentally sensitive areas and Native American sacred places.)

Then there is the pandemic to consider. Within a week––and well under a year’s time––400,000 Americans will have died from the Coronavirus / Covid-19. From the outset of the threat, Trump denied it as a threat even as he admitted (that’s evidence) to reporter Bob Woodward that he knew things were going to get really bad. Trump played it down and his followers were fooled by his words. The pandemic denial made fools of us all. Now hundreds of thousands of our friends and neighbors are dead and millions are infected with potential side effects lasting years or permanently affecting hearts and lungs.

Trump’a denial was necessary in his mind because he was so afraid of not getting elected he feared any disturbance to the fragile economy over which he presided. Ironically, it was his own lies that crushed commerce and led to millions of people cast out of their jobs. The economy tanked due to Trump’s selfish instincts. We’ve all been left clinging to vestiges of normalcy while states and cities and medical facilities at every scale struggle to keep up with infection rates. All because our federal response was either denied, uncoordinated or non-existent. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner fooled around in the background trying to patch together some sort of “free-market” response, but the disease didn’t wait around for ideology to catch up with reality. People were dying, and there was no plan in place to stop it. That’s still true.

Then there’s the Trumpian deception over the election that led to an insurrection. How is America supposed to deal with that?

A justified response

On January 18, 2021, in the wake of Congress’ impeachment of the President, the Chicago Tribune published an editorial by Liz Peek, a writer for RealClearPolitics. She claimed that the move to impeach Trump was both rushed and unjustified. I wrote a response and sent it to the Tribune, where my letters appear with relative frequency.

The text is here:

“Columnist Liz Peek attempts to show that the impeachment of President Donald Trump is rushed and not entirely justified. She fails to mention that well in advance of the 2016 election, during a debate with Secretary Hillary Clinton, candidate Trump refused to state that he would respect the results of the election, win or lose. This man has never respected the rule of law or the democratic process. He has repeatedly broken the nation’s laws governing his conduct in office, and most recently led an insurrection to overturn the results of a fair and free election. This second impeachment is no rush to judgment. It is a statement that a man such as Donald Trump has no place in public office, especially the presidency, and his supporters need to understand that loud and clear. The Senate failed in its duty to convict Trump the first time around, breaking its oath to conduct a full trial. That should not happen this time around. The outgoing President deserves punishment for his prolonged assault on our nation, a practice evidenced even in the policies implemented under his watch, which rewarded only the rich, gutted agencies designed to serve the American people and protect the environment, and left hundreds of thousands of people to die due to his lies about the threat of the pandemic. Those who innocently supported Trump were fooled, but those who continue to support him are abject fools.”

Millions of people invented reasons to vote for Trump and support him during his presidency. This devotion required considerable suspension of disbelief. Well, Americans are really good at that practice. Look at all those intergalactic shows and movies where people walk around spaceships as if gravity follows them around, or flit from planet to planet and galaxy to galaxy where oxygen happens to be everywhere and the main characters speak the same language. The world thrives on this brand of disconnection from reality and America has thus survived four years on Planet Trump. The Grand Illusion serves the President well. He lies with the worst of them, yet people believe in him. Even Christians tossed aside their core beliefs to buy Trump’s replacement for their faith. They chose access to power instead. It’s a familiar story really. The entire Star Wars enterprise is based on the same premise.

That is why it is time to send Trump into an orbit of his own making. He deserves to face penalty for the fraud and graft he’s depended upon for years. Like Emperor Palpatine, he brought the same corrupt and power-brokering tactics to the office of President. People were fooled into believing that Trump’s supposed business acumen was real, like some kind of “force” that could solve America’s problems with the wave of a Trumpian hand. Never mind that Trump University was fined $25M for fraud, or that his dalliances with porn stars were well-documented? What does that have to do with character or anything Donald Trump is doing as President?

Trump’s supporters promised “so much winning.” Instead, the nation got hit repeatedly with the back of his selfish hand, all while being admonished for not loving him enough. America was subjected to the worst kind of abusive relationship where the gaslighting abuser takes his minions for fools and demands that all those under his charge submit to abuse as a sign of love. Trump used and disabused members of his cabinet, his personal and public lawyers, and anyone that crossed him. All were hit with abuse during Trump’s fits of rage and disavowal.

And still his supporters came crawling back for more. Trump willingly exploited their adoring submission, then turned it into a populist coup, an insurrection, and the final act of his abusive claim on power. He convinced those people to act like fools for him. It’s time to impeach Trump and show the fools and the foolish among us that there is a cost to believing in falsehood and lies.

Only then can the nation begin to heal from this foolishness.