05-17-2017, 03:18 PM
(05-17-2017, 01:52 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Let it for now suffice to say that there really is no way that Trump, or Pence for that matter, can be another Hitler. We have a Constitution in place to prevent that. And while we're at it, how many of you feel as though Trump is creating a Constitutional crisis worse than Watergate?
Interesting question. I've been trying to avoid passing judgement and joining the shrill ongoing cries of denunciation, but since you ask...
Nixon stepped outside of the law relatively few time, then tried to do a cover up. The few break ins, as blatant as they were, didn't really hurt anyone. The might have shifted the political balance of power a bit. You certainly didn't want the government getting into the habit of doing such things. Nixon's vice was paranoia. He thought folks out to get him. Of course, being what he was, people ought properly be out to get him.
He shares that much at least with Trump. People are and ought to be out to get him.
Trump's vice is narcissism. He has an exaggerated opinion of himself, his abilities and his authority. In things like health care and the environment, he will blatantly harm a lot of people. He is also an intuitive person not a procedural person. He doesn't seem to get that you don't do certain things, or that a president cannot do certain things. If something feels good to him, it is done, whether he is dropping bombs or wandering into a woman's changing room. He lives spontaneously off the top of his head.
Nixon had a few incidents plus lies and cover up. Trump is an ongoing slow motion train wreck. Most of the Trump incidents aren't as bad as Nixon's, but there is a whole ongoing string of them going on week after week after week. When will it stop? How long will he stay in office?
To me, the worse single incident is violating war powers. It might have been satisfying and manful to bomb the poison gas airport, but there was no act of Congress authorizing it. No doubt about it, he did it, and it was a violation. However, we have new incidents weekly, often more than one a week, and I didn't get a feeling of repentance. It feels like he would do similar things again.
But impeachment only happens if one becomes enough of an embarrassment and liability to one's own party that they turn on you, that they vote for impeachment. Nixon's getting caught in repeated lies involving the cover ups got to that point. The question is whether modern Republicans have any shame. How many things are they willing to tolerate? Unless the White House assigns an Integrity Coordinator who edits Twitter posts and has the power to say, "No, Mr. President, you can't do that," the frequent disasters are apt to continue.
Nixon got through a full term and well into a second. It doesn't feel to me that Trump will last that long.
It is my hope that Trump's role in history will be to utterly discredit the unraveling memes: borrow and spend, trickle down, government is the problem, boost the military. I have considered it a possible problem that he might not stay in power long enough to thoroughly trash the unraveling memes. What if a competent unraveling meme person takes over?
'Worse' is a vague enough word that I'm not sure what scale to weigh things on. I suspect that if Trump remains in power very long he'll run away with it, though.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.