Trump is a virus

The closer we come to the potential, whether acted on by the Senate or not, of trump's impeachment, the more some of us are accused by right-leaning friends of enjoying the proceedings and of wanting impeachment. Nothing could be further from the truth. While I would prefer the sight of the entire trump family and administration and its toadies schlepping onto a jet with nothing but the clothes on their backs moments before the arrival on the runway of vans full of FBI, only to see the plane take off for the Ukraine where, like the Duvaliers or the Pahlevis or the Marcoses, they live out their days in asylum on state aid, I know that's unlikely.

Much as that fantasy tickles my sense of justice, and even if impeachment arrives, as promised by Moscow Mitch McConnell, dead in the water, I am not looking at it gladly or seeing its possible playing-out gleefully. I don't think anyone seriously is.

I'm old enough to remember how the Nixon impeachment went down and the observation that it's a positive event because it meant the system works. But I think it means exactly the opposite, that the system is so befuddled that, like a wanky program, our only way to fix things is to hit the reset and hope for the best. In this instance we can't even return to the factory settings.

Donald trump has been such a malignant insertion into our nation's system, think of him as spyware or a zombie bot, that our only solution is bodily removal of him and his infections from the system. He has operated the presidency as a business in the most criminal sense, as a way to enrich himself and his cronies by looting. He has not provided a service--ask any supporter for an example of something he's accomplished that provides for anyone other than his coterie and at best you get splutters of "America First"--but an excuse, a sense of greed justified by fear, hatred, and false self-victimization. Removing him won't, of course, make things better because he isn't the problem on his own. At worst he's the popularizer of a way to look at government-by-looting, and at best he provides cover for the worst natures of people who have waited for just his sort of greed. But kill the head and the body will fall. He shows no sign he recognizes his oversteps or misbehavior. His supporters ignore or cover them. Those of us who recognize that sin is treating other people like steps to your own advantage have to show them it isn't acceptable. He must be removed like a weed, wholly, so not even a root remains.