I wish I could be excited about impeachment.
It’s not that it doesn’t matter. Even if it’s purely symbolic – and that’s what it is, I’m afraid – shaming the world’s most visible bigot is a worthwhile exercise. It signals to the world that much of our country rejects what he represents. And there’s at least some temporary satisfaction in watching him squirm.
But in terms of changing our political fortunes, it’s cosmically irrelevant.
This process isn’t going to make him less popular. It will play into the endless fantasy that he’s a victim of the deep state. When the senate inevitably fails to convict him, he’ll hoist it up as a trophy of exoneration at his rallies. His supporters will celebrate and feel further emboldened in their fever dream of white supremacy.
Everything about the impeachment process assumes we still live in a functioning democracy. But we don’t. The architecture of our government and electoral process is fundamentally flawed. Our constitution is woefully broken. Our checks and balances turn out to be laughably flimsy, built on an assumption of good faith participation. That hasn’t been true for decades.
These last four years, my whole mindset about politics has transformed. I no longer believe in incremental change or moderation as a path to a better country. Those are the tools of a civil society seeking to balance the valid needs and wants of many different groups. We’re way past that.
We need massive, sweeping reform. We need a constitution that reflects the concerns of the modern era, written by better people than rich, white slave-owners. A bill of rights that reflects a holistic morality and a genuine guarantee for a decent life.
I’ve tried to avoid letting my thoughts stray into this kind of naive idealism. But if the foundation is garbage, we have to fix that first. Trump isn’t an anomaly. He’s the symptom of a disease that America has always had, the inevitable product of our inhumane systems of law.
Impeachment feels good for a day, but the cancer remains untreated.