Facing the Bully

For brief descriptions of and links to recent posts, click here. For an inverse-chronological list with links to all posts after January 23, 2017, click here. For a subject-matter index to posts before that date, click here.

As anyone who’s ever done it knows, facing a bully can be terrifying. You never know whether he’ll back down, as many do, or whether you’ll have to fight. If you face him, you’ve got to go all in and be prepared for anything.

That takes guts. One of the most dismal lessons of Trump’s presidency is how few left in our country have them.

For make no mistake about it: Trump is the quintessential bully. He lives by an internal code of personal reward and punishment. Do what he wants—no matter whether it breaks the law, scrambles right and wrong, or makes no sense at all—and you get the reward. Cross him, and comes the punishment. We also know from long observation that Trump doesn’t back down; he doubles down. So the risk of standing up is clear.

That’s the sum total of Trump’s mode of governing. His apparent threat to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars of vital security aid from Ukraine unless its president did him a personal “favor” was just par for the course. So was his promise to pardon underlings who might perjure themselves in testifying before Congress, which he later insisted was a “joke.”

With a man like this, loyalty goes just one way, up, never down to those who work for him. You can work your tail off to protect him—to hide and justify his wrongdoing, carelessness and stupidity. But get on his bad side, whether for reason or on a whim, and you’re gone. You’re lucky if he gives you a casual “great!” as you’re pushed out the door.

More likely, you’ll find out you’ve been fired by Tweet or from the nightly news. That’s what happened to Rex Tillerson, a man who ran, for more than a decade, the world’s largest multinational in a business that powers our civilization.

As I pointed out early in the game, neither Trump nor any other member of his cabinet—then or later—ever did anything like that. In comparison, Trump’s business is a limping midget: a small family enterprise that “succeeded” only in the small world of New York real estate and mostly failed everywhere else.

But back to the main point: how can people take this kind of treatment, day after day, and not hate his guts? How can they not begin to hate themselves for knuckling under?

That’s what I can’t ken about Trump’s Republican followers. He’s humiliated and diminished virtually every one he’s touched. He’s insulted, belittled, scorned and nicknamed them.

The long list begins with Hillary, but it hardly ends there. It goes right down through Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio. It continues with a whole phalanx of GOP members of Congress who suppressed their hate and misgivings, knuckled under, and forfeited their character and principles just to stay in the game. (Have they no pride or other talents?) It ends with another phalanx who couldn’t stand the humiliation and retired to avoid being “primaried,” or who dared to stand up to the bully and were beaten.

What drives all these once powerful and able people to suck up Trump’s sludge and smile? Is it the shine of the White House and its now-diminished but still global power? Is it fear? Or is it a subtle combination of the two, a moral and emotional witches’ brew that poisons their innards and twists their souls?

I don’t know myself. I’m only asking questions. But we’re about to find out, as a nation and a culture, what we’re made of.

The trigger is the whistleblower complaint. We should all light candles, every night, to whoever wrote it. For he or she is the first to stand up and firmly call Trump out.

Mueller didn’t do it. He didn’t even try. His title was “Special Prosecutor, but he didn’t act like one. A prosecutor’s primary, if not his only, job is to turn an investigation into a prosecution, or to end it. Mueller did neither, at least not in his Report. He never said whether he thought Trump ought to be prosecuted. When it came to the strongest claim against Trump, for obstructing justice, Mueller hid behind the DOJ memo and concluded, in effect, maybe, maybe not.

After 1,000 experienced prosecutors wrote a memo saying more-than-maybe yes, Mueller said maybe yes in his testimony before the House. But by then, it was too late. Mueller’s opinion and his shine as an exemplar of professionalism had sunk in over 400 dense pages, an ocean of lies and “spin,” and the Mariana Trench of our 24/7/365 news cycle.

The thing is, Trump’s not just a one-on-one bully. He’s bullied his whole party, the whole political establishment, his own government, and the media, not to mention the Dems. He has made more enemies than anyone can count.

So you might expect the whistleblower to have started an avalanche. Isn’t that what usually happens when a bully has multiple victims? The first brave soul steps up to face him, and others follow. Lots of others.

“Will they now?” is the question of our age. The answer will fix our nation’s fate.

In their joint appearance on PBS tonight, David Brooks and Mark Shields considered the question, but only Books answered it. A Republican himself, Brooks thinks his craven party is too far gone. He foresaw an impeachment going nowhere in the Republican Senate, and a strengthened Trump winning in 2020. Mark Shields didn’t even address the question because he views the charge as too grave to ignore, regardless of its political consequences.

Isn’t that what we Americans used to stand for, at least more than most: doing what’s right, not wrong? WaPo pundit Eugene Robinson used a famous meme from World War II to make the point: “Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.”

As people who’ve faced down bullies know, the fear doesn’t go away by itself. It goes away when the bullied get fed up. Seeing others step up makes that magic fed-up moment come easier. That’s the whistleblower’s gift to our nation.

Polls suggest this may be happening. In a poll done just the last two days, support for impeachment jumped twelve points from three months ago. Movement may be afoot.

As Caesar said in crossing the Rubicon to start a Roman civil war, “alea jacta est” (the die is cast). For the next few weeks or months, we are fated to live the Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”

We can hope that, when those interesting times end at last, we will still have our democracy and our rule of law. We can also hope that many more of us will have pride of courage and can look at themselves in the mirror without cringing. For what the House started today is nothing less than a test of our national character and our commitment to the Republic our Founders hoped to give us for the ages.

Endnote: The Political Becomes Personal. One of the many unique and terrible things about Trump’s presidency is that it has made the political personal. Trump famously makes everything personal. It’s all about him and his infinitely fragile ego.

Perhaps his followers in Congress are subconsciously trying to do the opposite, or at least to pretend they are. It’s too humiliating to see themselves as knuckling under to a crude and vile bully, so they convince themselves that it’s all about policy. “Unchecked immigration really is destroying the nation,” they think. Or, “Tax cuts really will boost our economy and make us great again.” But deep down, in places they try to hide even from themselves, they know why they are knuckling under, and they are ashamed.

If this is the case, the solution is not more debate, far less more pitched battles on social media. It’s reviving the old congressional barroom.

It’s taking the senators out, one by one, getting them liquored up, and letting them spill their souls. Then it’s suggesting, in the nicest and most sympathetic way possible:

“Wouldn’t you feel better if you stood up, acted like a woman or a man, and had your say? Wouldn’t your party be better off? Wouldn’t the nation? Do you really think Trump is a very stable genius, or do you think more like Rex Tillerson?”

Maybe the solution is honey, not bile, plus a little alcohol. It couldn’t hurt.

Permalink to this post