Wednesday open thread: We had a petulant 350lb child with the nuclear codes

Good morning friends.

I'm still trying to digest yesterday's hearing. I trust the committee that when it says it has explosive new testimony, it's not bluffing. But I think none of us expected what transpired.

I know many are saying that Cassidy Hutchinson was still all MAGA, and should get no pass. Maybe, maybe not. But you don't go after a mob godfather with the testimony of saints. And Ms. Hutchinson was the perfect witness: yes, a believer up until the last moment, but then something clicked. And she wasn't involved in any of the crimes. She didn't cut a plea deal for her testimony. She was the proverbial coffee girl who heard and saw nearly everything, because the hubris of the conspirators dismissed her presence. They assumed anyone who had stuck around this long was all in on the project. They couldn't conceive that their downfall would come from someone so innocuous and unimportant. A twenty-five year old woman. What could she do to them?

I keep saying that hubris is the one sin the gods cannot abide. Hubris is also the one fault which will bring down the powerful every time. Hubris clouds the judgment. You think yourself a master of the universe, invincible. We've seen it repeated over and over again throughout history. And we're seeing it unfold before our eyes.

Donald Trump was everything we knew he was. But the revelations yesterday are just pathetic. Throwing dinner against the wall. Trying to strangle his chief of security. This is the petty, petulant man-child to whom millions gave their devotion. No different than Hitler. No different than Stalin. But unlike German and the Soviet Union, he wasn't able to seize power. The walls held, if barely. And this man-child had the keys to Armageddon in his stubby little hands. That we're not all glowing cinders is a testament to some Providence which we cannot quite fathom.

The Founders feared a man like Trump. But they thought they had built in enough safe-guards. Sadly, they were not time-travelers, and had no notion of the internet, social media, conspiracy theories, and foreign actors pushing destructive propaganda. The structure they build was to guard against an 18th century despot. The tools of the modern era are so beyond any reckoning of even the most imaginative figure of the Enlightenment. And, of course, the republic the Founders built was definitely one which wouldn't have allowed Trump voters to participate in politics. I'm in no way saying that mass participatory democracy is an evil; but appealing to mass sentiment can lead to demagogues, as we have seen over the past century. The Age of the Common Man is as apt to lead to evil as to good. We had the bad luck of the draw this time. And by "bad luck," I mean a coordinated effort to undermine the structure of an informed electorate which allowed this to happen. 

Far from being a nothingburger, the hearings are all that we both hoped for and feared. This is worse than the Civil War. And unlike in the aftermath of that conflict, there must be lasting and severe penalties for this sedition. Punishment must be meted out, and harshly, commensurate to the crime. The progress of the hearings makes this outcome more and more likely. We must finally have the great cleansing we should have had in 1866. It's time to end the cold Civil War, and in no uncertain terms make the losers aware that they lost, and will never gain power again.