unz | There is a growing Washington consensus that
consists of traditional liberals and progressives as well as Democratic
globalist interventionists and neoconservatives who believe that Donald
Trump must be removed from office no matter what it takes. The
interventionists and neocons in particular already control most of the
foreign policy mechanisms but they continue to see Trump as a possible
impediment to their plans for aggressive action against a host of
enemies, most particularly Russia. As they are desirous of bringing down
Trump “legally” through either impeachment or Article 25 of the
Constitution which permits removal for incapacity, it might be termed a
constitutional coup, though the other labels cited above also fit.
The
rationale Trump haters have fabricated is simple: the president and his
team colluded with the Russians to rig the 2016 election in his favor,
which, if true, would provide grounds for impeachment. The driving
force, in terms of the argument being made, is that removing Trump must
be done “for the good of the country” and to “correct a mistake made by
the American voters.” The mainstream media is completely on board of the
process, including the outlets that flatter themselves by describing
their national stature, most notably the New York Times and Washington
Post.
So
what is to be done? For starters, until Donald Trump has unambiguously
broken a law the critics should take a valium and relax. He is an
elected president and his predecessors George W. Bush and Barack Obama
certainly did plenty of things that in retrospect do not bear much
scrutiny. Folks like Ray McGovern and Robert Parry should be listened to
even when they are being provocative in their views. They are not, to
be sure, friends of the White House in any conventional way and are not
apologists for those in power, quite the contrary. Ray has been strongly
critical of the current foreign policy, most particularly of the
expansion of various wars, claims of Damascus’s use of chemical weapons,
and the cruise missile attack on Syria. Robert in his latest article
describes Trump as narcissistic and politically incompetent. But their
legitimate concerns are that we are moving in a direction that is far
more dangerous than Trump. A soft coup engineered by the national
security and intelligence agencies would be far more dangerous to our
democracy than anything Donald Trump can do.
