They just fade away

The salutary effect of a boot in the ass

Public domain.

It hardly needs to be said that the rightwing reaction to the Mar-a-Lago search was absurd at every level, from the lowliest sputtering shitposter —

— to credentialed drips —  

— to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich actually suggesting the FBI served its warrant in order to plant evidence at Mar-a-Lago. (Doesn’t he know how planting evidence works? That’s a job for the police!)

Oh, and get this:

(Those horseshoes always close up eventually, it seems.)

Approximately zero conservatives were able to restrain themselves from immediately taking Trump’s side — in some cases citing principles of presumptive innocence they never apply to non-Republicans, but in most cases because Fluff Trump and Ask Questions Later is simply what a conservative does anymore.

My favorite among the fancy-schmancy Just-The-Tip-Trumpers is Noah Rothman at Commentary:

What if the Republican officials who jumped to cynical conclusions about the FBI’s execution of a search warrant targeting Donald Trump’s Florida residence are right? What if it turns out that the precedent-setting search of a former U.S. president’s effects was justified only by the suspicion that he had misbegotten government documents in his possession—a violation of statute that has not previously justified such extraordinary measures? What if the FBI expanded the terms of political engagement based on nothing more than speculation and partisanship, thereby opening a Pandora’s Box? What then?

Yeah, and if my uncle had tits he’d be my aunt. It’s a loooong jump from question one to question two — from “what if their ‘cynical conclusions’ were right” to “what if the feds are only investigating one of the less spectacular federal crimes he committed.” As to the third question — basically “if you accept stages one and two of my Gish Gallop, you’ll also accept this is ‘partisanship,’ because it is a word that I have just said” — come on.

It is not remarkable that every species of rightwinger flocked to defend the most obviously crooked White House occupant since Warren Harding from investigation. Trump is now the sine qua non of the conservative movement. They simply lose their place on the wingnut welfare rolls if they don’t defend him no matter what. (Their January 6 Show of Concern barely lasted a week; now they only bring up that ever when they want to bothsides the Democrats.) There are a few genuine rightwing refuseniks, but they’ve lost their privileges and are isolated in niche magazines and rolled out by the prestige media whenever they feel the need to show that Not All Republicans Etc.; but as the Rothman and McArdle examples show, otherwise that tiny exile community, everyone else is for all intents and purposes a MAGA operative.

As for us normies, victory is not assured. Like anyone who’s heard “this time we’ve got him!” several dozen times over the past six years, I can’t expect this ends with Tubby hauled off in irons. But an example from history gives me a glimmer of hope that, even if this goes only so far as indictments, and even if they never (as the saying goes) lock him up, the effect of this event may be salutary.

This furor put me in mind of General Douglas MacArthur. Now, in most ways MacArthur was far from a Trumpian figure. He was a genuine patriot, and even to the extent he was a bit loony he was loony based on strong principles beyond self-preservation.

MacArthur did have an ego, though, and while it was to a great extent justified by his achievements it came into conflict with the principle of civilian command of the military — at least that’s how President Harry Truman saw it. I know there are arguments to be made about how right each man was, but for my purposes they’re beside the point.

The point is Truman dismissed MacArthur as Commander of U.S. and U.N. forces in Korea and there were a lot of people at every level — as there are now — arguing the party exercising legitimate governmental authority made a mistake. In fact, if politics were all, one might say Truman had made a mistake — MacArthur had a an enormous following and there was a lot of noise about how Truman was letting the Korean War get away from him. (A Gallup poll showed the public with MacArthur — while elite “Who’s Who” respondents sided slightly with Truman. Talk about popularism!)  And MacArthur pressed his advantage by addressing a joint session of Congress, submitting to the adulation of ticket tape parades, and working the press.

One might wonder, then, why the next president, elected the following year, was Eisenhower and not MacArthur. There are a few theories, including that evidence from the Congressional hearings on MacArthur’s firing, including some that went unrevealed at the time, made the already unlikable general (certainly less likable than Ike) look less heroic than before.

But I think the simplest explanation is the best: Getting fired knocked MacArthur off his high horse. Before that a lot of people didn’t think MacArthur could be fired. The successful assertion of constitutional authority demonstrated that he was less than a demigod, and once that was achieved you instead had a man accustomed to deference who had been publicly and spectacularly shown its opposite.  

MacArthur’s buddies pushed for him right after he was canned. “General MacArthur was seventy-one years old on January 26,” reports a New York Times article from April 12, 1951, “M’Arthur Put High In GOP ’52 Plans,” adding, “he is a man of excellent physique, however, in fine health.” (The same article reports Eisenhower’s hope that “the General would ‘not return to the United States and become a controversial figure.’”)

MacArthur did show up at the 1952 GOP Convention as keynote speaker, delivering the hardline rightwing guff that Republicans deliver to this day — saying the Democratic Party “has become captive to the schemers and planners who have infiltrated its ranks of leadership to set the national course unerringly toward the socialistic regimentation of a totalitarian state” and so forth. There was talk that MacArthur hoped to maneuver to the nomination through a Taft-Eisenhower stalemate. But the bosses already knew their preference, and the old soldier faded away.

This is not, even in the most optimistic reading, a guarantee that Democrats will directly benefit from the investigation of Trump — they sure didn’t in 1952. But it does suggest that this rap in Trump’s mouth might have a salutary effect on the public’s perception of him. We already know most Americans want Trump investigated for January 6, which may be why the Democrats found the balls to hold those hearings. This also suggests the public views Trump as at least a potential crook. If the items obtained under warrant apply to J6, terrific; if DOJ has instead other crimes in view, I doubt they public will say, oh, no, not that one — we only wanted him to face justice for one specific crime.

In any event, after years of apparently consequence-free criminality, even a splash of finding-out after years of fucking around may break the perception that nothing can touch Mr. Big. For that much at least we can be grateful.