We must not simply relegate Trump’s perpetration of mass death, dishonor and disgrace to the dustbin of history.
A brief history of Republican presidents committing crimes and getting away with it: Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush both got away with murder and fraud. Each had a hand in the Iran-Contra deal that illegally sold weapons to Iran in order to illegally fund a war in Central America. Reagan smiled and said “I don’t recall,” and got away with it. Bush Sr. just pardoned everybody with the glad assistance of then-again-AG William Barr, and got away with it. There were no consequences for anyone except C.I.A. Director Bill Casey, who died of a “brain hemorrhage” the day after he was named by a sworn Congressional witness for being materially involved in providing arms to Nicaraguan rebels as part of the larger Iran/Contra scheme. Cue the spooky music, fine, but that was the most convenient death in the history of the Republican Party. I’m just sayin’. The incoming Clinton administration waved the rancid Reagan/Bush administration off into the sunset before busying themselves by bollixing the health care reform movement for a generation. President Clinton was eventually impeached for lying about a liaison with an intern, but not for deliberately bombing water treatment facilities in Iraq (an act of biological warfare). And then came George W. Bush, the gold standard for modern-day war criminal presidents. Before he was done, Bush oversaw the murder, maiming and displacement of millions of civilians overseas, the loss of thousands of American lives in those wars and right here at home, laundered trillions of taxpayer dollars into the bank accounts of friends and allies, and treated the Constitution like it was a wad of toilet paper stuck to his shoe. Remember the “comedy” video of Bush looking for the (still) missing Iraqi WMD in the Oval Office? That is the distilled essence of his eight years in office. President Barack Obama — no stranger to war crimes, he — came into office after Bush and his wreckers departed, arriving under the groaning weight of two failed wars and a shattered national economy. Surveying these challenges, Obama decided it was better to “look forward, not backward” regarding the Bush administration’s two-term smash-and-grab crime spree. Again, there were no consequences for any of the incredible traumas Bush visited upon the nation and the rule of law. Today, Bush enjoys the quiet life of a painter. His muses include small dogs, himself in the shower, and the faces of the soldiers he fed into the meat-grinder of his illegal wars. Occasionally he reappears on my television with people like Ellen DeGeneres to try and sell those soldier portraits and rehabilitate his image without a scintilla of self-awareness. Four years later — or 40, if you peg it to Reagan — we are passing through a gruesome crucible, a compounding of crises and tribulations that have shaken the nation to its bones. A quarter million people are dead in a pandemic that rages unchecked almost a year after its arrival. Caged children at the border may never see their parents again. Constitutional strictures are not even a speedbump to those in power. The Treasury has been looted, again. Hovering over it all like an orange thundercloud is Donald Trump, who would not hold his office if some form of justice had been visited upon the transgressions of his predecessors. From Reagan to Bush to Bush to Trump, the absence of consequences for departing brigand presidents has led to more flagrantly corrupt and harmful behavior by the incoming ones.
