Coming Around

THE TYPICAL STRATEGY for Trump, as is well known, is to deny any allegations of wrongdoing, and then to viciously attack their source. Then, when the wrongdoing becomes so evident as to defy any hope of denial, the Trump strategy is to acknowledge the wrongdoing, and to assert, falsely, that it was not actually wrongdoing, while once again gratuitously attacking anyone and everyone who even suggested any wrongdoing on his part. The Ukraine comes to mind, weapons for damaging information on political rivals, as clearly explained by Mr. Mulvaney, before his subsequent denial. Trump has often been compared to a mafia don; this is an inaccurate comparison; mafia dons live by a code of conduct, and must demonstrate sufficient honor and integrity to inspire loyalty. Finally, belatedly, Republicans are beginning to see the need for impeachment and removal. Slightly more than one half of the American electorate now favors it. The percentage will increase, as Trump's criminal and unethical behavior becomes more widely known, as the denials turn into vacuous assertions of rectitude, and, finally, confessions. Trump is only likely to confess on his deathbed, if then. His supporters are another matter. Though slowly dwindling in number, the core hardens. People are inclined by nature to defend their mistakes rather than to admit them. Trump supporters are inclined to behave like Trump, to hurl lies and vicious insults at their detractors, to defend the indefensible, and to invent alternative realities to justify their embrace of criminal behavior. I live in a red state, one in which science is rejected by the majority and superstition is embraced. My congressional representative, a Republican, tells me that he read the transcript of the phone conversation between Trump and the president of the Ukraine, and sees nothing impeachable. People only see what they wish to see, as everyone knows. My congressman said that he sees no high crimes nor misdemeanors committed by Trump. He clearly saw bill Clinton lie about sex to a grand jury, and voted for impeachment. Donald Trump has told more than thirteen thousand lies to the American people, over three hundred million of us, and ignores them all. Surely it is a worse crime to tell thousands of lies to the American people than to tell a single lie to a grand jury. But don't expect my congressman, nor any other Trump supporter, to accept this. They accept only what supports their twisted support of our criminal president, and everything else, everything true, they ignore. They fabricate a false reality, and the facts they call "fake news". They, the Trump supporters, are the truly guilty. But, gradually, belatedly, their lies are crumbling, and their pathological behavior is finally, at long last, bringing about their destruction, and the destruction of the criminal they so misguidedly support.