Thread by @RadioFreeTom

I am immobilized with a heating pad on my back, so you're all getting my Sunday night blast of ill-temper about Trump's latest attacks on Vindman and others. Bottom line: We are not required to think well of people who are still defending this. /1

This should be, in any sane country, a bipartisan moment. The President is now committing multiple impeachable offenses every day by demanding laws be broken at his command. Republicans - especially - should have cut Trump loose long ago as a matter of duty. /2

Yes, some support for Trump is "polarization." But it's also something darker: It's a party of opportunists manipulating an ignorant mass of propaganda-addled people. The GOP and its media enablers are as hollow and cynical a group as has ever existed in American politics. /3

"Polarization" implies that people give a shit about policies and ideas. I will fight all day long with @CharlesPPierce or @jentaub on the left, or @JayCaruso on the right, because we disagree about policies and visions for America. That's not this. This is something else. /4

This is what happens when a group of people whose lives are ordinary and full of normal problems spend too much time connected to an internet and a cable box that tells them their lives could be awesome but for the people in the Emerald City. An old story, with new technology. /5

What's also new is that the GOP - once called the party of ideas even by Sen. Moynihan in my lifetime - has now decided that being in power is more important than fidelity to ideas or to the Constitution itself. There is no legal or constitutional red line they respect. /6

Mass communication technology exploited by unprincipled and cynical leaders in wink-wink cahoots with foreign powers, demagogues getting rich by scaring rubes and old people, a sociopath with a cult following. This is something we once would have joined together to stop. /7

Nixon was heading for impeachment for a *fraction* of what Trump has done. Republicans know this. They once prided themselves on being the messengers to the White House that the line had been crossed. No longer. /8

But back to the main point: Our fellow citizens who affirmatively support this behavior do not deserve our understanding or our patient arguments. They are beyond this. They deserve our unyielding - and peaceful - disapproval. There is no obligation to be "understanding." /9

Their support for Trumpism should not produce shouting matches or ruined family dinners. It should produce resolute changing of the subject. Outside of family, it should lead to shunning of friends who insist on arguing over why Trump is right to smear combat veterans. /10

At some point, friendship and comity require shared values. Americans have broken friendships over early Communism, McCarthy, civil rights, Nixon, Vietnam. This was not a tragedy. It was the social opprobrium that is a sign of moral health rather than relativistic anomie. /11

This is another of those times. The President has become a raving paranoid on national television, name calling members of Congress, smearing military officers, promising secret revenge, demanding others in the govt break the law, deriding our intel and LE professionals. /12

There is no "but socialism" or "but abortion" hiccup that is acceptable. None. Republicans did not say "if we impeach Nixon the commies will roll over us and there will be abortions in the streets." They did their duty before the Constitution. The country eventually agreed. /13

I have no interest in debating anyone on why Trump's crimes are not impeachable. We all know better. Sens. Portman and Collins and Romney and yes, even McConnell, all know better. This is not a good-faith disagreement, and it never was. /14

The bright spot here is that this is not "Civil War 2.0" or a fascist movement. That would require commitment and bravery from the Trumpist inner circle. They are led by a cowardly man and they are cowards themselves. The rank and file are groupies, not activists. /15

There is no mass movement party here, no hard central corps of true believers who will advance the cause, because there is no "cause." Trumpism is about people who watch too much TV, who have shown, over three years, they have no real idea what to do with power anyway. /16

But the damage to the legitimacy and the long-term health of our institutions is now, in some cases, deep and irreversible. This will harm everyone long after this idiocy is over, except for the right wing grifters who will take their payday and skip town. /17

If you are still enthusiastically supporting Trump, your politics are morally flawed, or you are lying to yourself. More likely, you know what you're doing, and you're supporting him for the pure opportunism of using an increasingly sick man for your own parochial interests. /18

Either way, the rest of us are not obligated to respect those views, no more than we had to respect the supporters of Joe McCarthy, Father Coughlin, Huey Long, George Lincoln Rockwell, or any of the other hideous Americans who attracted a mass following. Enough is enough. /19x