Thread by @dynamicsymmetry

So one of the things that’s killing me especially about this nightmare is how blatant it is, how it’s so much more audacious than it might have been. They might have just acquitted him without setting fire to the Constitution in front of us.

I think I understand why they are.

People have been saying over and over that the easiest thing would be to say “yeah, what he did wasn’t great, but it’s not bad enough to impeach over”, vote to acquit, move on. No ridiculous contortions needed. Nothing splashy. Nothing prima facie outrageous.

I mean, yeah, plenty outrageous if you’re paying attention, but the majority of the country would probably brush it off as, well, normal. Maybe sketchy but totally within the pale. It’s a terrible position but it’s not hard to argue for it.

That’s not what they’re doing. That’s not what Trump’s lawyers are doing, and it’s not the argument the GOP senators are settling for.

The argument is turning out to be “Yeah, he did it, doesn’t matter. He can do whatever he wants. Get the fuck over it, libs.”

It’s not merely that that argument is outrageous, it’s that it’s *outrageously destructive*, because it completely upends how power is supposed to work here, and it takes a torch to the notion that there must be justification for anything the president does.

And as an argument, it’s a lot harder to get away with, or one would assume it would be. Phrased in the simplest way, the average person would respond to it with astonishment. Uh, no, the president can’t do whatever he wants, what the fuck? Seriously?

Whereas go home to your constituents and say “yeah, it wasn’t great, but I just didn’t think it was that bad, and anyway we’ve got the election coming up” and that’s perfectly defensible. Again, it’s *terrible*, but it’s also defensible.

So why go this route? Why go all-in like this? Why are otherwise not-unserious lawyers making these spectacularly horrible, indefensible arguments? Why is the party all falling in line with them?

Well, yeah, it’s that he wants them all-in *for him*. But it’s more than that.

Remember Sean Spicer and the inauguration? Remember how we laughed at the ridiculous lie he was sent out there to blusteringly tell, which was so clearly to soothe a massive and massively wounded ego?

Yeah, it was more than that.

It’s not just about Trump’s ego, and it’s not just about displays of loyalty. It’s about forcing someone to do something so extreme, so blatantly ludicrous and norm-destroying, that they’re fully cut off from the world outside Trump. Trump is now all they have.

They aren’t just setting fire to the Constitution. They’re burning their bridges. There’s no way back for them, no other path to any kind of victory. There is no alternative to him for them. They live or die with him, which is precisely what he wants.

This is a pretty classic tactic for abusive, authoritarian personalities. Separate the people you want to control from the life they had, cut them off from every other support system. Make them utterly dependent on you.

That’s what “loyalty” actually means to Trump, and it’s why, for him, loyalty is never reciprocal. He demands that people be dependent on him but he lives in horror of being dependent on anyone (even though in many ways he always has been).

Everyone keeps expecting him to pardon Flynn or Manafort or people like them, and I’m ready to be wrong, but I honestly don’t think he will. Because he doesn’t want to give them the idea that he owes them.

He only pardons people where there are no stakes in the relationship, and where all it does is tie them closer to him, make them more “loyal”, and ideally trigger the libs. We have yet to see him pardon anyone who truly mattered.

(Yes, war criminals “matter”, that’s not what I’m saying)

What we’re seeing here, with impeachment? Most particularly the vote for witnesses? It’s the ultimate loyalty test, *because it is so transparently outrageous and indefensible*.

And it’s where this was always going. It never could have gone anywhere else.

And it’s not even really a loyalty test, as I said. It’s a ritualistic bridge-burning. After this, they’ve got nothing but Trump. Which they know.

It was never going to be subtle, or quiet, or defensible. Never could have been. That’s not how Trump rolls, and therefore that’s not how they will be permitted to roll.

And yes, they understand that they just took a sledgehammer to their own power.

By the way, I think it can’t be overstated the degree to which McConnell’s reign of tortugian terror has softened the ground for this, by reducing the power of the Senate to judge appointments and rubber stamping horrible legislation and little else.

It’s much easier to get someone to give up their power with a smile when you’ve essentially eroded most of it anyway.

Power for them is remaining in office. It’s not *using* the office for anything, aside from personal gain.

So yeah. After this it’s all Trump for them, all of them, to infinity and beyond, and there is no way back.

And we shouldn’t allow them a way back.

The one good thing about them being ride-or-die for Trump in the election is that it’s extremely possible that he’ll be part of what takes them down—if we use it that way.

And honestly, I think we can take some comfort in them knowing that tonight. I truly think some of them are extremely nervous right now because they see how catastrophically this could backfire on them. They did this to themselves but not all of them wanted it.

For many of them, Trump has the real potential to be a lethal liability. Again, if we work to make it that way. If.

There’s no way back for them now. He’s all they have.

By the way y’all really need to be reading The Origins of Totalitarianism right now, it’s dense but it’s important