The Russia hoax is finally dead,” Donald Trump trumpeted in Grand Rapids, Mich., Thursday night, inciting supporters by maligning a pantheon of perceived enemies – real and imagined – ranging from House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff to the Fourth Estate.
To which adoring fans dutifully responded, “Lock them up. Lock them up!”
Encouraged by obsequious enablers, Trump applauded Attorney General William Barr’s hastily produced 4-page letter – a letter that appears to justify President Trump’s contemptible behavior – and declared himself totally “exonerated.”
If only it were so, Mr. President; even Barr’s summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s over 300-page report states that the report “does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
Nota Bene: It does not exonerate him.
“It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do,” Edmund Burke tells us, “but what humanity, reason and justice tell me I ought to do.”
And what humanity, reason and justice tell us we ought to do is what Schiff did in Congress last week. In his impassioned response to Republican calls for him to resign, Schiff called out the deniers of humanity, reason and justice: “My colleagues may think it’s okay that the Russians offered dirt on (Hillary Clinton) as part of what was described as the Russian government’s effort to help the Trump campaign. … You might think that’s okay. My colleagues might think it’s okay that when that was offered to the son of the president, who had a pivotal role in the campaign, that the president’s son did not call the FBI. He did not adamantly refuse that foreign help.
“Instead,” Schiff added as his Republican colleagues were called to account, “that son said that he would love the help of the Russians. You might think it’s okay that he took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that Paul Manafort, the campaign chair, someone with great experience in running campaigns, also took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that the president’s son-in-law took that meeting. You might think it’s okay they concealed it from the public.”
“You might say that’s just what you need to do to win,” he said. “I don’t think it’s okay. I think it’s immoral. I think it’s unethical. I think it’s unpatriotic. And yes, I think it’s corrupt.”
We must tell them it’s not okay.
We must tell them it’s corrupt, it’s contemptible and it’s a denial of the truth.
And the truth is that is an ignorant, paranoid, insecure and resentful person today leads this great nation and too many people – in denial of the evidence and in denial of their patriotic obligations – still perceive him as some sort of savior and the person who will free them from perceived grievances and resentments.
Free them from “Deep State” conspiracies and from the “Elites.”
“You know, I always hear ‘the elite, the elite.’ Well, I always said … ‘They are the elite, I’m not,’ ” a resentful Trump whined in Michigan. “I have a better education than them, I’m smarter than them, I went to the best schools, they didn’t.”
No. No. No. No.
Then Trump revealed his existential nature: “(I have a) much more beautiful house, much more beautiful apartment, much more beautiful everything. And I’m president and they’re not, right?”
No. No No. He may be president who owns things, but he is petty and his life is absent of beauty.
Absent of the essential beauty Schiff so eloquently expressed when he addressed his Republican colleagues.
Schiff’s words were a challenge to America – a challenge to resist assaults on the sacred balance between Congress, the executive and the Supreme Court enshrined by our Founding Fathers; a balance designed to resist the unfettered, plundering instincts of authoritarian-inspired presidents.
Embodied within Schiff’s words, embodied in the words between his words, he spoke for America. He spoke for what makes us great.
He spoke for the children of the Special Olympics; he spoke for DACA and Dreamers, for those aspiring to embrace the promise of America.
He spoke as an American on behalf of children kidnapped from parents; for families separated by the Muslim Ban; for those so desperate for safety and freedom that they abandon homes in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala and embark on perilous journeys in the hope of protecting their families.
He spoke for my friend Jamal Khashoggi, betrayed in exchange for arms sales.
He spoke for Yemeni children being killed with American bombs, for Puerto Rican children who’ve yet to have their lives returned to any sort of normalcy; for farmers who’ve lost markets for their crops.
He spoke for families fearful of losing Medicaid, of losing Obamacare, of losing federal assistance for housing and sustenance; for our LGBTQIA brothers and sisters who want to serve America.
He spoke with beauty against the marginalization of communities of color and minorities, against anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, against white supremacy.
He spoke truth to power because that is what Americans do.
In that truth, we were reminded of those moments when “Know-Nothings” were repudiated in the 1840s and 50s, when Lincoln stood unyielding against the treason of the Confederate South, when Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the DAR and invited Marian Anderson to perform at the White House.
In that truth, we are reminded of the time when Joseph Welch asked Sen. Joseph McCarthy: “You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”
Schiff called for decency: “You might say that’s just what you need to do to win. I don’t think it’s okay. I think it’s immoral. I think it’s unethical. I think it’s unpatriotic. And yes, I think it’s corrupt.”
We must all speak.
We must all tell them it’s not okay.
(Robert Azzi, a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter, can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com. On Thursday, April 4, at 6:30 p.m. Azzi will be presenting “Ask a Muslim Anything” at the Concord Friends (Quaker) Meeting House, 11 Oxbow Pond Road, Canterbury.)