The Trump Indictment: It Was Never About Patriotism

The GOP doesn't care about national security. In fact, they never did.

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When the Trump Indictment dropped on Friday it was jaw-dropping stuff. It became obvious very quickly that the Department of Justice had caught former president Donald Trump dead-to-rights violating one federal law after another. Documents containing the most classified information available to the United States were discovered spilling from boxes in bathrooms and unsecured rooms, like so many Big Mac wrappers and discarded junk. Trump himself was recorded bragging about possessing a report regarding an attack on Iran and possibly even pulling it out for emphasis.

Just unreal stuff. I think, even for those of us who have spent the last few years documenting Trump’s crimes and haphazard nature, it was shocking. The cover-up attempt - just asking a lawyer to destroy evidence - was incredibly lazy, which fits into Trump’s entire privileged way of life. Make it go away. Like a bother.

And obviously Trump doesn’t care about the security of the nation, the people who risk their lives to gather this intelligence, or much of anything beyond self-gratification, profit, and power. That all of this is so shabby and depressingly vapid is just fetid icing on the rotten cake.

Coverage of this mess has been predictably unsettling. Anchors have either spent their time celebrating a slam dunk case, like any of this works the way it’s supposed to, or else, in the case of Fox News, portraying it as the political witchunt Trump has been screaming about for years. But to hear critics chew on this, you’d think a tide was turning.

After all, the whole thing is obvious.

Anyone looking at the evidence, anyone really thinking about it all for even a second, would realize how terrible this all is.

I’m so tired of having to say this, of having to keep telling people these same things. But here we are again.

There is nothing you can show the MAGA faithful that will change their opinion of Trump. There is no video, no recording, nothing, that will change it. And here’s why: the unique appeals of Trump have tapped into a unique need within the movement that led to an undying, cultish devotion. By now, they have so solidly intertwined their identities with supporting Trump that politically, economically, and socially, there is no going back.

The hope that this might not be the case is grounded in some very basic and very wrong assumptions. Among them is the idea that stated principles, and principles that have supposedly formed the foundation of the United States, have been real all along.

Again. This is wrong.

Our liberal media class needs a lot of these assumptions, many of which are widely disseminated in popular culture and narratives, to create a larger framework that serves as a foundation for the society they sit atop and that serves them. Within this is a basic nobility at the heart of the American political body. Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, everybody is still part of the same team in terms of helping the country. We’re all rooting for the military and for the country to succeed. Fireworks. Hot dogs. So on, and so forth.

Trump’s presidency and continued existence is something like an unfortunate but brief blight. A scum on the surface that can be scrubbed off. And there is a belief that transgressions like Trump’s are just unforgiveable at a molecular level. Nobody could possibly disagree. If they just look and see. Sure, the past scandals were bad. But maybe this set of photos will do it. If they understand this was a betrayal of the national security state. If they just…if they just…

But there’s a hard truth here. Those foundations were never real and never solid. It was all something strange and useful for propping up these things and these people. But also malleable and useful for others and capable of changing with the winds.

The Right and the Republican Party have long touted patriotism as central to their cause, but that was never true. What they celebrated was a personal vision of the country as an instrument of their will. They supported the country as long as it carried out their will, as long as it served to make them feel better about themselves and their worldview. This is why, in times where they are not in control, they root for failure and for decline. Because support for the United States of America is not unquestionable. It is a focus point when it is convenient. When they are in control, “patriotism” is a cudgel that can be used to flatten opposition through rhetorical means.

Trump’s abuse of these documents and his privilege doesn’t matter to them. It’s irrelevant because, just as the country is insignificant to Trump beyond what it can do for him, it is irrelevant to them. The pundits and reporters and even the politicians who believe this might turn the tide are living in fantasy worlds that serve their own purposes.

Instead, it is necessary to consider what damage these people are willing to do to protect Trump and their own worldview. Because the selfishness at the heart of this is what’s important. They are willing to war and attack any institution, even if it is the same institution - the Department of Justice, the FBI, you name it - they were rooting for just recently.

In other words, hypocrisy doesn’t even begin to cover the actual nature of what we’re dealing with here. To be hypocritical would require actually believing something in the first place. Instead, the Right Wing ideology is predicated explicitly on not really believing any of this beyond adhering to it in order to carry out their whims or legitimize their actions. Which is what this has been about in the first place and why they supported Donald Trump, a charlatan who violated every supposed principle they ever had, including his social transgressions and political heresy.

Because those principles were never once real.

And realizing that, and beginning to understand, possibly with cold, hard terror, that you’re dealing with a movement and people who are obsessed with only power and profit, is only the start of the battle. For many, that is a horror that cannot be named. It changes literally everything abou the political landscape and makes the whole situation that much more dangerous. Which is exactly what these people have no interest in actually wrestling with because to do so would mean the destruction of their own limited and narrow realities.