Look, there are a whole truckload of reasons to despise current Utah Senator, former Republican presidential nominee, and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Just pick. Maybe you think his refusal in 2012 to embrace the health care plan that he himself signed off on in Massachusetts was the sign of a weak, weak candidate. Maybe you're still pissed at him for winking at birtherism, joking about Barack Obama not being born in the United States. Maybe you just don't like his dickish face or his dog torture or his endless lies in 2012. I get it. And we weren't wrong to despise him in the past and we won't be wrong when he gives us reasons to despise him in the future.
But for a just a few minutes, for just a shining moment, we can praise Mitt Romney for doing what no one thought a Republican was going to do. Because, see, Romney didn't just vote in favor of convicting Donald Trump for abuse of power and removing him from office and banning him from every running again. Romney decided to use his speech to the Senate to burn Trump's defense to the ground. And he showed all those self-professed Christians what belief in God means, and it sure as hell isn't being a hypocrite when you take an oath to that God. It was like he looked around at his fellow Republican senators and thought, "Wait, did you all go blind and deaf? Because how can you hear all of this and see anything other than that Trump's guilty?"
About Trump's attempt to get dirt on the family of the man who was, at the time, the leading Democrat running for president, Romney said, "There’s no question in my mind that were their names not Biden, the president would never have done what he did." About the whole idea of waiting to let voters decide, Romney wasted it with "The verdict is ours to render under our Constitution. The people will judge us for how well and faithfully we fulfill our duty."
Immediately after the vote to acquit Trump (and Romney voted with Republicans on the second article, obstruction of Congress), the condemnation of Mitt Romney went into overdrive. Romney knew what was going to happen: "I’m aware that there are people in my party and in my state who will strenuously disapprove of my decision, and in some quarters I will be vehemently denounced. I’m sure to hear abuse from the president and his supporters." And, oh, yeah, it's been a robust round of fuckery, with Donald Trump, Jr., who, true story, was birthed out of his father's anus, called for Romney to be expelled from the Republican Party, which is some motherfucking political genius in an election year when Democrats need just 4 seats to get back the Senate.
Between Trump tweets and the screeching ghouls of the right-wing mediaverse, Romney was being savaged for daring to actually believe his lying eyes. And you know that he is on the receiving end of a stream of death threats and violence threats, that his kids and their kids are going to be targeted. Romney's life is fucked for the foreseeable future, and that's not even counting the QAnon freaks who have long thought he was part of the Clinton/Obama cabal.
As the last couple of days post-impeachment trial have shaken out, it's become clearer and clearer that we are all so very fucked. Trump is getting revenge on those who spoke against him (like having Col. Alexander Vindman shitcanned from his National Security Council job, a clear violation of whistleblower protection laws). He's said, "We'll see" about retaliating against Democrats, calling them "evil" and other insidious insults. He's saying that Nancy Pelosi needs to be punished for tearing his State of the Union speech in half, like they're sacred texts. Senate Republicans are getting financial documents on Hunter Biden so they can investigate him for some goddamn reason. And William Barr has shut down any investigations of Trump (and any other politician) without his approval.
Trump unchained combines the malevolent idiocy of Joseph McCarthy with the sycophantic following of Mao Zedong. It's not that difficult to imagine a coming witch hunt or purge or even a new Cultural Revolution, each of us called to account for how much or how little we love our dear leader. That I can entertain that thought and it's not automatically thought of as hilarious parody shows just how far we're already down that road, with its mass graves waiting at the end.
Hyperbole? Sure. But I'd rather be accused of that than of not warning everyone that we're fucked unless we do something to unfuck ourselves.
