Tantalus Reincarnated

In the larger scheme of things, the Democrat impeachment circus is not just a beclowning event for them and their anti-Trump loyalists, it is doing far more damage to the American political landscape and our system of government.

To Democrats and their malleable "standards", Trump appears as the reincarnation of the Greek god Tantalus. Tantalus was forever condemned to the lowest level of the Underworld to stand neck deep in a pool of cool water beneath an overhanging tree filled with luscious fruit. Every time Tantalus bent over to slake his thirst, the water receded and every time he reached up to pick apples or grapes to assuage his hunger, the limbs of the tree raised, taking the fruit just beyond his grasp.

If you notice how the circus is rolling into town, you will see that Trump can never quite meet the standards of the Democrats because they seem to change frequently to be kept out of his grasp. Democrats like Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler, routinely take simple statements and then presume to enter the President's mind (or into the minds of the "witnesses") to magically divine what he and they "really meant". It's like watching that a clip of Cathy Neuman interviewing Jordan Peterson on an infinite loop.

They use fallacious circular reasoning (that's how the fake Steele Dossier got injected into the body politic- it was real because it was reported on and it was reported on because it was real) and cast every Trump or witness statement in its most negative context, even if they have to construct that context from whole cloth.

"He said he wanted no quid pro quo, that he just wanted Zelinsky to the the right thing but what he really meant was he wanted Zelinsky to manufacture dirt on Joe Biden because that would be the right thing for him and that is a quid pro quo!"

Last week Victor Davis Hanson made the point that the Democrats are attempting to impeach the President for 1984ish "thought crimes" - and he is right.

President Trump committed three crimes obvious to all Democrats, 1) he won an election he wasn't supposed to win, 2) he doesn't do the things Democrats want done and 3) even when he does, he doesn't do them the way Democrats would do them (or have done them in the past).

The last three years have been the culmination of the progressive movement turning the basis of American jurisprudence away from the rule of objective law into that of a rule of subjective men. It's no surprise, that's the very idea behind the progressive concept of a "living constitution" where if the specific, written words preclude an action you really, really want to do, you just interpret those words in a way that does and you get a judge to sign on.

To a progressive, our Constitution isn't made of Spanx material - designed to keep stuff in - it is made of Spandex, designed to let the bloat expand in comfort.

The institutionalization of such "flexibility" into our constitutional republic is the real damage, and something that will plague future generations long after we have turned to dust. The temptations to use precedents set in this comical farce to disastrous effect will be strong - perhaps too strong to resist. It will be too easy to let the personal become political (of which we are getting a taste today).

The remedy is the election in 2020. All friends, Romans and countrymen who have ears to lend and who value our Constitution must see past their personal distaste for a man and look to what the future would be if we remain on this trajectory and vote to restore our Republic to a regular order of sanity.