Sir: Donald Trump’s 2016 Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, puts it quite clearly in her opinion piece on The Washington Post on January 11, 2021 that “removing Trump from office is essential….but that alone won’t remove white supremacy and extremism from America.”
More remarkably, she add that “the Biden administration will need to address this crisis in all its complexity and breadth, including holding technology platforms accountable, prosecuting all who broke our laws, and making public more intelligence and analysis about domestic terrorism.”
Because a certain number of apparent pro-Trump supporters tried to topple down Capitol Hill on Wednesday 6, Speaker of House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi and the like have variously been saying the American highly-exalted democracy is vulnerable at the hands of a President whose vision is not in tandem with the grundnorm and parameters laid down by the fathers. And inciting insurrection, sedition, and subversion seems to be very frowned upon. A few U.S. officials are leaning towards invoking the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, which calls for the impeachment of the president, provided the vice president and majority of the cabinet attest to his incompetence and incapability.
In my opinion, I do not necessarily think impeaching Trump again would serve as an end to “Trumpism.” Wednesday’s attack on the Capitol, to me, was just a tip of the iceberg of the ad hominem and sumpsimus of Trumpians egged and pegged on the ‘‘Pro-Trump Republican Party’’ he’s ever pioneered. Typically, Trumpism, saying one thing in one minute and meaning another thing in another minute and vice versa, has been systematically enmeshed in the formative principles of the American culture.
Even though Trump had been impeached in 2019 because of charges of “abuse of power” and “obstruction of Congress,” and even though he believed the impeachment process had been “cheapened,” specifically on allegations that he’d unlawfully solicited Ukrainian authorities to influence the 2020 presidential election, Trumpism is not likely to fizzle away soon.
Somehow, Capitol Hill rioters’ “abuse of power” of the “obstruction of Congress” to certify the Biden-Harris win was needled and threaded by Trumpism. To be sure, Trump could still find his way into the Oval Office in 2024, provided he’s not been a curmudgeon of a Republican candidate.
If Biden says it’s a good thing for Trump not to attend the inauguration, as the latter says he’s not, which is typically un-American, especially on every January 20, then of course Trumpism, not Trump, has not been defeated, in that it’d surely take the successive leaders, Biden and Harris, as Hillary Clinton rightly points out, terrible efforts to remedy the divisiveness and the enfants terribles the Trump administration has since been making great.
Segun Ige, a graduate of English, University of Lagos.
