After Thomas Paine

GENTLEMEN, gentlemen, where are your souls? The faint-hearted conformist and the short-sighted opportunist will, in this new crisis, abandon their duty to their country, but they who rise to it now deserve the respect and gratitude of every citizen. Lawlessness, by Heaven, ought to be swiftly rebuked, yet we fall prey to this folly, that the more prolonged the error, the more difficult the conversion. What we have never experienced, we do not consider a threat; it is humility only that reveals our vulnerability. Hell exacts a heavy payment for its evils, and it would be grievous indeed if so dastardly an export as CHAOS should not be vigorously guarded against. The president, with a mob at his beck and call, has claimed that he has the absolute right (not only to SHIRK TAXES but) “TO DO WHATEVER I WANT,” and if being unrestrained in this manner is not tyranny, then there is not such a thing as tyranny upon earth. The assertion alone is sacrilege, for we once Declared that no such authority had a place under God.

Whether the removal of the president was called for too soon, or delayed too long, is irrelevant; it is not simply my opinion that dictates his actions demand it of us now. We did not act over the course of two years, and perhaps we were correct, in such a state of suspense. Yet the fault, if we do not now, will be yours; we will have none to blame but you. A great deal stands to be lost. All that Mueller compiled over those two years was rather an invitation than a conclusion, which the obstinacy of the Republicans, even now with the revelation of Ukraine, compels them to reject, and from which rejection we will not soon recover.

I have more faith than many living, but my steadfast conviction has ever been, and grows stronger by the day, that God Almighty will freely give up a people to self-destruction, leaving them to perish without pity, who have so willingly and so stupidly marched to their own slaughter, heedless of every blatant warning which common sense could provide. I am not so much of a believer as to presume that presiding over the world gives Him the obligation to preserve us from devils that we ourselves invite, and as such, I cannot see on what grounds you can defend your continued loyalty to the president of the United States; a common swindler, halfwit, or schoolyard bully has as much claim to it as he.

’Tis sobering to watch gangrene fester in a body politic. All nations are susceptible to it in what threaten to be their twilight hours. Rome grew rotten and sagged under its own weight as it cracked between East and West, and in the eighteenth century the entirety of France, following decades of stagnation and civil discontentment, erupted into bloodshed, and this furious revolution of the masses was championed by “the incorruptible” advocate for the underprivileged and poor, Maximilien Robespierre. Would that Heaven might grant an indefatigable patience to his grumbling American countrymen, to spare us all a similar retribution and Terror! Yet these decays are not without their advantages; they produce as much quickening as putrefaction. Their progression is unsustainable; the mind is forced to fix on a solution, becoming far more galvanized than before. This is precipitated by the necessary distinguishing of utility from liability, of healthy members from those shriveled appendages that must be cut off for the body to survive. Ironically, these national atrophies have the same effect on corrupt cronies that a hurricane has on a ship’s cumbersome cargo. They allow for the careless exposure of self-serving motives to a deceptively apathetic public. Many a shameless Toady has lately shed all pretense — to his great repentance on the day of his reckoning.

I will not here attempt to give an exhaustive account of every impeachable offense that the president has committed (for you must know better than I); suffice it to say that both politicians and populace, numb from scandal fatigue, rarely seeing sense, morality, or accountability — the unfortunate casualties of this presidency — have borne each with increasing resentment. They have echoed a common wish: to see you stand up and cut this malignancy out. Jefferson decried King George as unfit to be the ruler of a free people for having a character marked by every act which may define a tyrant, and the same may be said of President Trump, for the condemnation prefigured him. There is a natural hubris in some minds, merely hinted at in trifles, which, left unchecked, unleashes a cascade of horrors, and I count it among the crueler jokes of Providence that God has seen fit to unite such robust physical health with such a feeble mind further addled by its own self-importance and daily floundering before our eyes.

To further illustrate the state of our affairs, I pose to you the following question: why is it that the president finds himself constantly at loggerheads with Democrats but in a perpetual safe harbor with Republicans? The answer is obvious: Democrats are not infested with Toadies; Republicans are. I have been loath to reduce them to a pejorative, preferring to use countless arguments to woo them to reason, but it will not do; they will gladly sacrifice the world to their folly before giving it up. The time is long since passed for them to simply change their sentiments; they must change their very selves, or die. For what is a Toady? Dear God, what has he become? I should be hard-pressed to find a hundred souls among a thousand Toadies, were I to attempt to uncover their lost humanity. Every Toady is a coward, for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toadyism, and a man succumbing to such motivation, though he may be living, is dead.

But before we give up the dead as lost forevermore, let us attempt, one more time, to reason them back to life: your enabling of the president is, in fact, subservience — is there even one of you with enough pride to be repulsed at the thought of kneeling to him? Trump is as contemptuous of you as the American ideal is betrayed by you. He demands that you forsake all true patriotism and sink to his standard, with MAGA hats firmly on your heads. Your opinions are a nuisance to him, except that you support him unconditionally, for ’tis subjects, not statesmen, that he wants.

I once felt all the outrage that an American ought to feel at the worshipful devotion of those subjects: a memorable one, who attended a rally in Cincinnati, was standing in the audience, with as unhinged an expression on her face as I ever saw, and after ranting incoherently about the Democrats in Washington for as long as she was allowed, finished with this obscenity: “Never in my life did I think I would like to see a dictator, but if there’s going to be one, I want it to be Trump!” No sane person exists but acknowledges that Trump must sometime or other leave office, and anyone of sense must conclude, “If the president commit a crime, let him be punished, lest he become a king” — and this entreaty, seriously considered, should be enough to spur each of you to action.

No place on earth teeters on such a precipice as America. Her lofty position looms high above the “commoners” of the world; at any moment she might tumble down below them. We must distinguish between birthright and privilege, for as sure as I am that God judges the nations, I am equally certain that America prostitutes herself every day that she remains in the clutches of this madman. Even wars become secondary to the diseases she contracts, and in the end, we will be desolate and dark, for though the coals of liberty may never expire, no heavenly mandate requires that they burn here.

Therefore, I call now upon those who have been cowering to stand, those who have been silent to speak, and those who have died to live. Redemption is not beyond your reach. Let it be said that in our moment of crisis, with virtue and courage in need of champions, you upheld your oath and defended this nation against one who had spat on his own and torn both to shreds. Fear not that millions will despise you but rejoice that tens of millions will honor you — and do not trust in your station to shield you from the consequences of inaction, for “it will be the same for priest as for people, for master as for servant, for mistress as for maid, for seller as for buyer, for borrower as for lender, for debtor as for creditor,” nor your faith to justify you, for “faith without works is dead” — as the heart that I fail to move. Let not your children be ashamed of the names they bear when a little trouble now might make them wear those names with pride. I hold in the highest regard those who place duty before self, truth over expediency, and country above party. ’Tis the business of such minds to fortify themselves against fear and doubt and, in times such as these, grasp hold once more of the dulled sword of the principles which once governed but have since fallen into disuse and disrepair. My own sword I sharpen daily, for it never leaves my side. No amount of mere dislike could have prompted me to urge for the president’s forcible removal — such a thing would be childish and mutinous — but if a mad captain is steering his ship into a maelstrom, ordering the sails burned, and blasting holes in the deck with the cannon, then mutiny becomes the only option and thus ceases to be mutiny. Be he captain or greenhand, shipmate or stowaway, he must receive the same sentence; no brig for the one and plank for the other, and no clemency for either. Dare to call me a rebel and I will show you the Constitution upon which we stand — but any curse you could level at me would be music to my ears in comparison with the torment of the devils who would own my soul were I to pledge my allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. The ones who own your souls you will find poor caretakers on the day you must answer for how you spent them.