The infamy of history
“I remember hearing a noise coming from down the hallway …,” Cassidy Hutchinson testified on Tuesday, “I left the office and went down to the dining room, and I noticed that the door was propped open. And the valet was inside the dining room changing the tablecloth off of the dining room table. He motioned for me to come in and then pointed toward the front of the room, the fireplace mantle and the TV, where I first noticed there was ketchup dripping down the wall, and there was a shattered porcelain plate on the floor. The valet had articulated that the president was extremely angry at the attorney general’s AP interview and had thrown his lunch against the wall. ”
The previous paragraph was brought to you by a total absence of impulse control. But we already knew about that, you and I. We also already knew that a bizarre combination of a minority of voters and the outmoded electoral college system put a man who has no impulse control in the presidency. We knew he has no impulse control because, among other things, he’s a rapist. E. Jean Carroll credibly accused Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s. We are unsurprised he’s a rapist because we heard with our own ears Donald Trump confessing to Billy Bush that he exercises no impulse control where women are concerned.
We also already knew that Donald Trump is thin-skinned because we’ve seen examples of his fragile ego, unleashed by a lack of impulse control, countless times over the years. From changing a weather map with a Sharpie to angrily hate-tweeting at someone he dislikes, Trump cannot let any defiance or slight go. He can never be “big” about anything. He’s always little.
“Just because it isn’t surprising,” Mary Trump said, “doesn’t mean it isn’t horrifying.” But the fact remains it isn’t surprising, and that must be emphasized as well. While many of the revelations of Tuesday’s January 6 hearing were new to us and justly horrifying, none of them were surprising. In a sense we have heard nothing new. We heard nothing we didn’t already suspect, or indeed already know. We’ve seen nothing that doesn’t perfectly square with previous actions we’ve witnessed from this man-baby, this foul-mouthed, short-fingered vulgarian.
Perhaps it isn’t so much shock and horror that we’re expressing as relief, relief that we finally have proof that Donald Trump knew exactly what was going to happen on January 6 — because he encouraged it to happen, because he specifically engineered it to happen. He even wanted to be on the scene to watch it happen but the Secret Service wouldn’t let him.
What is finally happening is the shocking truth about Donald Trump — truth that you and I have known about all along — is finally making its way into the universal American zeitgeist. Thanks to the hearings and their surprising popularity, many apolitical and indifferent Americans are waking up to the truth about Trump that has been obvious to you and I for years.
It is precisely this slow, inexorable process that turns some people who were once heroes — Joseph McCarthy immediately comes to mind — into the monsters they deserved to be remembered as. McCarthy had his “Army-McCarthy Hearings” that finally revealed who and what he was to the American people, Trump has his January 6 Hearings. It’s called the judgment of history, and it is beginning to take a serious toll on Donald Trump, his reputation and his ultimate place in the infamy of history. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.