Nancy Pelosi was on Bill Maher’s show last Friday
and she was mega-impressive. Maher pointed out that Trumpians typically portray
her as radical. He might have added that Trump himself has tried to hang the
epithet “Crazy Nancy” on her. But honest observers describe Speaker Pelosi
as a San Francisco liberal which, she declared, “I proudly am.” I am totally
cool with that. As far as I’m concerned, we would all do well to think of San
Francisco as America’s Heartland.
A couple weeks ago, Ms. Pelosi was asked by a
journalist from a right-wing publication if she hated Donald Trump, and she
responded with a good deal of passion that as a Catholic, she doesn’t hate
anyone.
Her response made me think about hatred. I’m not a
Catholic so I suppose I’m free to hate anyone I please, but should I?
Here’s the thing: I’m not clear on the difference
between being enraged and hating. I am without doubt thoroughly and pretty much
constantly enraged with Donald Trump. First, I’m offended by his routine
spouting of ridiculous lies. When someone lies to me, I feel like they’re
saying, “You don’t matter, you piece of shit, so I’ll just tell you this nonsense
and expect you to swallow it.” Trump gives me the sense that he feels that way
about me – and everyone else who doesn’t suck up to him – every day.
So, here’s how I hear Trump: “I will build a wall
and Mexico will pay for it – believe me, you dumb-ass rube.”
“Let me tell you, you contemptible fool, I am
going to replace Obamacare with a far better health care system. Believe me (snicker,
snicker)”
Ugh. One preposterously insulting lie after
another. But do I hate him for this? Or for being a misogynistic, bigoted,
incompetent narcissist who is wrecking American democracy? I’m enraged at him
on a daily basis, but do I want him to die a wretched death or burn in hell
forever? Not really. I just want him to shut up and go away. So, maybe there is
a difference between hating and being enraged. And maybe Nancy is right that we
shouldn’t hate. She’s right about almost everything else.
Nancy Pelosi is such an extraordinary figure, and
right now so vital to the preservation of our constitutional
democracy, that I wish her picture could replace Trump’s on the White House
wall when he finally leaves office. And her Animatronic replica should
replace Trump’s in the Disney Hall of Presidents. And so on.
Senator Amy Klobuchar has pointed out that a woman
can obviously defeat Trump, since Nancy Pelosi defeats him every day. Well
said, Senator Klobuchar. I certainly agree that Nancy has handled the
impeachment issue well. It would have been a political mistake to try to
impeach Trump based on the Mueller report. Yes, it produced evidence that he
had obstructed justice multiple times, and that he was inordinately fond of
Putin, but it did not incorporate sufficient political firepower to bring the
voting public on board with an impeachment, especially after William Barr -
Trump’s soulless consigliere at the “Justice Department” - distorted its
contents.
But once Trump made his “perfect” (i.e., perfectly
unconstitutional) phone call to the president of Ukraine, impeachment time had
arrived, and Nancy knew it. Then, once Trump was impeached, she held on to the
official documents for a couple of crucial weeks, only sending them to the
Senate in mid-January. This gave the public time to mull over the issue and, as
a side benefit, gave Trump time to stew feverishly about the deep scar on his
record, an ugly blemish over which he has no control.
As an added benefit, a new flood of damning
evidence against Trump has come out during the Pelosi hold-out, and the public
has grown increasingly supportive of the idea that the Senate trial should
include witnesses and new evidentiary documents.
Nancy’s instincts, in other words, were perfect.
So where do I get off referring to Madame Speaker
as Nancy? Well, perhaps I forgot to mention that we’re acquaintances. Well, all
right, to be specific, I met her once when she visited Orlando in 2017 and I
had a brief, maybe 10-sentence-long, conversation with her. I even had someone
take a selfie of us. At least I tried to get a selfie, but my phone wouldn’t
work in the limited available light, so you’ll have to take my word on this
point. Or, I could offer this picture as a kind of “the-hurricane-is-definitely-heading-for-Alabama”
kind of evidence, and maybe that will convince you:
Nancy and Me
In any case, I don’t think you need any convincing
to agree with me on my main point and that is that Speaker Pelosi is a
truly remarkable leader and America is blessed or, as the non-religious might
say, just so damn lucky, to have her in charge.
