A Warning to the Loyal
Wherein the Author asks those who have served the present President most faithfully what, exactly, they expect for it, and consults the Example of General Arnold.
To the Readers of this Publick Blog, and most particularly to those who still stand with him,
I write this Week of the small Tyrant and Liddle' King of this great Country, whose Oval Office cannot contain his mighty Ego, and whose spent Sharpie could hold all his Goodness, with room left over. (The Spelling is his own. In 2017 he bestowed it upon Senator Bob Corker, who had campaigned for him the Year before, and who had lately called his White House "an adult day care center.")
He directs his big Tantrums at the Courts, at his Allies and at his own Friends, and I have a Question for those Friends. If he will do all this to the People who raised him up, why would you suppose he will stand up for you?
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What General Washington foresaw
In his Farewell Address of 1796, General Washington warned against Combinations that would "direct, control, counteract, or awe" the lawful Authorities of the Republic. Such Combinations, he wrote, are likely "to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."
Destroying afterwards the very Engines which have lifted them. The General did not need to meet our present President to describe him. He needed only to have known Men.
What General Arnold was paid
Benedict Arnold sold West Point to the British in 1780, and the British paid him for his Trouble: six thousand three hundred and fifteen Pounds, by General Clinton's own Account. They did not pay him in Trust.
He had been a Major General in our Army. They made him a Brigadier in theirs. When they sent him to raid Virginia, they sent two of their own Officers along to watch him, and ordered that he undertake no important Operation without first consulting them and obtaining their Approbation. In London, it is reported, a Lord of Parliament refused to speak while Arnold sat in the Gallery. He was never given another Command of Consequence. He died in London in 1801, in Debt, and his Widow spent her last Years paying what he owed.
The Side he betrayed his Country to serve never wanted him either. That is the Lesson. A Man who will sell anyone will sell you.
The Engines he has broken
Our Liddle' King keeps a long List of Men and Women who lifted him up and were thrown down for it.
Jeff Sessions was the first Senator to endorse him. When he followed the Rules and stepped aside from an Investigation, he was berated for a Year and a half and then forced out.
Mike Pence served him for four Years without a public Word of Complaint. On the 6th of January 2021, while a Mob in the Capitol chanted for the Vice President, the President told the World that Mr. Pence "didn't have the courage to do what should have been done."
William Barr told the Nation in December 2020 that his Department had found no Fraud on a Scale to change the Election. He was gone within the Month.
Mark Esper and Rex Tillerson, a Secretary of Defense and a Secretary of State, were each dismissed by Twitter.
Marjorie Taylor Greene was as loyal as any Member of Congress alive. Last November, after she broke with him over the Epstein Files, he withdrew his Support and called her a Traitor. She resigned her Seat rather than face, in her own Words, "a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the President we all fought for."
Thom Tillis voted against one Bill. He was called "a talker and complainer," threatened with a Primary, and announced his Retirement within the Week.
Thomas Massie lost his Seat in May to a Challenger the President chose for him.
Pam Bondi carried out his Prosecutions of his Critics as Attorney General, and was removed from Office in April all the same.
And this very Week, his Justice Department sued to keep the State of Alaska from certifying its own Senate Election should his Candidate narrowly lose. Alaska's Elections are run under a Republican Lieutenant Governor, by the same Office that handed his Justice Department the State's Voter Rolls last December. "I'm the one that said 'do it,'" he told Reporters. Loyalty bought Alaska a Lawsuit.
His Allies, and his Courts
Congress voted eighty-six to eleven in the Senate to bind Russia with Sanctions. Within a Month of signing them into Law, he waived them. When Ukraine's military Satellite Links were slowed in the Middle of a War, his Secretary of State called it a Matter "governed by a private commercial contract."
When a federal Judge halted his Deportations last year, he called for the Judge to be impeached, and the Chief Justice of the United States, appointed by a Republican, had to remind him that Impeachment is "not an appropriate response to disagreement." This Week his Justice Department appealed a California Ballot Case before the Judge had even ruled. In my Day, Children waited to be told No before they threw the Tantrum.
The Oath
He has betrayed his Loyalists exactly as he has betrayed our Allies, our Laws, and the very Principles that made this a great Country. He swore to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," and he has kept that sacred Oath as faithfully as he has kept every other Promise he ever made: which is to say, about as well as his Hair Spray has kept his Comb-over.
He fears, I am told, being remembered as another Mr. Hoover. He need not. He will be remembered far longer than Mr. Hoover, and in a Class entirely his own: the President who sold everything we believe in for his Vanity, his Pride, his Gluttony and his Greed, in a pitiful Attempt to look like a big Man, teetering upon gilt Stilts carved from the Reputations of the better Men who held the Office before him.
Alas, it is not the Office that makes the Man. Nor is it the Gold.
The Weakness of it
I have written before that an Apology is only a Weakness to the truly weak. Loyalty works the same Way. A strong Man stands by those who serve him, even when they make him look bad, because his Worth does not depend on never looking bad. It is the weak Man who cannot bear it, and throws them over the Side. The Liddle' King has never once stood by anyone who made him look small. He does not need to. He manages it himself.
And a Man like that is not interested in giving Loyalty to anyone. To him Loyalty is only another Fealty owed upward: Admiration sent in one Direction, Hoovered up from on high. An amoral Man does not offer Loyalty or Protection to anything that does not serve him. Businesses and Allies, Countries and Causes, Parties and Facts, Traditions, Promises and solemn Oaths have all found it so. So has a Woman in New York, whom a Jury found he had sexually abused. So, by their own Account, did several teenage Contestants in the Pageant he owned, some as young as fifteen, who said he walked into their Dressing Room while they changed. He denies it. But he owned the Pageant, and their Protection was his to give. So have the Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, who had to fight his own Justice Department for every Page of their Files.
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Here is the plainer Version, and it is meant for the Loyal.
You may think yourself safe because you have done everything he asked. So had Mr. Sessions. So had Mr. Pence, and Mrs. Greene, and Mrs. Bondi, and the Election Officers of Alaska. Not one of them was spared for it. The Beast does not inquire how you voted before it dines.
He will not take a courageous Stand for you, because he has never taken one for anyone. He will not keep Faith with you, because he has not kept it with his Friends, his Party, his Allies or his Oath. The only Loyalty he has ever shown is to himself, and he expects yours in Addition.
So why, oh why, must we be asked to send back to Congress anyone who would turn a blind Eye to their own Morals, fight with their own Hearts, and tussle with their own Brains to find ways to excuse him, raise him, or enable him?
You owe him nothing. You owe your Country a great deal. On the 3rd of November, give it a Congress that answers to the People and not to the Liddle' King, and see how quickly you are free.
Polly Dogood
P.S. It is told, though I cannot prove it and nobody ever has, that Arnold once asked a captured American Officer what his Countrymen would do with him if they caught him, and was told they would cut off the Leg he had wounded in their Service, bury it with full military Honours, and hang the rest of him. I offer it only as a Tale. The Moral is true enough.