Lots of People Want Trump Dead–So, So Wrong

Many of us know people who wish someone would kill Trump.  I hear this constantly from people, ranging from fairly sophisticated folks from my college days and 2GreenEnergy colleagues to total morons.

Some of them are hoping that the U.S. military, an organization of generally honorable people and one that clearly considers the president a threat to national security, will take him out.

There are two central reasons that any version of this is wrong.

The first is obvious: lawlessness, especially as it includes violence, is a last resort. As long as rule of law is presumably intact, that’s the way to go.  Military coups happen every year on this planet, but does anyone want to live in a country that has recently had one? Yes, the American Revolution was, for Americans at least, world history’s definitive military coup, but let’s not hope for a second one.

The second is only a tiny bit less subtle.  Trump’s demise, in whatever form it might take, will do very little to turn this country around vis-a-vis what it’s only recently become. We shouldn’t want him in the ground; we should want him in prison, convicted of one or more of the numerous felonies he’s obviously committed. It is only through this, that we have any chance whatsoever of being able to process where he’s taken us and who we’ve become.

If this country is going to reverse its course and head in a positive direction, its electorate, at least the vast majority of it,  needs to see that everything Trump stands for is profoundly un-American: lying, demagoguery, bigotry, coddling dictators, alienating allies, promoting violence, bribery, obstruction of justice, nepotism, corruption, campaign finance violation, fraudulent charities, punishing the poor, looting the treasury to further enrich billionaires, cruelty to children, petty vindictiveness, environmental exploitation, etc.  All of this is just plain wrong.  A dead Donald Trump, even if that comes via something as innocent as a massive heart attack, will not achieve any of that.

To be honest, I’m not sure that anything whatsoever will achieve that, but I’m 100% certain that an assassination or a military coup won’t.

Moreover, most Americans want justice, and that’s what prisons were made for.