Game Overs

I should be used to it now.

Every day of this impeachment inquiry, it seems like the witness utters something that to my eyes seems utterly damning to the President. I mean Well, that's the game. Time for Republicans to float Trump's resignation-level damning information comes out.

Vox agrees. "Gordon Sondland's Opening Testimony is the Ballgame," writes Zach Beauchamp. Was there quid pro quo? said Sondland, The answer is yes. I read that in Sondland's opening statement this morning and thought, surely, this is the tipping point. (I mean, even Ken Starr on Fox was wavering at one point.) Surely this is it.

But no.

Fox News quoted GOP Representative Mark Meadows that, in his view, today's testimony was "Game over" for the Democrats' impeachment hopes. Asked whether Trump ever explicitly told Sondland to withhold Ukraine funding in exchange for political favors (investigating Burisma), Sondland said no. That, Fox News suggests, was the real bombshell. No explicit request equals no wrongdoing. Game over, libs. (Not that these kind of quid pro quos ever operate explicitly, but whatevs.)

The real surprise is how surprised I am, even now. All political news is a shibboleth now. Your take on it, your conclusion about whose game is over, signals your membership in team red or team blue. Nuance isn't critical thinking or taking your time; it's disloyalty.

This shibboleth factor feels to me stronger within the right-wing media world. There's quite a bit of nuance and wiggle room, for instance, in NPR's overview today. Yeah, Sondland said there was quid pro quo, but yeah, Sondland also said he came to that conclusion gradually. It took him a while, he said, for him to get that "Burisma" was essentially code for "Biden." NPR also acknowledges some credibility problems with Sondland, problems for which he was dinged by both Republicans and Democrats. He's changed or updated his testimony three times now. He "doesn't keep notes," so his memory is iffy.

This performance contrasts with that of career diplomats, professionals at protocol and record-keeping. The diplomats were much more immediately keen to detect irregularities in Trump/Guliani's backdoor Ukraine politics. Sondland is out of his element, a hotelier and rich guy appointed to his position by Trump thanks to his million-dollar donation to Trump. In a way, Sondland's muddy testimony is proof of what you get when you kick out the experts and bring in laypeople.

I guess he's what Trump's supporters mean when they insist that he's "draining the swamp." To me, it seems more like a hospital firing all its experienced, credentialed doctors, PAs, and nurses in favor of country club socialites who've consulted Web MD--and then being shocked, shocked! when patients start dying in droves.

But I'm just screaming into the echo chamber. Politico reported this morning that, so far as its contacts among House Republicans can see, not a single GOP member will vote for impeachment, no matter what. There's just no incentive for them to do so when Trump has a stranglehold on their constituents' support.

That's sad, really. Rod Dreher said he voted for John Bel Edwards because, though Edwards is a Democrat, he's a pro-life one. It doesn't feel like betrayal to vote for him. There's no one like that among the Democratic presidential candidates. And Trump has effectively negated everyone to his own left within the Republican party.

For Republicans, Trump is the only game in town. No wonder, then, that they're loath to declare that game over.

Unswayable

Public impeachment hearings continue this week. I caught just a bit of them this morning while on some errands, specifically the end of Rep. Jim Jordan's diatribe about this being a coup to undermine the will of the people. Real Americans, Rep. Jordan assured everyone, know that this is a sham; they see President Trump did no wrong.

The polls I see indicate that 70% of USAmericans believe that what Trump did is improper. A smaller number, however, report supporting impeachment and removal from office.

I'm more interested/disturbed, however, by a poll out from NPR/Marist. Asked whether they could imagine anything from the impeachment inquiry that would change their view on whether or not Trump should be impeached, 65% said no. Nothing would sway them.

I just wrote last week that, although I'm not especially moveable on this issue (I think he's guilty as sin of an impeachable offense), I could imagine something that might sway me. But then, maybe I just have a good imagination.

There's also the fact that, for many people, poll questions like this aren't so much about reporting one's nuanced beliefs as they are about registering sides. People know, generally, how survey results can be mobilized in favor of one or another narrative. Were I dead-set against impeachment, I'd likely say that nothing could sway me. Whether something actually could is another issue.

Were evidence to emerge, for instance, that Trump had perjured himself regarding the Russia investigation, it may become more difficult to resist impeachment--though not removal.

At least, I'd like to think so. The glass-half-empty takeaway from the NPR/Marist poll would be that people are intractably polarized on this essential issue. They live within entirely different epistemological and ideological universes where it's obvious--how can you not see this??--that they are right and the other side is wrong.

Such polarization has roots within the separate media ecosystems of the right and the left. Consider, for instance, the top headline right now on Fox News: "Morrison, Volker undercut claims of 'quid pro quo,' 'bribery,' and 'cover-up' on pivotal day of testimony." Contrast that with one of the top stories on CNN: "How Republicans' star impeachment witness turned on them."

I tend to think that the weight of evidence is stacking up against Trump here. But I can see how, if Fox and such were the only trusted sources I consulted, I'd probably double down on my resistance to impeachment. The Fox story is spiced with slights against Democrats (ex: Democrats are using "bribery" as a charge only because it's "poll-tested"), full of choice quotes from Republicans, and quite selective (judging from the fuller accounts from other news sources) in presenting what Morrison and Volker said. Integral to the Fox News journalistic ethos is not merely reportage (Here's what happened) but perspective (Here's how the other side is acting in bad faith). Well-poisoning is part of the narrative strategy.

Of course, they'd likely say the same about the main stream media (i.e., everyone beyond the Foxsphere).

Perhaps they're right, at least in part. It's not like I'm inclined to read Fox News generously. But I'd like to think that part of my reading involves looking for elements that trouble my own preconceptions. (How would I know? How would I judge this for myself?) I'm not sure that's part of the Fox's assumptions for their readers.

Inertia is a powerful drug, ideological inertia even more so.

Hard times ahead.