Remove him

That was the seditionist Donald Trump's message to the world this morning, and it is by itself sufficient cause to remove him. It does not matter whether the man follows through with his threatened genocide or not. There is no possible argument that he is not threatening that genocide, not when "A whole civilization will die" is the final threat capping days of promises to destroy all civilian power plants, plunging Iran into famine and disease for the sake of one puffy rapist's personal whim.

It does not matter. Merely issuing the threat is an act unworthy of any supposed national leader. It is the sort of vow that past American governments pointed to as evidence that a foreign dictatorship—Saddam Hussein's, for example—was too bloodthirsty for the world to tolerate.

It does not help that Trump's underlings, freaks one and all, have gone so far round the bend as to imagine themselves agents of God's own will. It is yet another parallel between the fascists of Nazi Germany and our own—one of a hundred or so, at this point.

Trump must be removed. He will not be removed by the 25th Amendment, the remedy meant for cases in which a president is too severely ill to function, because the parasites around Trump have been taking full advantage of his unfitness to embark on their own orgies of brute violence and petty corruption. They want the man at the helm; they want the cruelties he emboldens and takes part in.

It falls on Congress to do it, and we are now at the point where Congress can justifiably be called war criminals if they do not. Perhaps we truly are an "evil empire," eager for "whole civilizations" to die based on the whims of the stupidest and most violence-eager rich prick we can dredge up. Or perhaps we are not.

In Congress, the disgust at this vulgarian's latest attempts to murder his way to global collapse is, at long last, reaching a head.

Individual Democratic lawmakers are issuing more pointed statements.

We can dismiss notions of the 25th Amendment: Again, Trump has surrounded himself only with soulless seditionists willing to be the gears in conservatism's ambitions to unwind democracy in favor of fascist rule.

Impeachment, though, is a requirement. Put it to Republicans to block; that will separate the advocates of war crimes from those who oppose them, signature by signature, which will prove invaluable if the United States is ever to return to non-authoritarian rule again. Make the list of names; etch it into the walls of the Capitol, if necessary.

Cutting the congressional vacation short, getting asses in the seats to defund Trump's military "excursion" immediately: Again, a requirement. Anything less is an enabling act, an endorsement of Trump's threatened war crimes. Return to Washington. Make a list of everyone who did not.

And, above all, emphasize that there will be consequences for these acts. To the military pilots called on to destroy civilian structures for the sole sake of breaking civilians' will. You will be held accountable. To the generals who drew up the plans: You will be held accountable.

We are well past the point where the Constitution can by itself provide remedy for all the crimes these fascists have already gotten away with. The Supreme Court has now insisted that presidents can do any crime they believe the presidency requires of them; presidential pardon power is so vast that Trump could pardon every war criminal he enabled with a single signature.

But the world will not put up with a United States acting out on an imagined role as the world's saboteur, and no matter how the Trump era ends we will be called on to either mete out justice on these criminals or be pinned as criminals ourselves. Those who carried out the crimes will be indicted by foreign courts, and the United States will either become a pariah nation or it will find a way to ship the indicted into their custody.

Enough. There is no moral argument for inaction. There's no plausible case for keeping the deranged idiot madman in power. Fly your sorry besuited asses back to the Capitol and this time, strip this self-proclaimed destroyer of civilizations of his powers. Anything less is an act of complicity.