King Donald and the Idiot Prince

PARIS — It comes down to this: Donald Trump says Adam Schiff committed treason, potentially punished by execution, because he accurately depicted that ultimatum to Ukraine's new president as a “classic organized-crime shakedown.”

The case is open and shut. Ukraine would lose $400 million it needs to hold off Russians on Europe's eastern flank if its young corruption-averse leader didn't help him slime Joe Biden. Such self-serving treachery is exactly why Congress was given the power to impeach.

Trump invokes lèse-majesté. No one questions a monarch. His phone call was perfect. And beautiful. Nancy Pelosi is corrupt. Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee chairman and seasoned prosecutor, is ten times worse. Never-Trump Republicans are human scum.

“Read the transcript,” Trump intones over and over. There is no transcript, only a call memo that establishes guilt. He shifts focus to Hunter Biden, whose role is beside the point. Partisans want to out a patriotic informant, putting him in peril, although high-level witnesses under oath to Congress confirmed his report in damning detail.

And yet half the nation is prepared to flout the Constitution, favoring political gaming over an impeachment process to uphold the rule of law. This is exactly how representative democracy gives way to demagogy.

In America, reality is lost as words are flung around by two extremes deaf to one another. But in Europe, people who learned the hard way how the Big Lie leads to Blitzkrieg see the United States abandoning values that protect a wider world from tyranny.

A glance around the globe reveals emergencies that demand a superpower's resources: climate calamity, worsening conflicts, human waves on the move. European countries that forced the Soviets to tear down the Berlin Wall are putting up de-facto new walls of their own.

In theory, institutions are in place to make America sane again. Public testimony this week will expose details of the Ukraine extortion — and much else. Elections next year can do what impeachment won't and change the majority in a stonewall Senate.

Still, after a month of interviews back home, I fear not only another four more years of Trump but also possible succession by his cruel, clueless oldest son. If that doesn't scare you witless, nothing will.

Don Jr. has seized limelight with a book: “Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us.” At a UCLA launch, he walked out to loud boos 20 minutes into the scheduled two-hour event after he refused to answer questions. If he did, he said, leftwing social media would use soundbites to attack him. At that, even some supporters joined in the booing.

More and more, echoes of that hoary line by Walt Kelly's Pogo ring true. We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Our electoral system is preposterous. Contenders spend 18 months in brutal campaigns, raising multiple millions from donors with mixed expectations. Networks zero in on the offbeat and outrageous to drive up ratings. Money determines who survives in superficial debates.

With so much at stake, a broad field of Democrats harp on impossible domestic agendas, ignoring global crises. They gut-shoot one another and gang up on whoever leads the pack. That can only leave an eventual victor bloodied and vulnerable next November.

France, as one example, strictly limits contributions, airtime and advertising in three-month campaigns. A first round eliminates the also-rans. Then two candidates square off on vital issues in lengthy face-to-face debates that most of the country watches.

Even then, the French can be stuck with an inept president for five years. Parliamentary systems are more flexible. Britain is in turmoil over Brexit, but it still works. A vote of no-confidence can dump a party leader or a prime minister almost overnight.

A comprehensive New York Times poll reflects the obvious. Conservative voters in six swing states who oppose Trump are less likely to vote for a Democrat if they catch a whiff of that dreaded misunderstood word, socialism. But Joe Biden, a comfortable old shoe, could win.

Reporters don't endorse candidates; this is my own analysis after watching democracies wither for a very long time.

Congress, not the president, passes laws. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, among others, are vital in the Senate to fix what ails America: income inequality, corporate avarice, inadequate health care, partisan courts and legislators who betray citizens they swear to serve.

More immediately, the overriding challenge is to keep the planet from imploding or exploding as it alternately floods, burns and bakes. China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, for starters, need our serious attention.

Biden, despite his drawbacks, understands world realities. He is a known quantity among friends and foes, able to find common ground. He can steer the ship of state off the rocks before we chart a radical new course. Sanders may be too old in 2024, but Warren won't be, and there are lots of promising young comers.

But Biden is anathema to many young voters who see him as a dotard behind the times. I found, for instance, a smug, snide piece in The Hill. The writer, in grade school when Barack Obama took office, exhibits a worldview that dates back only to when he began paying attention.

“It is absolutely stunning that one of the politicians most responsible for our current plight has the gall to express concern for those he took a direct role in hurting…” he wrote. “It is difficult to overstate the miserable and hollow state that Obama and Biden left this country in.”

He overlooked George W. Bush's Iraq War, which set fire to the Middle East, spiked terrorism and squandered trillions. Bush cut taxes and let financial swashbucklers plunge the country into deep recession. Obama restored a healthy economy for which Trump claims credit.

One op-ed in a major paper argued that boomers should butt out; their time had passed. Those older than 75 were apparently beyond his consideration. He wrote something like, “We millennials think…” His italics implied that he was all millennials' chosen spokesman.

Those are just two guys, but they reflect a new style enabled by the internet. Anyone with a keyboard can spew ill-informed crap, arrogating to themselves the role of speaking for their particular generation or identity group. Human societies don't work that way.

“Old people” is not a useful qualifier. Many of them have seen the world up close, acquiring wisdom and long memories of mistakes we should not repeat. They know the cost of projecting their own values on distant societies. No one country gets to be “first.”

Young voters matter most; they'll have to suffer with whatever happens. Many are whip smart. But since the Reagan years, public schools have been dumbed down. Teachers are overworked and underpaid. Students learn little about the other 95 percent who share our planet.

To survive Trump, we all need a firm grip on history and a sense of how the world turns. A student once told me past events didn't matter to him; they happened before he was born. I replied that Aristotle predated me by just a bit, but he made a point worth remembering:

Most people are basically good but pay little attention to the big picture, distracted by daily life, sports and whatever else they did before binging on Netflix. Bad ones are fewer, but they are focused on what they want and will do anything necessary to get it.

That hasn't changed in 2,500 years. But today Trump's flimflam resonates as stock buybacks, dividends and gravity-defying fiscal policies dope the markets. We all know people who revile the president but will vote to reelect him. After all, he's making them rich.

For now. In the meantime, he is destroying our world. I, for one, agree with what “Shifty Schiff” said in his indictment of a deeply corrupt, self-obsessed president. If America can't defend itself against a Donald Trump, it is no longer worth defending.