Not because I dislike him in particular. I would retrospectively be happy to see any president of my lifetime impeached, with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter (and that's just because I've never dug into his record enough to find out what he did that merited impeachment).
Nor because I'm particularly interested in seeing the system "work" by "serving justice." I don't like the system (the Westphalian nation-state), and in principle I consider anything that weakens it to be a good thing.
I believe that impeaching Trump but not removing him will weaken the system.
Senate acquittal will be more than just the increasingly common injection of congressional steroids into the arm of the imperial presidency. Given the format of a trial, coupled with the complete absence of reasonable doubt that he did what he's accused of doing and the fact that what he did was political in nature rather than along the lines of lying about a hummer from an intern, acquittal will amount to a formal declaration:
Ave Imperator!
The open and unabashed elevation of the office of president to the institution of Caesar, god-emperor, above and immune to all law and custom, is a pretty big step down the path of political disintegration.
Which is also a bad thing in the short term. It's going to be ugly and it's going to be dangerous. But it's coming sooner or later in any case. Might as well enjoy the show as it approaches and hope we can build something better where the former United States once stood.
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