What are we, American citizens with little voice in the body politic other than the ability to vote, to think of events in today’s Washington? Especially, what are we to think about the actions and postures of Republican Senators regarding the impeachment of President Trump? Those questions are difficult, even gut-wrenchingly difficult, because we are all well-schooled in the powerful and seductive myths of America the Exceptional, America the Beautiful, America the Home of the Brave and Land of the Free. Yet, what we see happening in Washington gives the lie to those comforting myths.
I’m not interested in re-hashing the well-established facts about what President Trump did to merit impeachment. Without question, statements from his own mouth clearly establish his involvement in various nefarious acts. What I’m concerned about is the state of America as a political institution after three years of Trump’s unrelenting demagoguery and GOP Congressional profiles in cowardice as they turned sightless eyes to presidential perfidy.
If the authors of our founding documents and the famous Federalist Papers saw the effects of mindless partisanship and mind-numbingly brutal demagoguery, it was through a glass darkly. If they had been able to see clearly what their political system was capable of, they would have blanched at the thought of a Donald Trump aided by elected GOP sycophants and hastened to revise what they had written.
But that never happened. We are stuck with their blindness and with a political institution that seems to value partisanship over truth and factual reality. What to do? The situation is far from hopeless. Our eyes should be focused on unseating the Demagogue-In-Chief and as many of his GOP ass-kissers as we can and electing people who believe in the rule of law and in the People rather than in corporations.
The problem is a great many conservatives actively dislike or even detest Trump for the blatant asshole he is but will vote for him because he is appointing conservative judges/justices, is coming down hard on immigrants, and is reducing the regulatory duties of federal agencies; here you better be thinking clean air and clean water among many others. Those folks will never see the light of reason; we must ignore them and appeal to people who do. It will come down to one thing only: supporting and voting for a Democratic candidate who has a real chance to win in November.
If we want to change the current reality, all of us, and that means ALL OF US, have to get active in the coming political process. And that means NOW.
