Pining For Normalcy

All right, I understand the hand wringing and the pants wetting. I know that Donald Trump is the greatest threat to this nation's security and democracy since the attack on Pearl Harbor. And I know that Trump is being aided and abetted in his attacks on the rule of law, on our form of government, on the climate, and on our elections by a political party that has become so corrupt and self serving that it is willing to forsake the very principles on which this country was founded in order to further its own selfish interests. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that our situation is grave and that the panic of so many pundits is not without cause. I hear their wails and their cries: We desperately need to throw Trump out of office and to discard the soggy diapers covering his ass and hauling his water -- Moscow Mitch, et al must go! I hear the fear in the voices of pundits such as Cris Matthews and James Carville as the say we cannot do that by nominating a socialist to run against Trump. I hear them when they say that what they want and what they believe the people want is a “return to normalcy.”

While I agree that people want to reestablish a basic decency and patriotism to our society and our government, I have to say that the panicked pundits are missing something that is very important. “Normalcy,” is a word popularized by Warren G. Harding, and “normalcy” as it was defined then and now has failed. The American standard of living is on the decline and people are in pain! Sadly, too many people have responded to this by blindly embracing the demagoguery and destructive impulses of a tyrant who is lashing out at minorities and tearing our government apart at the very time that many of the services and protections our government provides are most needed. In other words the Presidency of Donald Trump is a product of the economic and social angst caused by our failure to adjust to a changing world. One only has to look at the almost fanatical followers of Bernie Sanders to realize that his rise is also attributable to this angst. Not since the great depression has their been a time when this country was so in need of wide ranging systemic changes. Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, and Elizabeth Warren realize this. The so called moderates fall way short of what is needed. Therein lies the problem. If it takes a moderate to defeat Donald Trump and the party of corruption the needed changes will not be made, and we will find ourselves with another perhaps even a worse despot than Trump!

This leaves us with a difficult choice. Bernie is jumping out to a strong lead, and I am concerned about reaction to Bernie calling himself a Democratic Socialist. Change is scary, and after one hundred and some years of trying the plutocrats and their Republican lackeys have succeeded in vilifying socialism. A perfect example of how successful the Republicans and plutocrats have been in making socialism and socialist loaded terms can be seen in Bloomberg's comments about Bernie calling himself a Democratic Socialist:

"We're not going to throw out capitalism. We tried that. Other countries tried that," Bloomberg told Sanders. "It was called communism, and it just didn't work."

Talk about a throw back to the cold war. I guess some civics teacher forgot to tell Bloomberg that communism and socialism, particularly Democratic Socialism, are not synonymous. Socialists are not monolithic. Communism is the most extreme form of socialism and has always been widely opposed by most other socialists. Americans who are democratic socialists do not want to nationalize industries. They want instead to regulate industries in order to protect and encourage competition and workers, and they want government health care, education, and safety nets, much in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. The challenge for the Democratic Party if Bernie is nominated is to get people to look at Bernie's policies rather than the socialist label. It is easier to get young people to do this. Young people are not as afraid of change because so many of the things they are experiencing are still still new them. They did not go through the cold war and were not subjected to decades of disinformation about socialism and socialists, and they know that what we now have is no longer working for the majority of the men and women of this country.

The challenge of getting an older generation to set aside their fears and actually look at what Bernie is proposing is not an easy one, but that does not mean that Bernie cannot win. As some of the pundits have opined, it will take a movement, perhaps a revolution to defeat Trump and address the malaise that now afflicts us. This is no time for a nap! I will support anyone the Democratic Party nominates, but our candidate must not be the not Trump candidate or, even worse, the not Bernie candidate. Our candidate, whether it is Bernie or someone else, must be aspirational and inspirational if we want to succeed! We, as a nation, need to believe and achieve! We need to act boldly to build an economy and a future worthy of the great republic that became a symbol of hope, freedom, and prosperity.

Jonesing For Moral Courage

In announcing his intention to vote for the conviction of Donald Trump in the impeachment trial Senator Doug Jones (D Alabama) quoted Robert Kennedy:

Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.

Doug Jones did not look for an off ramp that would keep him from colliding with the Trump supporters in his red state. He did not try to come up with some absurd compromise that might compromise the constitution and/or the rule of law. He did not advocate censuring Trump or finding Trump guilty on only one of the articles impeachment. No, Doug Jones took the issue head on by correctly stating that the evidence required a guilty verdict on both articles even though much of the evidence that should have been heard and seen was withheld by Trump and by Republican senators.

To do what Doug Jones is doing when he is up for reelection this year in a red state takes courage and a patriotic willingness to sacrifice his self interest for the good of this country.  At a time when so many, mostly Republicans, cower in fear and bow to the demagoguery of a lawless and despotic president Doug Jones stands as a profile in courage. He is an inspiration to us all.  He is what we like to think of ourselves as being and what we want our children to become.

Thank You, Senator Jones!

Who Will Defend Truth, Justice, And Democracy

George Orwell's novel, 1984, was prescient, but no one thought it could happen here – not in America. Now, however, a morally and intellectually bankrupt cabal of unpatriotic cowards has taken over the Republican Party, and that cabal is actively fighting to replace the rule of law with the rule of Trump! Bear with me here as I set the scene before describing the Republican attack on the rule of law.

In the House of Representatives Republicans made no attempt to defend Trump by denying the allegations or offering any evidence that would point to Trump's innocence, instead they disingenuously characterized the procedures as unfair, obstructed the proceedings with spurious objections, and held a ridiculous demonstration. As Axios pointed out, the Congress Members who stormed a closed-door hearing to protest an alleged lack of transparency in the impeachment inquiry were sitting on committees with the power to question witnesses and review documents. Those so called secret depositions they were protesting were no secret to them. Many Republicans even questioned the deponents, and they were given as much time to ask their questions as Democratic senators were given. The vote to send the Articles of impeachment to the senate went mostly along party lines with only three Democrats voting no and one independent voting yes.

Now we come to the Senate where the articles setting forth the allegations against the president are to be tried. Notice that Article I, section 3 the Constitution says, “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all impeachments.” The use of the word “try” was no accident. Our founding fathers knew that trying a matter meant hearing and weighing the evidence and that there were established procedures for doing that! Notice also that the Senators are required to take the oath of affirmation: “I solemnly swear (or affirm) that in all things appertaining to the trial of ____, now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help me God.” Yet Moscow Mitch's first draft, “... of the Senate rules of engagement blocked new evidence unearthed in the House impeachment investigation from formally being presented in the trial without a separate vote... [And t]hat left room for Trump's lawyers to move immediately to dismiss the impeachment charges if they so chose...”

As Senator Schumer said: "Under this resolution, Senator McConnell is saying he doesn’t want to hear any of the existing evidence, and he doesn’t want to hear any new evidence. It’s a cover-up, and the American people will see it for exactly what it is." Senator Schumer's description is still accurate even though the house managers were allowed to use evidence from the house impeachment investigation. The latest poles showed that 75 percent of the respondents want to hear witnesses at the trial of Donald Trump. The people are not as stupid as Moscow Mitch thinks. They know that this is Not A Trial. They know it is Moscow Mitch's show, his sham, his farce, his corrupt cover up! Lamar Alexander, who many pundits have mistakenly described as an institutionalist, let the cat out of the bag:

"There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this with what they call a 'mountain of overwhelming evidence,'" Alexander said in a statement. "Our founding documents provide for duly elected presidents who serve with 'the consent of the governed,' not at the pleasure of the United States Congress. Let the people decide."

It does not take much reading between the lines to understand that Alexander made up his mind to dismiss the articles of impeachment against Trump regardless of what the evidence showed. Indeed he does not even want the American people to hear witnesses with first hand knowledge of Trump's offenses or to hear what is in the relevant documents Trump has refused to turn over to Congress in defiance of lawful subpoenas. Apparently Alexander like the rest of the Republican senators is afraid that the people of this great country will be appalled by what they will hear and see if all the evidence is presented! In this regard Senator Alexander is ignoring the very people he would make the judges and jurors. He, Senator Alexander, is in effect participating in a cover up by withholding the evidence voters need to make an informed decision about Trump's behavior and the extent of the corruption within the Trump administration. If extorting the aid of a foreign country in Trump's election bid is not an impeachable offense, what is? If Trump's unconscionable obstruction of justice and congress is not an impeachable offense, what is? And another cover up is not going to change the answer to those questions!

This brings me back to the statement I made in the first paragraph when I wrote that “... a morally and intellectually bankrupt cabal of unpatriotic cowards has taken over the Republican Party, and that cabal is actively fighting to replace the rule of law with the rule of Trump!” I know that sounds extreme but lets examine the facts. Donald J. Trump is a corrupt and incompetent president who is ruled by his greed and self aggrandizement, and he will do anything to feed his coffers and his ego. The impeachable behavior charged in the articles impeachment are not singular events. As the Mueller Report clearly shows, Trump welcomed the help of Russia in the 2016 election and obstructed justice in an effort cover up his complicity. In other words, Trump has shown a pattern of corrupt behavior that indicates he will continue his unethical and lawless behavior if he is not prevented from doing so. Foreign interference in our elections is one of the things our founding fathers feared most. They knew that such interference brings with it an undue influence of foreign nations on our elected officials and the laws and policies of our government. No one with a triple digit IQ and any knowledge of government and/or history could possibly think that Trump should not be removed from office for what he has done! The argument that we should let the voters decide was soundly rejected at the constitutional convention. Since there were no term limits at that time any impeachment resulting in the removal of a president from office would take the decision out of the voter's hands. The founding fathers knew the urgency of preventing a corrupt and/or despotic president from causing more damage to the Republic and its laws is paramount. The damage caused by an illegitimate election is far too likely to be irreversible. And once liberty has been taken away it usually takes a violent revolution to restore it. If the voters must decide whether a President who is abusing the power of his office is to be removed from office, and in the case at hand they must, they should also judge the morally bankrupt cowards who refuse to discharge the duties of their offices in accordance with the oath they took to "support and defend the Constitution.”

The bottom line here is that if you refuse to enforce the laws and the ethics governing our elected officials, including the President, those unenforced laws and ethics are moot and become utterly meaningless. Democracy and the rule of law go hand in hand; you cannot have one without the other. In this regard the cover up is as dangerous as the offenses Trump is trying to hide. One only has to look at the fact that Trump replaced Jeff Sessions as Attorney General because Sessions was not doing enough to protect Trump from the Muller investigation to see this. The person Trump chose to replace Jeff Sessions as Attorney General is William Barr, who is acting like disgraced and convicted former Attorney General John Mitchell. Instead of protecting the people of this country William Barr has prostituted himself in the service of Trump. He, Barr, misrepresented the Mueller report, refused to enforce congressional subpoenas in spite of the fact that this is one of the Justice Department's duties, and refused to conduct legitimate investigations that might uncover the misconduct of the executive branch, thus forcing the House to conduct the impeachment investigation. Barr has placed the President above the law, and he, Barr, has become an active participant on the wider conspiracy to cover up Trump's crimes and misconduct. Furthermore there is evidence that he and other members of the Trump administration knew and may have participated in the crimes and misconduct they are trying to hide. So here we have the department of justice violating the very laws it is charged with enforcing.

Since Republican Senators have refused to protect the constitution, it is now up to we the people. And thanks to Republican senators helping Trump hide documents and deny access to witnesses we do not have much of the information we should have. What we do know is that no member of the Republican party in Washington has clean hands in this matter. This makes our choice very clear. We can choose the party of Trump or we can defend a democracy that still believes in the rule of law. We cannot endure the rule of Trump and keep a democracy that believes in the rule of law at the same time! We must throw Trump and the dirty diapers covering his butt out of office. The price Republican legislators have to pay for participating in the cover up and refusing to hold Trump accountable must be a high one; it should be the end of their political careers!


I know the votes have not been taken yet, but the fix is in; there is no way the Republicans are going to throw Trump out of office. I also know there is someone out there who is responding to my previous paragraph by saying, “But what about the economy?” My answer is that it took George W. Bush the better part of two terms to crash the economy, and it took Barack Obama the better part of two terms to get us out of Bush's recession. Reelecting a corrupt, incompetent, destructive despot just because he has not crashed the economy yet is downright foolish.