Impeach Trump.
How cathartic that sounds.
How inconsequential it would be if the purpose is to stop Donald Trump’s policies, his meanness, his repulsive behavior, his grifting, his demeaning of the office of the presidency and his devaluation of America’s standing among democracy-loving nations.
Putting aside how realistic getting an impeachment and conviction would be, with the expectant euphoric satisfaction of humiliating Trump, does anyone seriously believe vice president JD Vance and second in line House speaker Mike Johnson would be any more compassionate and effective in curing our ills and leading the free world?
Vance reached a new low on Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps. He failed to note the Nazis killed six million Jews and millions of other persecuted people during World War II. It is through such indifference, purposeful or unintentional, that antisemitism and neo-Nazi fascist ideology flourishes.
Lately, I’ve been struggling to return to sleep between the hours of 1 to 4 am. I lie in bed finger-typing on my iPhone the dissolution of an America I learned to love. Sure, as in many romances there have been bumps along the way. Assassinations. Kent State. Watergate. Clarence Thomas. Mitch McConnell. Donald Trump.
I’ve been blogging since I retired in mid 2009, well before Trump consumed the attention of America and the rest of the world with his now openly manifested imperial presidency and new world order.
My sanity, my equilibrium, is taxed because I have fears that Gilda and I will, when our times come, not leave to our children and grandchildren a country better than the one we grew up and matured in.
I do not mean better materially. I have confidence in our overall economy and in their abilities to be gainfully employed.
Rather, I worry that in pulling out blocks of the Jenga-like values and support systems developed over the last 90 years Trump will destroy what made America great, the envy of the world, the place where everyone aspired to live, free and with unbounded opportunity.
I have a confession. I have been blogging a lot lately because I am depressed about the state of our union.
Specifically, I am depressed not because Trump has been taking an axe to our charter oak—and has another three plus years to savage even more constitutional planks. No, I am depressed because six jurists who should be the most intelligent and far-sighted of our leaders have accorded him (and his successors) carte blanche to turn our country back into a monarchy. Not a symbolic monarchy like that practiced by King Charles III of the United Kingdom, but like a real dictator, like Vladimir Putin, Russia’s modern day tsar.
Unless the Supreme Court reverses itself, our days as a beacon of democracy are numbered. This Supreme Court has dismissed precedent. Those precedents were from prior tribunals, decades in the past. This bunch of justices is not likely to reverse the damage it has wrought.
Besides, Trump has postulated he is above the law, that he need not adhere to any encumbrance passed by the court. Surely a military eviscerated of any patriotic leaders will not challenge him.
Nor will a Congress run by Trumpians. Half of our country has lost the ability to discern truth from propaganda. Half of our elected senators and representatives do not speak out against autocratic tyranny. They apparently have not read the Constitution and the Federalist Papers or have not understood and retained their meaning, their warnings. They are content to take our money—their salaries, their health care, their pensions, their privilege—and vote the Trumpian party line.
I am no fan of Stephen Miller. Nor of Kristi Noem. Or Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Kash Patel, Karoline Leavitt, Pam Bondi and the rest of the sacophants installed by Trump. They should not be aides in an administration. They are demons. But simply removing them would not end Trump’s evil, any more than impeaching and convicting him would. There are too many fellow travelers in the shadows eager to replace them.
Some believe the only thing that will reverse Trump’s influence is the election of Democrats to the House and Senate. I hope so. But I wonder if after the midterm elections later this year Trump will be emboldened if Republicans hold on, or desperate if Democrats succeed.
Ten months until November 3. Will enough Americans wake up to the reality facing us all?
