Dear America,
The big day is finally here, and it looks like the impeachment of Donald Trump is inevitable. Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader of The Senate has unabashedly declared that he is deciding the rules of the cognate impeachment trial in cooperation with the White House, presumably with Donald Trump as well, either directly or through surrogates. What's striking about McConnell is the overt nature of his collusion with Trump and his minions in the corruption of the trial process so as to essentially rig the outcome. Given the genesis of the whole crisis, one would think that such activities would be at least covert, if not taboo, but it all seems so Republican that no one seems particularly surprised, or much to my chagrin, discomfited.
One of my concerns about the alleged, and in the opinion of most, proven misconduct of Trump is the potential it evinces for our president to seek the kind of permanent franchise over power in this country that his "good friends", Vladimir Putin, R.T. Erdogan and Xi jinping wield in their countries. Our president has demonstrated what appears to be his belief in his own entitlement in many ways, but particularly in the impunity he claims to do what he has done to get us to this point in the impeachment. He has defied congressional subpoenas and ordered others, sometimes without success, not to comply with them as well. Put concisely, he has displayed his contempt for our system of checks and balances, and I have no doubt that given the chance, he would do away with them. As for the Republicans, as Shakespeare said in Hamlet's voice, "there's the rub." I can't be the only one who perceives the threat, and I am willing to bet, in fact we are all betting, that the majority of Americans will too...eventually.
McConnell, acting as Trump's minion on The Hill, is co-opting his own party on The President's behalf, and so far they are going along willingly. In the height of their dudgeon, they appear almost haughty as they contemn the whole impeachment thus far as if they were narrating a passion play. But sanctimony notwithstanding, their defense to a claim that they are ignoring the danger to our national democracy that Trump's not-so-subtle ambitious designs constitute would of necessity be pretty thin. You have to remember that both Putin and Erdogan were elected, so they come from ostensible democracies too, though both men are in fact the kind of autocrats that our civil war was fought to shrug off and that our constitution was devised to preclude. The significance of that fact is that it is an almost universal commitment in this country that the threat that anyone might ascend to an autocratic presidency is anathema. So with Trump sanguinely suggesting at a recent rally in Texas that the chanting crowd should ask for twelve more years instead of the traditional four, someone in the mainstream media, on the Senate or House floor, or just a few obscure bloggers like me will inevitably bring up the danger here. The fact is that failure to sanction Trump for his attempt to extort a political campaign favor from a foreign leader in furtherance of his own political ambitions is just asking for tyranny to reign here as it does in Turkey and Russia at least, not to mention the potential for something like what prevails in North Korea and China. Sooner or later, someone is going to point out our jeopardy, and they are going to ask the Republicans why they aren't doing anything about it--why in fact they are abetting it.
That is the rub. Republicans are flippantly dismissing the whole prospect of impeachment and a trial as mere formalities. McConnell is almost explicitly saying that they are, and his constituents so far haven't confronted him on that point. But impeachment is such a solemn process that failure to consider the allegations it comprises with that same solemnity is, dare I say, un-American, so Republicans' sanctimonious dismissal of the process is risky business. They consider themselves to be the embodiment of our forefathers' democratic design, but allowing Trump to get away with all he has done so far, and in the subject episode in particular, is far from what the forefathers had in mind.
When the voters go to the polls next November, there is a good chance that they will be brought up short when they go to pull the metaphorical Republican lever this time. By then, it will have been pointed out that the Republicans for whom they are intending to vote put our freedom up as if it were political ante in their attempt to retain power for the party as a whole. That kind of self-serving expediency cannot be allowed to prevail as an ethos if our republic is to survive. Sooner or later, even Republican voters will have to realize that.
Your friend,
Mike
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