When I was young I
became aware that in this nation I could say anything I wanted, ask any
question I desired and did not have to agree with something if I did not
want. I knew the extent of free speech was nearly unlimited. I
determined the nature of the culture in which I lived as one that would
always protect one's right to free speech as well as the right to read
anything I chose. I thought I was lucky to have been born in a nation
whose very foundational documents I would learn were enshrined in the
Constitution since 1789 by the nation's prescient Founders.
As
I matured and attended a university I learned to question everything
including all those things which power mandated I must accept as truth.
I became smitten with many of the protest events of the late 60's
because they provided me an insight into many of those things I later
learned to be untrue. I first then became acquainted with the history
of persons of color in this nation and the so called Jim Crow laws a
person of color in the south was required to follow. I was shocked and
revolted when a black professor told us that he fought in World War II
only to return unable to sit at a lunch counter with whites or that he
was mandated to sit at the back of the bus giving up a seat in the front
because only a person of white privilege could sit there. I became
aware of poll taxes, grandfather clauses and literacy tests as a tools
whites in the south used to deny persons of color the right to vote. If
one thought in the north those discriminatory practices would not
happen one need only look to de facto segregation in the northern cities, or in the many schools which were separate and still unequal.
My
experience told me, too, that in war this nation was always right. I
then, however, read books like J. William Fulbright's "Arrogance of
Power" or listened to lectures by Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky only to
learn that the US was not always on the side of right but was often on
the side of international political self interest denying rights to
those who were too weak to resist. Vietnam, for example, or the removal
of the Iranian democratically elected and beloved Mosaddegh
replacing him with the US friendly Shah and his brutal repressive
police force Savak were examples of US power mandating results it did
not have, in my opinion, the right to make.
Maturity
dictates, though, once strongly held beliefs need from time to time to
be reassessed. If I have learned nothing from this evil Trumpian time I
have learned to value what this nation had before his corrupt rule and
how easy it can be to subvert democracy. Edmund Burke, the 18th century
philosopher said
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing" and so good men in our Republican Senate have snipped at their
own balance of power rights bestowed constitutionally on them to allow
this corrupt con man, charlatan and malignant narcissist to keep his
seat when they could have removed this cancer from our body politic when
they had the chance.
Trump
has subverted our democracy, placed in power other men who are loyal
only to him and not to the Constitution. Our Founders would be aghast.
He is vicious in act, word and deed locking up children in cages,
polluting our once pristine waters, denying climate change and
articulating all manner of vicious appellations on many innocent others
whose only crime is possessing a brain to think and question all that he
does. He has maligned our allies, turned his back on our friends and
advocated for our enemies. He has become a Russian asset in that he has
allowed Russian power in Ukraine to go unchecked even conducting a hot
war in the Donbas section and annexing Crimea. He refuses to release
his taxes leaving us to question why. The worst subjugation of
democracy, though, comes with his annihilation of the Congressional
balance of power by the attorney general declaring in jack boot
agreement with Trump that the president can do anything he wants,
subvert any principle of a free state because the president has the
Article II right to do it. He is emulating a banana republic by firing
all those who do not agree with him and replacing those eliminated with
so called "acting" authorities giving him the freedom to remove and
replace them at will. Moreover, he interfered in an ongoing trial to
lighten the sentence of his pal Roger Stone found guilty on seven counts
of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction. It is the
first time a president with the attorney general's blessing has
interfered in an ongoing trial. This is unconscionable.
The latest most egregious action came by his firing of the acting
director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, because Maguire did
the right thing by briefing Congress about 2020 Russian election
meddling on Trump's behalf. Trump was livid at Maguire for doing the
right thing, fired him and placed in that vital-to-national-security
position Richard Grenell, a man of zero intelligence experience but a
loyal Trump supporter nonetheless. There are, of course, so many more
examples of Trumpian usurpation of powers he does not have.
The founding fathers put in order of importance the legislative branch
as Article I and the executive branch as Article II. The Founders did
not want a king but Donald J. Trump does and is using his acquittal of
impeachment by the Republican majority Senate as a permission slip to do
anything he wants. Acquittal does not mean innocence and he is,
indeed, not innocent. The House found enough guilt to impeach
him for asking a foreign power to investigate his presumed election
rival, Joe Biden.
Donald J. Trump is creating an authoritarian despotic tyranny before our
very eyes and God forbid is poised to have the electorate give him four
more years.
Benjamin Franklin when a woman asked what form of government the
Founders had created said "a Republic if you can keep it" because he
feared the fragility of a democracy and man's proclivity to be seduced
by power and subvert it. Donald J. Trump is doing just that!
