The clouds return

 

 Today the United States Senate voted that Donald Trump did not do what he very visibly and obviously did between late October 2020 and early January 2021; betray his oath of office as President to faithfully execute the law and support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

To me this has the feel of the point in watching one of those historical dramatizations where the characters have come to a decision you know is going to end badly. The conspirators have chosen to go ahead with the plot that you know will end in betrayals, prosecutions, hangings, and beheadings. The commander has made a decision you know is based on bad intelligence, or is because of his hubris or pure stubbornness, that will result in the deaths of thousands of his own troops.

It was years ago that I wrote a whole series of posts comparing my nation today with the Rome of classical times, noting that we seem insistent on repeating many of the same foolish mistakes the Romans of that period did, and with much the same likely result - the end of functional democracy and the establishment of permanent minority rule.

I've been pretty merciless in castigating American "conservatives" (who are, by the way, in no sense "conservative" but are radical reactionaries) for being the driving force behind this and, as this vote shows, they still are.

(What this also proves, in a way I didn't begin to anticipate before the past year, is the extent to which the GOP has become the American Party of KimIlSungism-KimJongIlism. Turns out that we aren't even dignified with the bad examples of Rome. We're fucking North Korea with Pizza Huts and Chevy dealerships.)

So.

Now what?

When I talked about how impossible it is to "talk" to Republicans now it turns out that it's not because they're some sort of rigid ideologues. As far as I can tell the current Republican orthodoxy consists of a bizarre farrago of culture-war nonsense ("cancel culture", "wokeism", anti-"nanny state"-ism, and "personal freedom" that seems to largely consist of violent rejection of common sense like reducing stupid firearm-related behavior and public health precautions during a pandemic) with pure delusion about finance (stuff like "trickle-down economics", the Laffer Curve, taxation-as-theft...that sort of thing).

But the real break-point appears to be that the GOP is now the Party of Kim Trump Q, a personality cult, overrun with bizarre conspiracies and paranoia, devoted to owning the libs even if the cost is its own misery and impoverishment.

There's no hope there.

But what about the rest of the US political world?

The Democratic Party - the only remaining party that the US has allowed itself - has been a willing accomplice in our neo-Roman imperial foolishness. It has either acquiesced, or encouraged, the increasing inequity of wealth in our return to the Gilded Age.

It has been willing to go along with the hollowing out of the American economy, shoving millions of people into precarious "gig" jobs and helped "business" to close out by downsizing, automating, and offshoring the sort of living-wage/good-benefit/stable-pension jobs that helped create the white middle class after WW2. 

It has blinked at, or encouraged, foolish imperial wars.

It has been unwilling or unable to challenge our headlong plunge towards the Late Holocene Thermal Maximum.

But - given today's proof that the entire GOP has gone full juche and the utter desolation of actual sane political ideas in the American Right - if there IS to be a hope of avoiding a collapse-of-the-Republic-fate it will have to come from what passes for the "Left" in US politics.

Can it? And, if so, how?

So that's what we're going to talk about after this.

But you'll have to give me a moment or two. Right now I'm too depressed at what today says about the State of our Union.

The end of the American Experiment

I know I said I was done wirting about American politics, but this is so ridiculously central to all of our lives that I'll have some thoughts on the United States Senate's decision to transform the office of Chief Executive into an unaccountably sovereign neo-autocrat early next week.

Suffice for now to say that the one thing that never entered my mind, when as a young man I watched the committee hearings on Nixon’s criming that summer of ‘74 - my mother, good American that she was, refused to let me shirk observing a critical moment in our nation's political existence - was that I’d live to see the remake of that picture where the bad guy wins and walks out of the courtroom grinning. If Trumpy had any sense of history he’d pose on the steps of Marine One with both arms raised flashing double “V” signs.

It’s kind of shocking to watch how easy it is for a president to become a king.

It’s just revolting to watch that happen with this fucking guy. Caesar? Sure. Brilliant bastard with a string of Big Wins. Trump? Seriously? We’re gonna pimp our our republic for this low-rent orange shitgibbon? Say what you want about Lenin or Hitler, at least there was some dark genius about them. We’re taking a dump on the 200-plus years of the experiment in republican governence for this sleazy spray-tanned used-car-salesman?

Assuming it will be legal to write honestly about these times future historians won’t have a clue how to present this without pages of baffled speculation and disbelief.

What's really weird about this is how it's all taking place as if it were just any other day.

Friday, while 3,000 miles away the republic I have made my home for more than sixty years, the republic whose uniform I wore, the republic I always assumed was immutable, is being turned into an autocracy by a cabal of venal and cynical men.

And I was driving to work like any other day.

Just seemed like there should have been something more...ominous.

Rain of blood.

Earthquake.

Dead rising from the grave.

Not merely light traffic congestion passing through the Woodburn interchange.

An Open Letter to Speaker Pelosi

"I've already contacted my Representative, Mr. Blumenauer, but I wanted to reach out to you directly to let you know how critical I believe your role in upholding the republican institutions of this nation is now.

The conclusions of the Mueller investigation and, in particular, the shamelessness of the Republican Party in evading and denying those conclusions as they relate to the criminal conduct of this President, make it clear that if this is not the moment for impeachment there never will be, and if the House Democratic caucus does not use the impeachment process to uphold those institutions that they will not BE upheld.

Regardless of the foreseeable betrayal of the nation by the Senate GOP there is no reason not to begin proceedings against this President and his failure to faithfully uphold the laws of the United States.

Impeachment. Now."

Impeachment

After today's release of the investigation into the 2016 election and the despicable performance by the lickspittle who is notionally my nation's chief "justice" officer, the choice of the way forward is brutally clear.

Either the United Stated House of Representatives opens impeachment proceedings against Donald J. Trump.

Or the United States becomes Putin's Russia, where "truth" is what The Leader says it is and the residents are subjects, not citizens.

Forget the man's obvious senile incapacity. Forget the self-dealing, the lies, the performative cruelty, the emoluments. Simply concentrate on this; a foreign power meddled in the internal politics of this country. The current President knew of it, did nothing to alert those responsible for preventing it, and, instead, expected to profit from it.

Does that excuse the U.S. meddling in other nations' internal business?

Of course not.

Does that justify turning a blind eye to the current Administration's role in what happened in 2016?

Of course not.

And then...consider all the things I've cautioned you to forget. The lies. The corruption. The vile eagerness to run the nation only for the rich, the white, and the notionally-Christian. The brutal vindictiveness. The crass eagerness to embrace Naziism. All the other lawbreaking, including recommending that federal officers break the laws and promising pardons if they do. The reality that the orange sonofabitch thinks he's a king.

If this Congress does not impeach, we might just as we stop kidding ourselves about being a "republic of laws, not men".

It's really just that simple.