![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entering the Twilight Zone
Sep. 25th, 2019 12:04 amA somewhat anachronistic article (published early on Tuesday) describes America as having entered the Twilight Zone, and asks whether Congress will act. It now appears that the House of Representatives, at least, may do so, but if Dishonest Donald is impeached, the next question will be what happens at his trial before the Senate, which retains a Republican majority. I hope to see twenty or more Republican Senators vote their consciences, or what ought to be their consciences, but unless yet more shocking misconduct comes to light, this does not appear very likely.
I think that an acquittal would be a grave mistake and a menace to constitutional government; our nation might itself enter its twilight years. Trump, his team of grifters, and Putin’s hackers might do their best to prevent any more free and fair elections, even if elections continued, formally, to be held. If this seems excessively melodramatic, who would have predicted five years ago that President Trump (what a joke!) would have merged his re-election campaign with the Republican National Committee, and that five states would have decided not to hold Republican primaries or caucuses?
Alternatively, if the Democrats were voted back into power, they might seize on the precedent that a lawless President would be impossible to remove so long as his faction controlled at least one third of the Senate, and a President Warren or Sanders or Harris might use that as a basis to rule increasingly by decree. History’s longest-lived democratic republic might be on the road to a final witches’ dance of intensified polarization, autocratic rule, and then, perhaps triggered by national bankruptcy or military defeat by China, a military coup, possibly civil war or perhaps an auto-golpe, to use the Spanish term.
I do not say that the worst would surely come to pass, but I see ways in which it could. For these reasons, I very much hope to see Trump not only impeached but also convicted and removed from office in disgrace. The survival of our Republic and our nation may depend upon it.
I think that an acquittal would be a grave mistake and a menace to constitutional government; our nation might itself enter its twilight years. Trump, his team of grifters, and Putin’s hackers might do their best to prevent any more free and fair elections, even if elections continued, formally, to be held. If this seems excessively melodramatic, who would have predicted five years ago that President Trump (what a joke!) would have merged his re-election campaign with the Republican National Committee, and that five states would have decided not to hold Republican primaries or caucuses?
Alternatively, if the Democrats were voted back into power, they might seize on the precedent that a lawless President would be impossible to remove so long as his faction controlled at least one third of the Senate, and a President Warren or Sanders or Harris might use that as a basis to rule increasingly by decree. History’s longest-lived democratic republic might be on the road to a final witches’ dance of intensified polarization, autocratic rule, and then, perhaps triggered by national bankruptcy or military defeat by China, a military coup, possibly civil war or perhaps an auto-golpe, to use the Spanish term.
I do not say that the worst would surely come to pass, but I see ways in which it could. For these reasons, I very much hope to see Trump not only impeached but also convicted and removed from office in disgrace. The survival of our Republic and our nation may depend upon it.
