Impeachment! — Will they Cry “Peace! Peace!

Impeachment! — Will they Cry “Peace! Peace!

Short Title: Impeachment!— Will They Cry “Peace! Peace!

Full Title: Impeachment!!? — Leaders and/or Followers who Cry “Peace! Peace! when there is no Peace!

“Gentlemen may cry ‘Peace! Peace!’ when there is no peace!”  [Patric Henry, 1775]

OUTLINE:

The Myth!?; Primary Reality (4 Horsemen); Political Reality; Moral Reality; Physical Reality; Subsidiary Considerations [No Magic Bullet for the righteous or the unrighteous]; Time and the Tide…

THE MYTH OF “SEPARATE” ISSUES WITH RESPECT TO THE IMPEACHMENT OF ONE DONALD JOHN TRUMP [Rhetorical preliminaries]

I have been hearing, seeing, and reading a number of comments about the complexities of “impeachment” proceedings versus the absolute need for defeating said DJT in the upcoming 2020 US Presidential election.

THE PRIMARY REALITY [4 of several prominent Deadly Horsemen…] 

Every day that Donald John Trump remains in the White House People will Die for want of the Health Care provided in The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka, ACA [abv.]) signed into law in 2010.

Every day that Donald John Trump remains in the White House Foreign-born Children will be Willfully Separated from their parents and relatives by the Actions of the Trump Administration and the border patrol.

Every day that Donald John Trump remains in the White House Foreign-born the Destruction of our Environment will be Augmented by the foolish words and deeds of DJT, the willful actions of his Administration [accompanied by the continuing dominance of Energy Conglomerates over politicians in both parties as well as by the simple inertia of most Americans].

Every day that Donald John Trump remains in the White House Foreign-born the ungodly profit driven-assault by the NRA upon the lives of our children and the equally ungodly assault by sectors of the banking industry upon the financial health of higher education seeking young adults will be augmented by the foolish words and deeds of DJT and the actions of his Administration.

THE PRIMARY REALITY — ITS MOST PROMINENT POLITICAL COMPONENT

Every day that Donald John Trump remains in the White House People will Die for want of the Health Care provided in The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka, ACA [abv.]) signed into law in 2010. They will die for three distinguishable, but inextricably entangled realities:

One, there are arguably hidden costs in the ACA which would usually prompt any conservative executive to proceed very slowly in implementing the law.

Two, the present administration is simply refusing to fully implement the law because the President and many opponents of the ACA have been driven by a sense of entitlement blind to the spiritual, political, and social consequences of an economy which celebrates greed.

Three, the president and members of his administration are both willfully and secretly breaking the law because they are both blind and indifferent to their oaths of office and their shared humanity with all people on this earth — including even their political supporters.

Both reasonable and unreasonable people will disagree about the relative effects of these three components of the President’s motivation, but the third component is both real and deadly.

THE PRIMARY REALITY — ITS MOST PROMINENT MORAL COMPONENT

Every day that Donald John Trump remains in the White House Foreign-born Children will be willfully separated from their parents and relatives by the Actions of the Trump Administration and the border patrol. Many of these children will be deeply scarred by these events even if they are eventually returned to their families. Others will never see their family again. While merciful humans on both sides of the US-Mexico border will be wonderfully helpful for some of these children & their families and while the ACLU and a few judges will blunt the force of these policies a significant fraction of the US citizenry are as deaf to the cries of the children at our border as were the citizens of Germany were deaf to the screams of those murdered by German planes, tanks, guns and ovens. It is, of course, quite common for humans to think that the evils that befall others will not befall themselves. Even the Poles were largely silent when the Germans marched into Czechoslovakia! [“Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee!”]

THE PRIMARY REALITY — ITS MOST PROMINENT PHYSICAL COMPONENT

Every day that Donald John Trump remains in the White House Foreign-born the destruction of our environment will be augmented by the foolish words and deeds of DJT, the willful actions of his Administration, the continuing dominance of energy conglomerates over politicians in both parties, and the simple inertia of most Americans. Birds, fish, and insects already recognize global warming — in many instances they have already changed the timing of their migrations by several weeks and the geographical limits of their migrations by tens or hundred of miles or kilometers. Humans, however, are somewhat different — they have the capacity to deceive both themselves and others. Even worse, they are often strengthened in their self-deception when others share the same illusions. We will not escape the consequences of our failure to care for the world that nature has given us — and while, as always, the poor and the dispossessed are already suffering the effects of severe weather, aridity, stronger hurricanes, and fires — the high and the mighty as well as the dispossessed will be brought down by the continuing the careless addition of carbon dioxide and methane into our atmospheres, untreated sewage into our rivers and lakes, and plastics into our oceans. While we are not in the situation of Jor-El on the doomed planet Krypton, the disasters will continue to come. Each of us can work for our world — and the recipients in the next civilizations will be grateful. But don’t be fooled — collective moral filth in a government and economy is already wreaking havoc. Plutocracy is simply one of the most obvious roads to a terrestrial hell. Long before the prophets and the early Christians proclaimed that the fruits of ill-gotten wealth can destroy a person or a society, other societies had experienced this reality. The original story of Midas didn’t teach that “all that glitters is not gold” — it taught that the overzealous search for gold itself will destroy the searcher.

SUBSIDIARY CONSIDERATIONS — “Irrefutable” evidence of impeachable offenses.

House Speaker Pelosi, overly mindful of the dangers of an overzealous political offense that targets only Donald J. Trump and his Republican allies and sycophants without simultaneously addressing other important issues [such as those listed above] has stated that we need irrefutable or “ironclad evidence” before proceeding to formal impeachment proceeding against Donald Trump. There are no ironclad cases! There was never an “ironclad” case even against Hitler — Hitler was right that the Treaty of Versailles (1919) had placed a terrible burden upon the German people as if the German government were the sole instigator of the 1st World War. But, here back in the USA, DJ Trump’s refrain that he always imposes tenfold punishment upon those who “cross” him is sometimes a boastful lie and, at other times, a sign that he has already — like Hitler, Huey Long, John Calhoun & other demagogues before him— jumped deep into an Ocean of Lies.

We should not fool ourselves. The German Communist said to themselves that they must keep to their ‘regular’ partisan activities — and that, after experiencing Hitler, the German people would naturally turn back to the communists. Before Allied and Soviet tanks rolled into Berlin — almost all of the communists, albinos, and gypsies had already been murdered well before the 6 million Jews, 7 million Poles, 20 million Russians and even several million Germans were dead from executions, starvation, and the other murderous consequences of the 3rd Reich.

Let me be clear, I do not think that DJT is either as intelligent or as fundamentally focused as was Adolf Hitler. DJT himself (reminiscent of Mussolini with Hitler) admires “strongmen” like Putin and Kim who do not admire other dictators. However, it does not really matter where Donald is on the scale of willful malevolence by a human being. When the poisons of blind ambition, greed, religious hypocrisy, fear, and cowardice reach a critical point fear-driven mob action may impel nation states and empires into self-destruction — and the United States of America may very well be very far upon a similar road to destruction.

There is, of course, hope that some Republican Senators may find their manhood or womanhood and there is — perhaps — a somewhat more realistic hope that the 3rd Branch of Government will check major excesses of the Trump administration. Whether our present Supreme Court — with a majority of members who functionally celebrate wealth as a reward of liberty and with a membership which includes at least one new member who was untruthful during his confirmation — can or will be courageous enough to avoid a second ‘Dred Scott’ decision may be determined in 2-3 years… If most Democrats think that their standard is only to be “better” than the Trumpites or Republicans, then those of us who are democrats are ourselves already deep into one of those sewer lines just below our political ‘swamp’. Today, our children now go to school knowing that this may be the day when it will be their individually specific duty to confront a gun-wielding outlaw and that he/she may need to step into the line of fire…

[Those of us who consider electability important need to keep other even more critical realities in mind. The notion that either sports or politics is only about winning is not a criteria for political behavior — especially for our highest offices in any branch of government.]

Three more things on the historical records …

For me, one often curious and perplexing characteristic of human behavior is the tendency for societies under stress to turn to a problematic “strong” leader who presents the semblance of consistency over more “rational” and “humane” leaders who think they can oppose such demagogues with half measures and other forms of “leadership.”

I, personally, do not honor Trump for his consistency in hating immigrants and praising retribution any more than I retrospectively respect Hitler for his consistency in hating Jews and Slavs. I see no ‘honesty’ in the consistency of such wickedness. However, I recognize that stressed and often fearful human beings frequently follow one who is “all in” on a downward turn over one who displays lukewarm virtue and compassion. Political leaders who do not know when it is high noon for a civilization will reap no rewards in heaven or in human memory if they think they themselves can decide when it is ‘smart’ to look away when a political whirlwind approaches…

A very personal note:

While I am myself an American-US Citizen with very deep democratic family roots, I do not myself believe that patriotism is the highest virtue — I live on a single planet within a universe of trillions of galaxies each one containing enormous numbers of stars, planets, and possible intelligent life. However, I very much believe that true morality consists in understanding how our own families and social-political realities are connected to other persons and groups — and acting upon those realities. I therefore celebrate the fact that some US citizens believe and act on the belief that loyalty to the United States is of a higher order than loyalty to one’s political party. It has been said that “All’s fair in love and politics” — and it is true that human beings often act as if it were so. However, I do not believe that it has ever been true. Furthermore, I am very clear in my own mind that a fear-driven “patriotism” or “nationalism” is one of the quickest roads to national disaster.

TIME AND THE TIDE AND THE NOONDAY SUN

Time and the Tide and the Noonday Sun…  

Human beings can choose and even plan to catch a wave, the high tide, a Spring tide, and to a lesser extent, they can even plan for a Tsunami. They cannot, however, choose the time the time of a tide, a wave, or either the first, second, or third wave of a tsunami — or the passage of the noon day sun. This, I believe, is as true for political waves as it is for those waves consisting only of gravitationally and wind-driven water.

Dr. Lon Clay Hill, Jr. (retired)

Miramar, Broward Co., FL, USA, Planet Earth