A DARK DAY FOR AMERICA
By a vote of 57 to convict and to 43 to acquit, the United States Senate has failed to find the former president Donald J. Trump guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. A vote of 2/3 of the Senate, or 67 senators, was required to convict the ex-president of the charge against him. The 57 included all 48 Democrats, 2 Independents, and 7 Republicans. The 43 against were all Republicans.
The charge against the former president was incitement of insurrection against the United States. In other words, he encouraged a violent mob to overthrow the constitutional government. This is the most serious charge ever made against a president of the United States.
In January, the House of Representatives voted an Article of Impeachment by a clear-cut majority (232-197). This week, the Managers of the House presented an overwhelming case in support of the charge against Trump. Polls show that their presentation was effective and that a majority of Americans viewed the ex-president as guilty.
There can be no reasonable doubt that Trump incited the mob to march on the Capitol at the very moment the houses of Congress were about to meet in order to certify the results of the Electoral College which had elected Joe Biden president.
The crux of the evidence centered on the relationship between President Trump and the Vice President Pence. Trump had repeatedly called for Pence to block the certification, something he could not do under the Constitution. Pence had told Trump he could not stop the certification, yet Trump continued to demand Pence stop the Electoral College certification and Trump repeated this to his followers on Jan. 6, 2021.
When the mob swarmed through the halls of the Capitol they sought by name two people, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, and Pence. "Hang Mike Pence" and "Traitor" reverberated through the crazed and violent mob which had already mortally wounded a policeman. It was clear the mob would have assassinated or done bodily harm to both Pelosi and Pence if they had found them. Trump remained in the White House watching the TV coverage of the assault on the Capitol and refusing to take any action or issue any statement for an hour and a half after the assault began. At 2:13 p.m., the Secret Service hustled Pence and his party out of the Senate chamber to a safe room. At 2:24, Trump tweeted a criticism of Pence which the mobsters repeated. At 2:26, the Secret Service moved Pence and his group to a secret hideaway. AL senator Tuberville reported that he told Trump on the phone that Pence had been removed from the Senate. At 2:45 the mob gained control of the Senate chamber. At no time did Trump try to contact Pence or inquire of his safety. In fact, Trump did not talk with Pence for the next five days.
It is clear from the vast body of evidence from January 6 that Trump incited an insurrection to overthrow the constitutional government of the United States. If this was not grounds for removal, nothing would be. Today's vote sets the precedent that any president in the future can incite, with impunity, a mob to attempt to overthrow the two co-equal branches of the government. An attempt to overthrow the government will not be grounds for removal. The case of February 13, 2021, will forever stand as this standard. In effect, no president of the United States can be removed from office for any offense against the nation.
The 43 senators who voted to acquit ex-president Trump established this dangerous precedent. History will judge them.
In time, the precedent of the president's limitless power may well lead to the end of our democratic, constitutional republic. It is the Constitution that binds us together as one body of people. By refusing to uphold the Constitution today, the Senate has signed a blank death warrant for the republic we have known since 1789. There is now a bright green light for any new Trump coming down the road to act at will in disregard of the Constitution.
Why did the 43 vote against the Constitution? It was fear of Trump and the third of Americans who are devoted to him.
It helps to keep all of this in the big picture. To return to my thesis that regular readers of the blog know, we are in a great clash between two forces in American life, the revolutionary and the counter-revolutionary. After the Second World War, American entered into a Great Democratic Revolution that brought equality and inclusion to social elements heretofore marginalized and ignored. The forces that had controlled power arose to resist the social, cultural, economic, and political changes that came with the GDR. These counter-revolutionaries were primarily big money, white working class men, white southerners, and white evangelical Christians. They were, and are, driven by fear. They migrated into the Republican Party and claimed victory in the 1980's under President Reagan. Changes, however began to overwhelm the counter-revolutionary, namely the demographic shifts that would inevitably bring the non-white minorities into majority status in America. Soon, whites will be a minority in the United States. The election of the first black president, Barack Obama, in 2008, shocked the counter-revolutionaries. Many whites gave up on democracy and turned against the very democratic institutions that had produced the changes they saw as so threatening. In Trump, many fearful whites saw a saviour figure who would dismantle or transform the institutions of power that had produced the hated democratic reforms. Trump was quite popular and gained 47% of the vote in 2020. The Trump-led counter-revolutuion arose to a crescendo on January 6, 2021, when the white supremacist crowd assembled by the president stormed the Capitol to prevent the Congress for exercising its constitutional duty of certifying the election. Their goal was to force the Congress to discard the legal and legitimate election and keep Trump in power against the will of the majority of the people.
The Republican Party is now in crisis. Obviously, from today's vote, the majority of the party remains strongly attached to Trump. They seek the support and votes of his followers. The minority of the party have repudiated Trump in favor of democratic principles. Two leading politicians in South Carolina exemplify this breach: Nikki Haley, who repudiated Trump, and Lindsey Graham, who fiercely defended Trump.
By following Trump, the majority of the Republican Party is following the road of anti-democracy. They are willing to discard democratic principles of equality and majority rule which means they are willing to discard the Constitution, as today's vote proves. If the Trumpistas continue to be the majority of the Republican Party, we will have a pro-democratic and pro-Constitution party in America on one hand and an anti-democratic and anti-Constitution party on the other. Either America or the Republican Party will have to give. History tells us that America will prevail but we can expect a great deal more violence and political chaos and turmoil to come now that the Senate has validated the unlimited power of the president to try to overturn the Constitution.
This is a dark day in American history. It would be easy to say Trump did this to us, but that would be only a part of the story. Trump would not be where he is without the aiding and abetting of millions of Americans.
As of now, the majority of Americans support democracy and the Constitution. The "antis" are the minority. The majority need not think this is the end of the fight. It is just beginning of something worse, maybe much worse. In fact, history has many examples where minorities seized control of the state. In 1933, the Nazis were a minority party in democratic Germany when President Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor. Hitler immediately called for new national elections to the Reichstag. Even after vicious attacks on their opponents, the Nazis did not win an outright majority in the Spring elections. They gained a majority vote in the Reichstag only after they combined with a small far right-wing party and made a totalitarian state. In relatively free and fair elections, the Nazis never won a majority of the votes of the German electorate. Yet, we all know what happened in Germany and what that meant to the world. So, do not think that a minority cannot gain power even in a democracy.
What happened today is a severe blow to democracy and to the American constitutional republic. There is no point in trying to pretend otherwise. This will embolden the anti-democratic forces in America. We can expect an escalation of violence and political turmoil. The violent anti-democrats will be back. They believe they won the battle of Jan. 6. They won the battle of Feb. 13. God only knows what comes next.
