Month: January 2021

This is another story from my “youth” – there is no deep political meaning, no “moral” of the story.  It’s just a story about a hike – and a dog.

The Challenge

Boy Scouting had a huge impact on my life.  From leadership lessons to survival skills, physical challenges to a breadth of knowledge learned; Boy Scouting was a “game changer” for me.  And, of course, Scouting gave me my first taste of teaching, and of a form of coaching, that would end up setting my career path.

We did a lot of hiking and camping in my “Tenderfoot” years in Boy Scouts, and I was thirteen when I took my first major backpacking trip.  My troop, 229 out of Kettering, Ohio, sent us on an “expedition” to Philmont Scout Ranch in the mountains of New Mexico.  I was fresh out of eighth grade, a wrestler, swimmer and track athlete, and I thought I was ready for the challenge.

But there’s nothing like that first ten-mile day in the 8000 feet altitude of New Mexico with a forty-five pound backpack.  I remember cramping up as we worked our way out of the valley into the mountains, thinking maybe I had appendicitis, and they’d have to send me back.  It wasn’t such a bad thought, the climb was tough, the air thin, and I was challenged by the effort.

 Chili Mac and Dehydrated Ham

But it was a cramp, not appendicitis, and after the first two days I adapted to the altitude, the effort, and the dehydrated food.  By the way, there’s an amazing transition that occurs on every long-term backpacking trip.  That first night, no matter what the menu item, powdered and dehydrated food tastes like — well, it tastes bad.  Even the chili mac, something that you might even serve at home, just isn’t particularly good.  It’s eat a few bites, then crawl into your sleeping bag.

But somehow there’s a magical transformation that occurs in the pack, as the food gets jostled and tossed on that second day.  When that day’s journey ends, the tents are pitched and the fire going, the dehydrated onion soup followed by rehydrated noodles and ham in tomato sauce with “Bolton biscuits” (unbreakable, non-crumbling biscuit product) and powdered chocolate pudding is the best!! 

Traveling America

So I learned a lot about backpacking.  My family moved to Cincinnati and I joined Troop 819.  We hiked on the Appalachian Trail (AT) on the Tennessee/North Carolina border, again on the AT in New Hampshire off of the Kancamagus Highway, and in the Maroon Bells of Colorado.  We had great adventures, and by the time I was an adult, I no longer dreaded that first day with the now sixty-pound pack and steep elevation changes.  We’d been snowed-in on the Roan Plateau above Rifle, Colorado in June, and covered the incredibly steep elevations changes of the White Mountains in New Hampshire.

We hiked a lot with the troop, and one of the places we enjoyed with the Susquehanna Trail, only a few hours drive away in north-central Pennsylvania.  I was nineteen or twenty, old enough to drive one of the vehicles, when we took a crew on that trail.  We dropped our vehicles at a little town called Cross Fork, and headed up into the mountains.  

In the Woods

That first night, as the rookies groaned and crawled off to bed and the Scoutmasters lit their tobacco, I noticed something moving, just beyond the light of our campfire.   It seemed fascinated with the remains of our dinner, and got just close enough for us to recognize as a dog we’d seen as we left our cars and trooped through town.  He’d followed us up onto the trail, and come the six or so miles we climbed to our first campground.

So we set some food out for him, and went to bed, thinking he’d turn around and head back to Cross Fork.  The next day, the adults hiked at the rear.  That’s not because we were “stragglers”, but this way it was the youth leaders directing the hike, and the younger kids didn’t struggle back by themselves.  Even in following the map, it was all about leadership.  I’ve walked dozens of miles, knowing it was the wrong way, and waiting for a fifteen-year-old to figure it out.  We had everything we needed, so what  if our excursion the wrong direction left us too far off-course to correct that day. We could bed down wherever we needed to and straighten things out in the morning.

Blue Tick

And being in the back meant that we would get glimpses of anything following us.  And that dog, instead of going home to Cross Fork, was getting closer and closer to our group the whole time.  But nightfall when we reached our second camp, he was about ready to come in and join us.  Dinner closed the deal, and we had another friend along for the trip.

He was a “blue-tick” coon hound, and when he got to know us, he was incredibly friendly.  We didn’t have a name for him, just called him “dog”.  But that seemed silly, so as we sat around the fire that night, I tried to guess what his name might be.  After all of the usuals, from Buddy to Spot, I started working through the first names of Presidents (I would eventually become a history teacher).  He didn’t respond to George or John, and I got all the way to Dwight with no luck. There already had been a couple of Johns, so I used Kennedy’s family nickname – Jack.

The dog’s eyes lit up, and he ran up to me.  Whatever his real name, Jack was the one he wanted us to use.  And so we had another in the line of stumbling Scouts working through the Pennsylvania woods, though this one was pretty agile – Jack, the blue-tick coon hound.

A Mouthful

As we hiked, Jack would wander away from the crew for a while.  But I’m sure the dozen boys we had made so much noise as we tromped along, that Jack could find his way back to us easily.  He’d run up, check on us, then head out again.  That night he caught up with us as we were pitching our camp.  But this time it wasn’t a joyful run.  He slunk into camp, whining as he came up to me.  Jack had made a big mistake.  He tried to catch a porcupine, and got a mouthful of quills for his trouble.  

We debated what to do about a dog we didn’t know with quills around his mouth.  It was clear Jack couldn’t eat in that condition, so we had to do something.  Porcupine quills are a lot like fishhooks, they go in easy, but they’re barbed to come out ugly.  But, unlike a fishhook, you couldn’t just push a dozen barbs the rest of the way through Jack’s lips and pull them out from the inside.  There was only one way to help him.

Hot Pot Tongs

We always carried Hot-Pot-Tongs, basic pliers made of forged aluminum.  They were lighter than regular pliers, and designed to lift our pots off of the fire.  But they worked like pliers in a “pinch”, and so I decided that they would work on Jack. 

For the next twenty-four hours, Jack and I performed the “ritual” of quill removal.  He would slink up to me, whimpering, and wait for me to get the Hot-pot-tongs.  I would grab a quill, and jerk it out.  Jack might let me get two, but then he’d run off just outside of the camp, and wait for a while.  Eventually he’d come back, wander up to me, and we’d do it again.

It took most of  two days, with twenty miles of trails to cover in the time, to get all the quills out of Jack’s mouth.  But we finally got him “quill-free”, and Jack was happy to consume his portion of whatever dehydrated gastronomic delight we were serving that night.

You’re Gonna Die

In the Pennsylvania mountains you have to worry about two wild animals.  The first are the rattlesnakes.  The hang out on the rocky outcroppings, usually ones that provide the best views over the scenic valleys.  It makes sense to do a bit of checking before you decide to take your pack off, sit down and enjoy the view.  

There’s an old hiking joke about the guy who gets bit on the butt by a rattlesnake.  His buddy runs back into town to get the doctor, but all the doctor can do is give him treatment advice.  “Well,” says the doc, “you take your pocket knife, and you cut ¼ inch deep wounds through the bite marks.”  “Yep” says the buddy, “I can do that.”  “Then,” the doc says, “you take your mouth, and you suck the blood and venom out of the wounds.”  “What!?” says the buddy.  “You suck the venom out,” says the Doc, “that’s the way to fix your friend”.

The buddy runs back up the mountain, to find his friend laying on his stomach, moaning, “What did the Doc say?”  The response – “the Doc says you’re gonna die”.

We did see a rattler on this trip, right in the middle of the trail.  We detoured around it, worrying about its mate the whole time.  But the other wild animals that can really cause trouble are black bears.  Bears do one thing well, and that’s find food.  So leaving food around camp, or in the tent with you, is just a bad idea.  We had to emphasize to the kids, that the candy bar for the middle of the night might be a great snack, but it might not be for you.

Night Attack

Anyway, one of the last nights on the trail, we had to sleep in a “dry camp”.  That meant no running water around, and we had to conserve our supply.  We set up our tents, and as we were turning in heard some thrashing around in the woods.  The leaders made sure the food supply was secured in the trees and we went to bed.

But there still was something moving around out there.  And as my tentmate and I settled in, we worried about what might happen.  In the middle of the night, I woke up to something rustling up against the nylon tent wall.  I put my hand against it, and felt fur on the other side.  Was there a bear right beside us?  I carefully started to unzip the front door, but before I could get it open – fur and legs came flying into the tent!!  We were under attack!!!! – by Jack, who obviously was as worried about what was out there in the night as we were.  So our two-man tent became two men and a dog for that night. 

Jack’s Back

So after a week or so out on the trail, we finally completed our circuit and arrived back at Cross Fork.  There’s kind of an American contrast:  a bunch of grimy, dirty, no-shower-in-a-week kids and adults marching with packs down the Main street of a little town.  But we were surprisingly welcomed.  Town kids watched us coming in, and started yelling “Jack’s back, Jack’s back”.  Jack said his goodbyes to us, and returned to his home in Cross Fork, Pennsylvania.  As it turns out, this wasn’t his first excursion with a backpacking group. He was the “town dog;” everyone was happy to see him return.

It’s been a while since I’ve been out on the trail.  My backpack is in rafters above the garage, along with all the other equipment gathering dust over the years.  But I still remember the elemental peace that hiking brings, when the biggest concern of the day was getting up the next mountain, checking out the views along the way, and getting the porcupine quills out of Blue Tick Coon Hound’s mouth.  

Since writing this essay – the Department of Homeland Security sent out a National Terrorism Advisory Bulletin warning of terrorist threats from “domestic extremists” with “…objections to the Presidential transition” and “fueled by false narratives”. It’s all not just about votes from Donald Trump.

Old Friend

I had a long conversation with an old friend Tuesday night.  While we don’t share all the same political philosophies, we have been able to reach across our differences and build bridges, connections that I highly value.  Unlike most of the political conversations in our era, we have been able to keep our differences from driving us apart.  But that night, I blew it, and I am sorry.

I’m not sorry for how I feel, but I am sorry that my old friend bore the written brunt of my emotions.  I am usually able to see practical politics over rhetoric, and recognize that politicians respond to differing pressures than just “right and wrong”.  And my friend called me to reality last night – the reality that regardless of what happened in the Capitol on January 6^th, the majority of Republican Senators will find a way to avoid a vote against Donald Trump.

He’s probably right.  

Profiles 

When I was twelve years old, I read John F. Kennedy’s book, Profiles in Courage.  Kennedy knew a little bit about courage himself.  In World War II, he saved his PT Boat crew members from drowning and capture by swimming miles in the dark between islands in the Pacific.  As he would say, “I got my boat sunk,” but we know that he went far beyond “normal” heroics.  And he did it with a damaged back, one that would deteriorate so much that fifteen years later he spent months in bed recovering from surgery.  And that’s when he wrote a book about courage, political courage.

Kennedy wrote about eight members of Congress who risked (some lost) their political careers to stand up for a principle they believed in.  It wasn’t about the physical courage that Kennedy showed in the Pacific nights, it was about political courage in the bright sunshine of open Congressional debate.  And it wasn’t even necessarily that they were on the “right” side of the issue.  It was that they believed that they were in the right, and were willing to stand for that right despite the political costs.

We know a lot more about John Kennedy than we did back when I was twelve.  But, personal flaws and all, Kennedy’s book revealed a new level of “duty” to me, one that I haven’t forgotten in the more than half a century since I read the book (damn – that’s a long time). 

Kicking the Ball

It set my expectations for our legislators.  I knew that they would generally do what they thought best.  And fifty years of politics informs me that “best” was generally what was best for their own political interest.  It’s the nature of the profession.  But what I did expect is that in an issue of national import, when the founding principles of our nation were on the line, at least some of them would put principle over party, and over their own political careers.

The Trump era should have taught me different.  I’ve become Charlie Brown, constantly trying to kick the football that Lucy pulls away.  Again and again, I line up to swing at that ball, only to land flat on my back.  And so I lined up again Tuesday, watching the United States Senate debate the impeachment trial of Donald Trump.

Fig Leaf

The term “fig leaf” goes back much farther than half a century.  It comes from the first book of the Bible, Genesis.  Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden, an idyllic life where clothing was unnecessary.  But when they “partook of the forbidden fruit”, they gained forbidden knowledge, and were embarrassed by their nakedness.  So they took fig leaves and covered themselves.

Some members of the United States Senate have made the political calculation that they must support Donald Trump.  This, in spite of the clear evidence that Trump incited rioters to attack the Congress, including those same members.  In all of the history of the United States, it is the first time a President has tried to violently intimidate the Congress.  It is the most dangerous threat to the Constitution since the secession of states before the Civil War.

But though out of office, Donald Trump maintains political power, and some of the Senators are afraid they will be “primaried” and lose their office.  Unlike Kennedy’s eight “profiles in courage”, these Senators are putting their political careers ahead of principle.  But they need a “fig leaf”, something to hide their embarrassing act from public view.

Misinterpretation

Rand Paul, the junior Senator from Kentucky provided that “fig leaf” Tuesday.  He argued that, since Donald Trump was no longer the President, the Senate no longer had jurisdiction over him.  Regardless of his prior actions as President, the fact that he was no longer in office puts him beyond the reach of the Congress, was Paul’s theme.  And that argument does fit in with our “Schoolhouse Rock” understanding of the impeachment and conviction process, where we learned that it was about removing the President (and other high officials).  That’s why it was no surprise that when Nixon resigned from office, impeachment went away.

But the legal precedent, what the Senate has done before, is the opposite.  The Senate has tried “former” officials in the past.  And that is because the Constitution specifically states that the penalties for conviction are two-fold:  removal from office and a second vote to ban from future office.  Practically, the Founding Fathers envisioned both, and resignation or end of term shouldn’t relieve a convicted “high official” from the second penalty. Nixon, by the way, was already ineligible to run for the Presidency again, having served most of two terms.

But Rand Paul offered this “fig leaf” to obscure what some Republican Senators are doing.  They are standing on false “technicalities” rather than stating the obvious:  regardless of the heinous actions of Donald Trump, they are more afraid of his political power than they are of his threat to the Republic.  

Take Courage

The Democrats aren’t afraid.  And five Republican Senators aren’t afraid either.  Toomey of Pennsylvania,  has already said he won’t run for re-election, removing the threat that Trump represents.  Three more, Romney of Utah, Murkowski of Alaska and Collins of Maine, believe that their constituents will stay with them.  And one, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, has made a choice of courage over expediency.  

But forty-five Republican Senators are crowding behind that little “fig leaf”, trying to hide their naked political fear of Donald Trump’s tweets.

And I am tired of the statement: well if it was a “secret ballot” Trump would be convicted 90 to 10. It’s time for “Profiles in Courage”, and that means speaking out in the open. But that’s probably not to be.

What’s my best case?  That several of these Republicans figure it’s not worth the Trump generated pressure for the next three weeks.  So they vote “for the fig leaf”, but when it all comes down will vote to convict the clearly guilty President, and ban him from office.  Hang onto that football, Lucy.  Some like Mitch McConnell and Rob Portman, have even sent vague signals that it might be the case.

And my worst case?  That they truly won’t stand up for the Constitution, that they are so afraid of the power of the “Trump Base” that they will “stand with Trump”, just as they did after the “perfect phone call” to Ukraine.

Reality

My old friend believes that will be the case, and thinks we ought to move onto the future.  He isn’t ignoring the past; he’s just recognizing political reality.  Senators Kaine of Virginia and Collins of Maine agree with him. They are “floating” the idea of a Congressional Censure – a slap on Donald Trump’s wrist with no actual penalties.  It may be the best they can do.

I will agree on one issue.  The dark power that Donald Trump tapped into as President will not go away with his impeachment, removal or banning.  He is not the cause. He is the symptom.  So it’s more than Charlie Brown foolish to think a “principled” vote of the Senate will change the divide in American politics.  

But it would be a start.

A Year Later

February, 2021 begins next week.  A year ago, the nation was watching Donald Trump on trial in the Senate, and  Democratic Presidential candidates scramble to get recognition.  And quietly, almost below the radar – we began to hear about a virus in Wuhan, China.  Little did we know a year ago, that in 2020 over two million would die from that virus worldwide, and over 430,000 here in America.  That’s more than in died in any war the United States ever fought except for the Civil War – and that “butcher’s bill” of 600,000 will be surpassed in the next couple months. 

We are all now “experts” on COVID-19:  on “social distancing” and quarantining.  We all know folks who had COVID and recovered, and also those that didn’t make it.  On the key hook by the door hang multiple face masks ready for use. Everyone has them. Some are fashionable, some make political or social statements, and some wear ones that look like the belong in an operating room.  Ours are basic black – they go with everything and don’t look dirty (kind of strange – that’s the same reason I wear black running socks). 

Jenn and I are retired, and spend a lot of time at home. There’s usually a TV on, and I’ve binged a few televisions shows (not programs, as I’m told by the advertisement). The new Star Trek Discovery series is the latest. But mostly MSNBC’s on, often in the background. Stephanie Ruhle, a morning news anchor, has made it a point to demand that children go back to “regular” school. And she points out two very valid reasons.

Back to School

 First, she says, in-school education is much, much better than “remote” education.   Of course it is.  As a teacher, I know that the personal relationships between teacher and students are vastly important both to student achievement and personal growth.  And, through my limited experience in online education, two months at the beginning of the pandemic, I know it’s so much more difficult to have those relationships “remotely”.  So, everything else being equal, going back to school is a “great” thing.

And the second point Stephanie Ruhle makes is also valid. If kids can’t go to school, many folks can’t go to work. For those who don’t have the “luxury” of working remotely, remote school means don’t work (and not get paid), find someone to stay with kids (and pay them) or leave kids alone and unsupervised in remote school. From a national economy standpoint, schools being open is critical to getting the economy going particularly for lower income areas.

Compulsory Education

It’s a lot like the reason compulsory schooling began in the first place.  Here in the United States, that took hold in the 1920’s.  Of course it was about getting kids “educated”, but there was another reason just as significant.  If kids were in school, they were out of the labor market.  Child labor was a big deal in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.  Kids were agile, they could do the mass production work of that time. And they were cheap.  They kept adults out of the job market.  So sending them all to school kept them from working “in the mills”.  

And another reason for getting kids out of “the mills” was the danger of doing hazardous work.  One job was that of “breaker boy”, the children who straddled the elevated conveyor belts leading into coal processing plants.  Their job was to pick rocks out of the passing coal and toss them to the ground.  The dangers were great – the conveyors were high, and the “belts” were often slatted metal.  If the kid reached in too deep, they could lose a finger, or a hand, to the “belt”.  If they lost their balance, they could fall to injury or death on the piled-up rocks below.  Child welfare meant getting them out of those jobs, and keeping them safe until they were old enough to “assume the risks” themselves.

It’s the Adults

We now know enough about COVID-19 that we understand that the risks to children are low.  While they can catch the virus, and they can spread the virus, they are less likely to get sick from the virus.  Those particularly vulnerable kids, or those with vulnerable adults at home, need to be removed from the school setting, but for most kids, school is fine.

So it’s not the kids at risk from open schools, it’s the adults.  It’s the teachers and the custodians, the cooks, and yes, even the administrators.  Like the “breaker boys” of the 1880’s, it’s the adults who are being asked to assume the risks.

And it’s a special kind of risk that we want those adults to assume.  There are few jobs today that place large groups of people together in a single room.  And since we know that children can have COVID without necessarily having the symptoms of COVID, we are asking those adults to go into a setting where transmission to them is more likely.  It’s not the same as the other “essential” worker jobs we discuss.  The grocery store clerks have more room, the postal workers are outside, and the meat processing plants test their workers. Even the hospital workers have the proper protection, and work in buildings designed to ventilate the virus away.

Chicago

The Chicago Public Schools ordered their buildings open, and their teachers to report for in-person instruction this week.  The Chicago Federation of Teachers voted by seventy percent to stay out of school and continue online instruction. Their concern has two parts.  Sources told the Chicago Tribune:

“They will not go back to schools until they think it is safe and urge CPS to come up with health metrics for when a school should be closed, and to take the idea of synchronous teaching — instructing in-person and remote students simultaneously — off the table” (Tribune).  

The United States wants kids in school, but we haven’t spent the resources to make it safe for the adults working there.  Schools aren’t improving ventilation systems (already a problem in our aging school structures).  Schools aren’t “bigger”, so classroom sizes really haven’t changed much.  In our local area, the “rules” were re-written so that kids could be three feet from each other in class instead of six, because there wasn’t the room for six-foot separation.   And there is little or no COVID testing in schools.  The schools depend on the county health departments, first overwhelmed by contact-tracing, and now by vaccine distribution. 

Commitment

Schools aren’t closing because the kids are getting sick.  To be brutally honest, we have no idea how many kids really have COVID, because we don’t test.  Only the ones who get sick enough to go to a doctor and get reported to the County Health Department are known.  What we do know is that schools are being closed because of staff absences.  Teachers are getting sick, and substitute teachers, many, like me retired from a teaching career, aren’t working.  We are among the more vulnerable to COVID infection. 

Teachers want to work directly with kids.  They want to be back in school.  I’d like to substitute.  But many know that they are putting themselves and their families at risk by being in the classroom.  So what’s the solution?  Vaccination of adult school workers and testing of kids is the answer, as well as spending the funds to make schools physically a safer place.  And all of that takes time, money – and a national commitment.  

Just wanting kids back in school shouldn’t make it so. 

Revolutionary Theory

Revolution:  when the people rise up against an oppressive government to change its structure.  A “coup d’etat”,is when an individual leader is overthrown. But a Revolution is a popular movement (of the people) overthrowing a “system”, not just a tyrant.  Look at revolutions of the past: the American, French and Russian revolts. They didn’t occur when oppression was “at its worst”.  Revolution isn’t a matter of how bad things can get.  Historically it was a matter of “hope”:  of people knowing that things were getting better, than having that hope dashed.  

Revolution is about frustration just as much as it is about oppression.  It’s about taking away hard-won gains, improvements that were won “within” the system.  When those are stripped away, the frustration that results causes “the people” to “rise up”. 

America Today

In today’s America, there are two different cases that suggest we are a nation on the verge of revolution.  The first is the “frustration” of the fading white majority, slowly losing power along with its majority status.  Within two decades, white people will no longer be the majority of Americans.  The race that had the majority power since the founding of the Republic; since it could own some minorities and sweep others from their lands, will no longer be able to depend on sheer numbers to dominate elections.  

One perspective on the success of “Trumpism” is to see it as a last great struggle of that majority group to maintain control.  In blunt terms:  the Obama Presidency was a “wake-up call” to a new, multi-cultural America.  For those who didn’t appreciate that change, it was the alarm that drove them to the polls in massive numbers, first to elect Trump in 2016, and then to defend him last November.  Their America is dominated by a strict partisan divide. At every level it is near even:   the 2020 Presidential election (81 million for Biden, 74 million for Trump), the Senate (50 Dems, 50 Reps), Governorships (27 Reps, 23 Dems), and in the House (Dems 222, Rep 212).

Past Majority

The four years of the Trump Administration gave that fading majority group “hope”.  Mike Pompeo, Trump’s Secretary of State and an obvious future Presidential candidate summed it up in a tweet last week:  “Woke-ism, multiculturalism, all the -isms — they’re not who America is. They distort our glorious founding and what this country is all about. Our enemies stoke these divisions because they know they make us weaker…”   

In a more esoteric way, that conflict is demonstrated by the New York Times’ 1619 Project versus the Trump Administration’s The 1776 Report.   1619 places slavery at the foundation of much of American prosperity.  It posits that the original sin of America was slavery, one that has neither been acknowledged nor atoned for. 1776 was written by a commission of conservative Christian historians for the Trump Administration to directly repudiate 1619.  It denigrates the impact of slavery both on American social and economic advancement, taking the more traditional, “great individuals, primarily white, made a great American” stand.

And now, by a relatively slim margin, Trumpian “hopes” have been frustrated.  And their leaders, with Trump at the head, stoked that frustration with the “false hope” that the election was stolen.  It should be no surprise that they were willing to storm the Capitol, hang the Vice President, and overthrow the Constitution.  Ironic that they were protesting the one Constitutional provision, the Electoral College, that gave their minority view political power four years before.

 

Future Majority

Concurrently, the “future” majority is now feeling empowered.  The symbol of “white majoritarianism” is the former President, the first to be impeached twice.  They view the 2020 election as a repudiation of Trumpism.  And the changing politics of the South, with Georgia and Arizona going for Biden, and North Carolina and even Texas becoming “bluer”,  are a positive signs of the future.

But states like Georgia, Arizona, Texas and Pennsylvania are also trying to enact voting restrictions, with the clear desire to reduce minority voter participation.  And should they be successful in minority voter suppression, that will serve to frustrate them, perhaps leading to a disenchantment with the current electoral processes.  Nothing “calls” the revolution more than gaining power legally, then having that power ripped away.

Insurrection

We are learning that the “Insurrection” was not just a spontaneous uprising of a “mob” of Trump supporters.  There was planning involved, planning by the extremists who wanted to use the mob as cover, and by the organizers to use mob action to pressure Cgress.  In short, the mob was intentionally created, and intentionally used.  Whether their ultimate violence was “intended” by the Trump Administration, is still an open question.

But Insurrection is not a Revolution.  Revolution is much deeper than a riot in the Capitol, or in the streets of American cities.  Revolution comes when a vast number of Americans come to believe that their government no longer can represent their interests.  In fact, it comes when the Revolutionaries have lost all hope of “political” change.

Changes in our Nation are inevitable.  America is America:  we are becoming more “multi-cultural” in spite of Mike Pompeo’s wishes.  And the “inalienable rights” are more than just those that the Founding Fathers’ envisioned, in spite of the authors of the 1776 Project.  The predominantly white, Christian, European nation those Founders led is old news. Luckily, they left us Founding documents that allow our changing nation to expand our structures and our beliefs. 

Without that expansion, Revolution would be inevitable. The frustration will make people Rise Up.

Songs and Insurrection

Donald Trump is no longer the President of the United States, Hallelujah, Hallelujah!!  He’s sequestered away at his Mara Lago Resort, taking out his frustrations on the fairways and putting greens instead of Twitter and the Department of Justice.  And, to quote a very different song lyric (from Hamilton, of course) That Would be Enough.  But of course, it’s not.

The evidence continues to grow that Donald Trump was in the process of an overthrow of the Constitution. He tried to subvert the mandated transition of power to a new President. Trump did it with the long discredited “election fraud” campaign.  He did by attempting to suborn election fraud in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan (and probably Arizona, Wisconsin and Nevada).  We have the actual call to Georgia, when he demanded that the election authorities “find” 11,780 votes to change the outcome.  

He did it by bringing his partisans to Washington on January 6^th for the express purpose of stopping the Electoral Vote certification.  We have that speech as well, and those of his apologists who are hiding behind the one—word fig leaf of “peacefully”,  ignore almost an hour of haranguing the crowd, firing them up to march to the Capitol and “fight, fight, fight”.  This isn’t a “perfect” speech, Georgia wasn’t a “perfect” phone call, and neither was the one to the Ukrainian President.

Sunday Night Massacre

And Friday night we discovered that President Trump made the decision to fire his acting Attorney General. He wanted to replace him with a lesser Assistant who, in the assistant’s own words, spent “…a lot of time on the internet” and believed in the “stop the steal” fraud.  Only the willingness of the rest of the leadership in the Justice Department to quit in protest, gave the President enough pause to change his mind.  And it really wasn’t that potential “massacre” that stopped him.  It was two days before the January 6^th assemblage on the National Mall. Trump thought he had a better chance of “winning” there, and didn’t need the distraction.

And now reporting shows that while the mob was storming the Capitol, and Congressmen hid in fear, Donald Trump was watching on television. He was almost gleeful, getting what he wanted: pressure on the Congress to deny the legal election results.

Who knows what other actions will be revealed in the coming days?  Who knows how close our Republic was to irrevocable damage?  A government of the people, by the people and for the people was on a thin thread, and the more we learn, the more frayed and narrowed that thread becomes.  

Self Defense

So impeaching the President while he remained in office was really a “no brainer”.  It was the only reasonable course that the House of Representatives could take, a pure measure of real self-defense.  That only ten Republicans chose to participate says so much more about the rest:  politics reigned supreme over principles.

But he is no longer in office, exiled to the sunny golf courses of the Sunshine State.  So why bother with a trial in the Senate?  Goodbye and good riddance. Let us move onto the crises of the present:  COVID and the economy, racial justice and the climate threat.  But like putting a new coat of paint over rust, those last actions of Trump cannot be ignored.  The new will flake off to reveal that the old rust is simply growing, the problem worse from the neglect.

We know that “…if you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll ask for a glass of milk”.  We learned that over and over from Donald Trump.  The more he acted outside the “lines”, the farther he passed the boundaries of American mores and norms.   Senator Susan Collins of Maine assured us he “learned his lesson” after the first impeachment and trial. But of course we now know the only lesson he learned was – forge ahead and no one will stop him.  

Milk and Cookies

So the Senate trial of the former President is more than just a “show trial” for the slim Democratic majority.  In their heart-of-hearts, they wish they could “leave him be” on the golf course.  But they know, he has the cookie, and the glass of milk, and he will come back for much, much more.  And even if Donald Trump chooses to not exert himself and return to the fray, his progeny and those that strive to gain his mantle (Graham, Hawley, Cruz, et al) must know that there are consequences for insurrection, malfeasance and misfeasance in office, and for trying to subject the United States to authoritarian rule.

Sure, the new Department of Justice will have their say as well.  Federal prosecutors must be examining those last few weeks, trying to determine whether to charge felonies of incitement of insurrection, sedition and election fraud.  But there is a difference between “legal” consequences and “political” consequences.  And the legislative branch, granted the Constitutional authority to enact political consequences for unconstitutional acts, must weigh in.

There are two punishments for conviction after impeachment.  The first, and most obvious, is removal from office.  That box is already check-marked, the people of the United States have made that clear.  And for doubters, the precedent is already set for trying a “high official” who has left office, it was done in the ugly time after the Civil War.  It’s been done before; it can be done again.  But why do it?

Political Consequence

 The second Constitutional consequence of conviction is the opportunity, a choice, to ban the offender from any future “position of trust”.  And it is that statement that the offended legislative branch must make to the man, and his followers, who attempted to use the executive branch to violently overthrow them.  Like the House of Representatives, the Senate must rise to its own defense, and not just depend on a third branch, the judiciary, for protection.

The statement must be loud and clear – attempt to overthrow the Constitution, and you forfeit the right to earn the trust of America again.  The Senate must stand for itself, and for the nation.   

This is just a story of my younger days.  There’s no deep political meaning, no “moral”. It’s just a story of a nineteen-year-old kid from the suburbs, learning about  – Riding the Dog. Enjoy!!!

Driving Old Cars

My sister lives in the New York City area.  She has no need for a car; public transportation is great and stores in the neighborhood are close.  So when she wanted to come back to Ohio and didn’t want to pay for a flight – she took the Greyhound from Newark, New Jersey.  She called it “Riding the Dog”.  She once led a passenger revolt in a blizzard at a truck stop near Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania.  But that’s her story to tell.

I have lived in Ohio for most of my life.  Unless you live directly in a downtown, having a car is a necessity.  When I went to college at Denison University in Granville, I was two hours from home in Cincinnati.  Dad could come and get me, but I was an independent young man, and didn’t want to depend on my Father for mobility.  So I always had a car at Denison, even in my Freshman year when we weren’t allowed to park one on campus.  I paid a small fee to keep it at the Certified Gas Station down by the IGA (grocery store).  It was a fifteen-minute walk from my dorm, but accessible when I wanted to go camping, hiking, or get back home for a Friday night with friends.

Plymouth Fury III

Today’s kids would call my first few cars “beaters”.  They weren’t all that old, my first car a 1969 Plymouth Fury III (it was 1974).  But my cousin put the first 100,000 miles on her in a year, and she was worn.  I paid him $250, and had to replace the head gaskets before I could even start the engine.  So I learned about mechanics from my neighbors, as we took the engine apart to remove the heads, had them machined, then put everything back together.  Tom Morgan and Carlos Phillips taught me everything about engines, and even more about the process of getting things fixed.  Tom, a Proctor and Gamble engineer, always had a way of using a “gentle tap” with a hammer to loosen some recalcitrant part.  

Carlos, on the other hand, learned his mechanics on his two vintage 1950’s Porsches.  He was amazed that you’d even get a hammer near the engine, or that the engine would ever run without the “strict German tolerances” he was used to.  But we had a great time in Tom’s garage, getting “the Furious” together, and watching my Dad fall asleep against a tire.

The “Furious” did fine for the last year of high school and the first year at Denison.  But a buddy borrowed it over the summer after my freshman year, and the engine blew again.  Ultimately the Fury was “repurposed” – we donated it to the Goodwill.  I can’t imagine that they fixed it up, but I like to think that some other sixteen-year-old got a “low-cost beater” to learn on.

The Squareback

My second car was a little older, a 1967 Volkswagen Squareback.  It was the station wagon version of the Beetle, with a shoe boxy build instead of the more traditional bulbous shape.  And while it was by then eight years old, it only had 75,000 miles on it.  Carlos was ecstatic – old Volkswagen engines and old Porsche engines were almost the same – except for engine tolerances and top speeds, of course.  So when the Squareback broke down, actually caught fire on I-71 just north of the Fort Ancient bridge on a frozen sixteen-degree day, Carlos was more than willing to help replace the crankshaft bearings.  Tom joined in too, this time in my Dad’s garage.  The Squareback didn’t take up as much room. 

But I was still in school at Denison, so I had to do the repairs on the weekend.  And one way to get back to Cincinnati, was “riding the dog”. 

There was a “metro” bus you could pick up in downtown Granville, across from Fuller’s Market (now I’m pretty sure that’s “the Pub on Broadway” – that’s my fault too, but it’s another story).  It took you all the way down State Route 16 into downtown Columbus and the Greyhound Station, where you could catch the bus to Cincinnati.  On the other end there was a stop in Springdale, not too far from Mom and Dad’s house, so I could catch a ride and get back to work on the car.

On the Dog

It took a couple of weekends to get the Squareback on the road:  one to tear things down and get the parts to the NAPA store to “get grinded” and reset, then another weekend to pick things up and put them all back together.  So there were two weekends of finding a way home, and the first weekend, of “Riding the Dog”.

So I caught the bus in Granville, and impatiently waited for the dozen stops to get downtown.  We even stopped in a little town called Pataskala, not far west of Granville.  I didn’t think much that at the time – little did I know that I’d spend most of my life there.  But that too is another story. 

We finally arrived at the Bus Station in Columbus, on the seamier side of downtown.  I rushed in, got my ticket, grabbed my backpack and boarded the Cincinnati bus.  I wanted the window seat, even though I had the trip down I-71 already memorized by mile marker.  A middle-aged guy took the seat next to me, and struck up a conversation.

He asked me what I was doing, and I explained to him the fate of the Squareback.  He laughed, then told me that he was a chiropractor.  Now I was a smart kid, nineteen years old and a Denisonian, but at the time I’m not sure I knew what a Doctor of Chiropractic actually did.  So this guy began to explain chiropracty to me, telling me about positions and spinal movements.  It all sounded interesting, if a little exotic.  He waxed eloquently about the health benefits of alignment and extension, and we were halfway to Cincinnati before…things got a little strange.

Adjustment?

The good doctor explained the need for special tables in order perform adjustments.   But then he began to get into the mechanics of his tables, and the “new” chair he had designed.  This, he said, was good for chiropractic, but its real value was for sex.

I wasn’t quite ready for that transition, and soon the Doctor was waxing eloquently about how good sex was in his new chair.  He then got more descriptive, reaching over the carefully placed armrest to try to alter my Greyhound seat to more aptly describe his invention.  I wasn’t a frequent “rider of the dog”, but I knew when it was time to defend my window seat.  We had a bit of low-key parrying, as he tried to place himself in a more descriptive position. I kept replacing his hands back on his side of the armrest, and he was getting frustrated with my unwillingness to gain “a full understanding” of “the chair”.  My still honed high school wrestling skills were coming in “handy”.

I thought things might become more violent, but realized that we were turning off of I-75 by Princeton High School.  The Springdale stop was right at the corner, and I had no concerns about jumping over my “seat mate” to get down the aisle to the open door.  No goodbyes were necessary for the Doctor of Chiropractic.

What Bus?

I spent the weekend up to my elbows in grease and gasoline.  But we got the engine apart, the small (4 cylinder) crankshaft to the NAPA store, and ordered all the assorted parts and pieces to pick up the next weekend for the rebuild.  By Saturday night, I was with my buddies listening to music (and probably having a Stroh’s beer or two).

Sunday morning I had breakfast, and then caught the early afternoon bus back to Columbus.  No “doctoring” was available on this trip, so I read an Isaac Asimov novel and jumped out unscathed at the Greyhound Station.  I went out to the street, and waited for the local bus to take me back to Granville.

After about half an hour or so, I wandered back into the Greyhound Station to the information desk.  There I was informed that the bus to Granville (and onto Newark) didn’t run on Sunday, oops!

It was 1975, and hitchhiking was still “a thing”.  My buddy down the hall hitchhiked all the time from his home in Maine to Denison and back, so I figured that getting from downtown Columbus to Granville wouldn’t be a big deal.  But you can’t hitchhike on the Interstate, and it didn’t seem like you could in downtown Columbus.  So I started walking east on Broad Street, figuring it couldn’t be too far until I could get to a more “highway” like area.

Hitchin’

Looking back on that journey, I walked from downtown, through Bexley and Whitehall, and out past the airport towards a little hospital (then), Mt. Carmel East. That’s about nine miles, but hiking and backpacking was my thing in those days. I was even wearing hiking boots and a backpack. Unfortunately it was getting dark, and cold, and there was still a long way to, about eighteen more miles to Granville.  I finally got up my nerve and stuck out my thumb. A nice lady picked me up and took me as far as the County line. 

State Route 16 was a two-lane highway back then, not the five-lane road it is today.  And back then there was only one stop light from Mt. Carmel East all the way to Granville. Today, there’s one every couple of blocks.   So hitchhiking was easier back then, and a pickup truck pulled over almost right away. 

Now I was a novice hitchhiker, so I didn’t think too much when the guy with the fluorescent orange work gloves jumped out of the driver’s seat.  The passenger door was broken he said, but he was headed east if I wanted a ride.  So I clambered up into the driver’s side of the truck,  slid over to the passenger seat, and we headed east towards Granville.  

The window didn’t work either, so I did start to get a little nervous after my chiropractic adventure.  But he was a local guy, just talking about local stuff, and we got to Granville quick enough.  He wanted to drive me up to my dorm, but I had him drop me off by Fuller’s Market.  Seemed like a safer bet.

No More Dogs

The next weekend I caught a ride with another Denison student headed home for the weekend.  It was a busy Saturday and Sunday, trying to reassemble the Squareback with all the new parts and pieces.  And I managed to get in a little bit of trouble at home:  Mom came into the kitchen and found pistons in the oven and wrist pins in the freezer.  Their tolerances were close:  it was hard to get them together. So you made the wrist pins smaller from cold, and the pistons bigger with heat.  Somehow Mom didn’t seem to get the point, and the oven did have the odor of just a hint of motor oil.

But we managed to get the pins in the pistons, the crankshaft in the engine, and the engine back in the vehicle.  By Sunday it was time to test it out,  and, I drove the Squareback back to school.  By now I could park in the Dorm lot.  I hitchhiked a few more times in my student days, including one crazy ride at 120 miles an hour through the mountains of Tennessee.  I thought that was going to be the end, but learned to never underestimate the skills of the son of a moonshiner.  

But that trip to Cincinnati was the last time I was “riding the dog”.

Call It What It Is

You would think that after almost a thousand essays, I would have covered all of the political topics of our time.  But there are a couple I’ve shied away from for varying reasons.  One of those is American racism, though I have written about Black Lives Matter and societal violence towards minorities.  But with the end of the Trump Administration, so many Americans don’t seem to understand why the Insurrection of January 6^th is being called a “white supremacist” event.  So I’m going to try to examine why.

In the Fox News App (yep, I really do check it to see what they’re saying) they had a long article about the Insurrection.  In that article the term “white ___” (fill in the blank, supremacist, racist, extremist) was constantly followed with the parenthetical “sic”, to designate an improper use of language.  It took me a while to catch on.  Fox News doesn’t believe in “white supremacy” (sic) so every use of the term by them is improper, hence the “sic”.  

So let me lay out a case to demonstrate why the Insurrection, and much of what is done to restrict voting is, in fact, racist.  And let me go on to show why a lot of what our government does, intentionally or unknowingly, is racist as well.  If you’ve gotten this far, I hope you’ll be willing to read the rest.  The case isn’t that complicated.  This isn’t social calculus, it’s simple arithmetic.  In fact, it’s as simple as two plus two.

Stop the Steal

The Trump/Republican Party made a case to America that the Presidential Election of 2020 was “stolen” from them.  They argued that the Democrats somehow stole votes, or created them from thin air.  They tried to make their argument in Courts throughout the nation, even in front of Trump appointed Judges, but failed each and every time.  But they held onto that argument, long past time to give in, all the way through to the Electoral College certification in the United States Congress on January 6^th.  One hundred and forty some Republican Congressmen voted to refuse the votes of several states, and two Senators.  

But let’s look specifically at whose votes President Trump, and his fellows in the Congress didn’t want to count.  It wasn’t that they really wanted to throw out the whole votes from Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada.  They only wanted to disregard the votes from certain segments of each of those states.

Here’s the list.  It’s the county (or counties) in those states that contained the following cities:  Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, Phoenix and Las Vegas.  Why those counties?  Because if you discounted those, Trump would win, and win the Presidential Electoral College.  But let’s go to the next step:  what do each of those cities have in common?

Sixth Sense

There is a Bruce Willis movie called “The Sixth Sense”, where a child is able to see the dead.  The famous line from that movie is a haunting (literally), “I see dead people”.  If you look at each of those cities you don’t see “dead people”, you see “brown people”.  Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee have a high percentage of Black people, most of whom vote Democratic.  Phoenix and Las Vegas, have large Hispanic populations, and again, most of them vote Democratic as well.  

So when the Republicans cried out to deny the votes of those states, because of those cities, what they were really doing is disenfranchising people of color so that they could win an election.  If that ain’t (sic) racist, I don’t know what is.

So why not New York, or Cleveland, or Chicago?  Because those states weren’t close enough to be in question.  But don’t doubt for a second that if Ohio had been a closer count, there would have been Republican cries to discount Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Summit (Akron), and Montgomery (Dayton) counties.  Republicans saw “Black people” there too.  Black people who voted Democratic.

I’m sure my Republican friends will say it had nothing to do with race, it was simply about trying to win the Presidency.  But if it was you – if the President of the United States was taking your vote away, and all-around you people who “looked like you” were having their vote threatened too, what would you think?  It’s as easy as two plus two.

Electoral College

It’s similar to the argument to maintain the Electoral College.  Let’s be clear:  The Electoral College simply says that in some states, the vote for President of the United States is worth more than in others.  The smaller the state, the more each vote for President “counts”, the bigger the state, the less.  In a nation where the Supreme Court ruled a half century ago that “one man, one vote” should be the law of the land (Reynolds v Sims), the Electoral College stands out as the “grand exception”, endowed by the Constitution with an exemption from fairness.

Want a statistical analysis?  Every state (and the District of Columbia) is guaranteed three Electoral votes. Then those votes are added by population.  So, in California, each Electoral vote represents about 720,000 people.  In Wyoming, each Electoral vote represents 193,000.  Here in Ohio, it’s one Electoral vote to 650,000.  

Any nine-year-old can look at that analysis and determine – it ain’t (sic) fair.  And of course the Electoral college was based in an ultimate unfairness.  It was written on the principle that some people counted as one (free persons) and some people counted as 3/5’s, (enslaved persons).  Those who were enslaved didn’t get to “cast” a 3/5’s vote, they didn’t get to vote at all.  But their bodies added to the Electoral strength of the state where they were held.

It shouldn’t surprise then, that the states with the greater “weight” of Electoral votes are states where the vast majority of the population is white (Washington DC is the exception).  The Electoral College is a “peculiar” institution, founded in racism.  And it continues to be.

Apartheid

The nation of South Africa made a huge transition in 1994.  For forty-five years before, South Africa lived under the principle of Apartheid, a strict legal separation of the races.  Where you lived, where you could go, what you could study, who you could love, was legally set by a government determined racial designation.  The ultimate goal of apartheid was to keep a minority white population in control, and the majority population of color denied political power.

It wasn’t until 1994 that the system of apartheid was abandoned, and majority rule came to control.  Amazingly, this revolution didn’t require a war (though there was a lot of civil violence).

So there are models of government where a minority manipulates the law and government to maintain control.  And while here in the United States we aren’t considering apartheid laws, there are more subtle means used to keep one political party in power over the other.

And let’s call them out:  laws that keep people from voting, that are designed to make it “easy” for suburban voters and “hard” for urban voters, and that draw the legislative district lines to enhance one political party’s power and dilute the other, are racist when one party predominantly represents one race.  Voter suppression, “Red Mapping”, making polling places inconvenient for the voters: all are designed to keep people of color from voting.  That’s inherently racist.

Numbers

The United States Census Bureau estimates that within twenty-five years, the United States will become a majority/minority nation.  In plain language, white people will no longer by the majority of the country.  The fact that this represents a “challenge” to be met by altering rules and laws to enhance the power of white people, is another “proof” of racism.  And here’s another statistically “altered” figure.

We all know that the pandemic has damaged our economy.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics says our nation has, in large part, recovered from the high unemployment of last June.  They statistically claim that unemployment was as high at 14%, but now is back down to 6.7%, still high, but more “politically” palatable.  But our “gut” tells us that the current figure doesn’t “feel” right, that far more folks are impacted by the pandemic than “just” 6.7%.

Emergency

And our “gut” is right.  The Statistics stop counting folks who stop looking for work.  So the “real” unemployment rate – of people who want to work but can’t find work – is closer to 12% (CNBC).  And from that the overall rate, we know there’s an even greater impact on people of color.  The “announced” unemployment rate for Black people is 9.9%, and for Hispanic people 9.1%.  But the “real” unemployment rate for people of color:  somewhere around 15%.  The numbers are all massaged to look better.  But the “massaging” denies the national emergency that a 15% unemployment rate represents.  

The Congress should do something about a 6.7% unemployment rate.  COVID relief, extended unemployment, improved health coverage are all reasonable actions.  But if it’s “only” 6.7%, that’s “not that bad”.  When that number was 15%, Congress passed the first COVID relief package almost immediately.  The President made sure to put his signature on the “stimulus checks”.  

For a large segment of the United States population, that number is still 15%.  But since our Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t acknowledge that pain – it’s not such a concern.

It’s all easy to see.  Not some societal advanced calculus, just “ two plus two” arithmetic easy.  

Call it what it is.  Intentional or not, it’s racism.  

Recent History

The events of the past few weeks were predictable, but never the less near catastrophic.  We entered the New Year with millions of Americans questioning the results of the November election.  The oddity of that is they only seemed to question the outcome of the Presidential vote.  The rest of the results, which favored Republicans in most cases, were just fine.  And few of the sceptics seemed to notice that contradiction.

Then, only five days into the year, we had the stunning results of the Georgia Senate runoff.  By slim margins, the Democratic candidates managed to win the twin elections, and change the power structure of the Federal Government.  That January 5^th election put the Democratic Party in control of the Senate, by the new Vice President’s tie-breaking vote.  With Democrats already controlling the House and the Presidency, it was a full change in power.  But in all three institutions it was by such narrow margins – a galactic shift by the smallest of forces.

Insurrection

On January 6^th we paid the price for the lies, and the false expectations.  President Trump called “his people” to protest in Washington, then sent them to Congress to stop the Electoral certification.  There is a legal expression, “knew or should have known”.  Donald Trump knew, or should have known, the fuse he was lighting on the National Mall that day.  He acted, at best, in “reckless disregard” for what might happen from the crowd he was stoking.  He lit the fire, and it exploded into the flames that nearly consumed the Congress.

Two weeks later, we know how close we came to the mob dragging our leaders out of the Capitol and into the streets.  What might have happened then is too terrible to contemplate.  And what Donald Trump would have done, what advantage he might have taken, we don’t know.  And, in all likelihood, neither does he.  While some in the crowd had “missions” planned in advance, I don’t really think the former President had a grand strategy.  He was “pissed” because he lost, and he was taking it out on everyone.

Napoleon with a Long Tie

Now Donald Trump is exiled, like Napoleon, to his “Elba Island” at Mara Lago.  But like Napoleon’s first exile, he really isn’t “gone”.  He’s brooding, a still powerful force in American politics.  Look at his muted supporters still on Facebook.  Less than twenty-four hours after Joe Biden’s inauguration, they already are looking back at the “good old days” when Trump was in charge.  He’s not been sent to Napoleon’s final exile, St. Helena, a speck in the middle of the South Atlantic.  Trump is still right here.   

And the leaders of the Republican Party get to make choices.  They could choose to further disarm the “Trumpian Wing” of their Party, by taking away an opportunity for Trump to run again.  They could complete his impeachment by convicting him, removing the perks of his “retirement”, and banning him from further political participation.  

But that risks the enmity of the Trumpian voter.  In our gerrymandered democracy, the influence of Trump on Republican primary voters remains enormous.  So Republican leadership must do more than just take away Trump’s political rights. They must find a way to reach his voters, outside of his powerful communication structures of right-wing and social media.  If they don’t then a whole new generation of cynical Josh Hawley’s will find themselves empowered.

Secession

Some Trump supporters suggest that they will split off from the Republican Party.  They will secede to a new political vehicle, the party of Trump, the “Liberty” Party.  Our two-party system is embedded deeply into our political structures.  Ask the Green or Libertarian parties, or any of the other “alternative” choices.  But the “Liberty Party” wants to subsume the Republican Party, much as the Republican Party subsumed the Whig Party in the 1850’s.  Their goal:  to take over those embedded structures so that the Republican Party becomes the “alternative” and the “Liberty” becomes the second of our two-party system.

As a Democrat, it would be easy to cheer for a split in the Republican Party.  In the short term, it would improve Democratic chances, a three-way split of the votes with the Democrats at a huge advantage.  But in the long run a “Liberty” Party represents a threat to democracy, the same threat that the mob represented on January 6^th.  A “Liberty” Party empowers the racism and authoritarianism that we pretended didn’t exist in the American political system, but made itself very clear in the past few months.  

So I hope the Republican leadership chooses wisely in the next few weeks.  They have an opportunity to further exile Trumpism.  They have a chance to cooperate with the new leadership in the nation, to advance all of our causes.  And they can do it all under the cover of: “those ‘damn’ Democrats are in charge”.  The Republican leaders would risk losing the short-term gains of appealing to the Trumpists.  But the more they pander to them, the greater the long-term risks of becoming an Orwellian “Liberty” Party.   

And we all know where that leads.

High School Lessons

I was a high school coach for forty years:  cross country, wrestling, and track and field.  All of my teams worked hard; the early middle school wrestlers, the state contending cross country teams, and those amazing last track teams.  We always wanted to succeed, to win, to achieve our goals.  

As “the coach”, it was my job to teach more than just athletic techniques.  The idea of school sports is to teach “life lessons”:   hard work leads to success, helping others achieve makes everyone better, and how to sacrifice for a greater goal.  It often worked.  My teams were successful, and more importantly, as the “old retired guy” I now get to see those same team members have success in life.  They are working hard, having families, achieving life goals, and making the world a better place. They learned the lessons beyond how to pass the baton, run the hill, or “snake” the bar.  Success in life: that, more than the wins and losses, is what it’s all about.  

Final Lesson

One of the hardest lessons was to convince them to be willing to risk failure.  Big goals, big achievements always involve big risks.  Whether it was winning the Conference by one point or plotting to win the state in a cabin on a hilltop, getting high school kids to “take the chance” and risk disappointment was hard.  No one wants to be disappointed; it would have been easier to make “safer” goals.  

At the end of each season there was always “the final” lesson.  More often than not, it was how to deal with failing to achieve that last, ultimate goal.  I put it to them this way – have class in defeat.  Whatever the outcome, it doesn’t change who you are, and the work you have done.  Have pride in the journey, of being willing to take the risks, success or failure.  And sometimes it all worked, and the lesson was to show class in victory, in ultimate success.  I had to teach that one too.  Sports is about winning and losing, so when you win, remember what it was like on the losing side.  Show grace in victory, because we have all had to show grace in defeat.  And sometimes, it was by just one point.

Sun Rise

Those same lessons apply to politics.  In fact, that’s where I learned them in the first place.  In political campaigns you put your heart and soul into trying to succeed.  If you have the right candidate and the right ideas, you know that success will be more than just “winning”.  It will be about making your world a better place, improving life for more than just yourself.  So defeat is so much harder. It’s crushing.  You lose not just for yourself, but for all of those that would benefit from your ideas.

Defeat, failure to achieve that ultimate goal: it was so bad that the world seemed to stop.  The sun clearly could not come up – this bad day would last forever.  But that was a lesson to be learned too.  The next morning, no matter how bad the loss, the sun still rose. And with that, the journey began again.  The sun came up, and it was time for new goals, time to plan a new journey.  

Many of us re-learned that lesson in the early morning hours of  November 9^th of 2016.  Unimaginably, all of our collective ideas and goals were tossed away.  To paraphrase President Gerald Ford, for the majority of us, a “long national nightmare” began – the Trump Administration.  And as we know now, it turned out to be far worse than any of us even imagined on that long dark night that seemed to last for years.  From the Muslim Ban to Child Separation, Russia to Ukraine, “fine people on both sides” to “I’ll march with you to the Capitol”:  it’s been a long, long four years.  It ended just as badly as it began.

Our Team

Somehow the win of Biden/Harris this past November feels more like winning the Conference by one point than some overwhelming victory.  While more than 81 million Americans voted for Biden and Harris, 74 million voted for Trump and Pence.  Almost half of our nation now has that same long night we had in 2016. 

I feel good about the win.  Today, Joe Biden will become the President of the United States.  In the next few days, the United States will rejoin the Paris Accord, remove the Muslim Ban, and make it a government priority to reunite the remaining separated children with their families.  The XL pipeline will be canceled once again, and the Federal Government will finally “take charge” of the COVID vaccination program.  And that’s just the beginning.

The sun rose this morning on a new America.  But it’s an America that is still divided, still shocked by the Insurrection, and a long way from Reagan’s “city on a hill”.  So, my Resistance, my Democratic friends, savor “the win” today.  But learn this lesson from an old Coach: show class in our victory.  We need our fellow Americans, even those that voted for Donald Trump.  We need them to be a part of our team effort.  

I saved my Biden signs from the election, and I thought about putting them back out last night, just for today.  Instead, I’m making sure the US Flag is waving high in front of our house.  It’s the “class” thing to do.

Post Script

I watched President-Elect Biden speak to the nation twice yesterday. The first time, as he left his home in Delaware, he was willing to show his emotion, his attachment to his home state, and his pride in the son he lost.

Then he took that same emotion and strength and led the nation in the FIRST national mourning for the 400,000 lost to COVID. He gave us a moment to mourn, to finally recognize our loss.

It was good to have a President for our whole nation.

It’s Monday, January 18^th, 2021, three days before the Inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as President and Vice President of the United States.  The question of this day:  what is left for Donald Trump to do as President?  How will this “episode” of the “Apprentice” finally end?

Family and Friends

We know he’s going to issue another round of pardons.  Rumors are that there is a list, over one hundred, that President Trump is ready to announce. That’s traditional for any outgoing President. But Trump’s pardons are likely to include those close to him. The man has to take care of his family.  Donald Junior, Ivanka, Eric and their assorted partners all have some level of risk for Federal indictment.  It’s unimaginable that President Trump wouldn’t grant them all blanket pardons for anything they might have done since he came down the Golden Escalator. 

And then there’s the “friends”.  Start with Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani, already under Federal investigation by the Southern District of New York.  There’s a whole lot you can say about Rudy:  he’s been the prime driver of the “stolen election” campaign.  And before that, he was the central figure in the Ukraine scandal. (Hey, that’s both of the impeachments!!)  Last week Trump begrudged the $20000/day fee that Rudy was charging, but now the former Mayor of New York has agreed to represent the President in his latest impeachment trial in front of the Senate.  

It’s hard to know what’s a “great Trump deal” and what’s a “quid pro quo”, but either way it’s very likely that the President will be presenting a “golden ticket” to “the Mayor”.

Stephen Miller, the architect of the Muslim Ban and child separation might also qualify for a “get out of jail free” card, along with a slew of administrators in the Department of Homeland Security.  In 2009 when President Obama took office, there were lots of questions about whether his administration would pursue the Bush Administration creators of the “torture memo” and those that implemented it around the world.  Obama made the decision to stop the policies but not prosecute.  While Biden is definitely forward looking, there’s no guarantee that he will make the same choice.

Get the News Cycle

By the way, all those Federal Pardons are exactly that, pardons for federal crimes.  They sideline the Biden Justice Department, but do nothing to stop the state prosecutors from bringing charges.  That puts Eric and Don Jr back in the target zone, as the New York Attorney General and the Manhattan’s District Attorney Cyrus Vance aim at the Trump family and organization’s tax irregularities.

This is really nothing new.  Since before election day, all of these pardons were anticipated.

But there are two pardons that would definitely create “a stir”.  And if either of these are issued, don’t be surprised if they show up Tuesday night, or maybe even Wednesday morning as Trump walks out the door of the White House for his farewell flight to Mara Lago on Air Force One.  He’ll try to upstage the Biden news cycle, one more time. 

Pardon Yourself

The first is Constitutionally questionable:  can Donald Trump issue a pardon to himself?  The Presidential Pardon power is virtually unlimited in the Constitution. Article 2, § 2 states: “… he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States”. There are no “buts or ifs” in the wording.  However, it is a reasonable argument that the Founding Fathers thought that a “self-pardon” was clearly out-of-bounds, an extension of sovereign power that crosses the line into royalty.  

Why would he pardon himself?  We already know that Donald Trump was “individual one”, an unindicted co-conspirator with Michael Cohen in the Stormy Daniels case.  We also know that he could well be named in the Trump tax cases in New York, which could also have Federal ramifications. 

And President Donald Trump could face a Federal charge of inciting insurrection for his actions on January 6^th.  Those charges carry a penalty of ten years in Federal prison, fines, and bar holding Federal office in the future.  It’s a “Resisters” dream:  Donald Trump going to Federal prison.

And there is another, more current political ramification of a Trump “self-pardon”.  From a legal standpoint, it might be worth a shot.  What’s there to lose?  If there were a Federal indictment against him, a self-pardon would be the first line of defense, a line that wouldn’t be available if Trump didn’t pardon himself.  Maybe the Supreme Court would ultimately allow it, but if not, Trump’s case is no worse.

Count the Votes

But there is a second consideration.  Trump is already impeached, and facing Trial in the Senate.  There are likely fifty Senators aligned with the Democrats who will vote for removal.  There are currently only a few Republicans who might join them, not enough to reach the sixty-seven votes need for a two-thirds majority and conviction.  But if the President acts in such an imperious manner, pardoning himself as he walks out the door, that might be enough to change the count.

What’s at stake here?  An impeached and convicted President is stripped of his pension, $200,000 a year.  He’s also stripped of his travel and office allowances, and could be left without Secret Service protection as well.  Trump’s financial woes are well known.  He owes Deutsche Bank $400 million coming due in the next year, and the Bank has already said they are ending their relationship with him.  So there’s no extending that loan.  

But the real issue: a simple majority vote after the two-thirds conviction, would bar the convicted President from any future “position of trust” in the government.  In short – Donald Trump can never run for President again.  And that’s a financial matter.  Trump is depending on his fundraising ability to maintain the “station to which he is accustomed”.  The Trump “campaign” raised $270 million AFTER they lost the election in November.  If he can never run again, how will he continue to raise money?

Payback for Trumpers

And there is one more Pardon that could alter the vote count in the Senate.  The FBI has already filed charges against hundreds who participated in the Insurrection of January 6th.  If Donald Trump really wants the Inauguration Day news cycle, here’s the ticket. Issue a blanket pardon for anyone who participated in the Insurrection.   After all, they did it to “Stop the Steal” and they did it for Trump.  There is no question.  He has the power to pardon them all, and there is no Federal justice “work around”.  The local jurisdiction, the District of Columbia, is a Federal district and unlike the states, must honor Federal pardons.  

But if that action doesn’t seal conviction in the Senate, then Donald Trump really does have blackmail, “Kompromat,” on far too many Republican Senators besides just Lindsey Graham.

And the best part of all these “plot lines” – the end of the season is almost here. We’ll find out “before we know it” – all by Wednesday at noon.

Coolidge

It was 2:30 am on August 3^rd, 1923. Vice President Calvin Coolidge was vacationing at his family home in Plymouth Notch, Vermont.  There was no electricity or phone to the site, no way for instant communication. Vermont State Representative Porter Dale had to personally deliver the news to the Vice President.  The President of the United States, Warren Harding, died of sudden cardiac arrest in San Francisco at 10:30 pm (EST) the night before.  

Coolidge got up, got dressed and said a prayer. He asked the closest Justice of the Peace, his father John Calvin Coolidge Sr, to administer the Presidential Oath. The thirtieth President of the United States was sworn into office by kerosene lamp light at 2:47 am in the family parlor.  After the Presidential succession was assured, Coolidge went back to bed.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr will become President of the United States at noon (EST) on Wednesday, January 20^th.  The formal “oath taking” is necessary but not required. Biden assumes the duties, and Donald Trump no longer is President when the clock strikes noon. Whether Biden is sworn on the Capitol West Front Portico on in Statuary Hall; the Oval Office of the White House, or the back of a limousine or in the aisle of a plane, he will become President at noon.  Whatever disruption occurs in Washington Biden’s ascension to office is assured. Though, over 20,000 National Guard troops make disruption less likely.

Insurrection

As the days passed since the insurrection of January 6^th, we’ve learned so much about what we watched in horror.  What looked like a mob gone far wrong turned out to include multiple groups with specific “missions” in mind.  Some were looking for the Vice President or Speaker Pelosi, and some for targeted members of Congress.  

Under cover of the overall mob violence, we now know those “teams” came perilously close to their objectives.  Vice President Pence was evacuated from the Senate chamber just sixty seconds ahead of the mob.  But they were right behind him.  Only the quick-thinking actions of one Capitol Police officer, Eugene Goodman, redirected the mob from the office where Pence and his family were sheltering.  They were within 100 feet of the Vice President, the man that they promised to hang. The gallows were already erected outside.

In the Crowd

So who were these insurrectionists? They were willing to break into the Capitol, battle the police (some using “Blue Line” flags as weapons) and threaten the legislative branch of government.  From watching the scene on television, they seemed like supporters of Donald Trump, “MAGA” folk, the same folks we have seen at the rallies and truck parades.  And those were a lot of the people pushing into the Capitol, breaking the glass and pursuing the guards.  But among them were white supremacists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, and even a scattering of people drawn to the flames of destruction despite their views. They included one Black Lives Matters activist from Utah.  

District of Columbia Metro Police officers who arrived late on the scene, reveal that they were not only out-manned by the number of rioters, but out-gunned as well.  One officer, dragged into the crowd and in fear for his life, reached for his pistol. But he realized that if he shot, a hail of bullets would be returned killing him and his fellow officers.  Surrounded by the crowd, he instead appealed to their humanity, yelling that he had kids.  He was encircled by a few protectors, that led him to get back to his fellow officers.  To those protectors, the officer said, “Thanks for the help, and F**k you for being there”.

Crazies

So what was this mix that used Donald Trump’s words and the ensuing violence to follow their own agenda?  One now under arrest, Jake Angeli, is a QAnon advocate who stood out in buckskin pants, a fur cape and horns.  His lawyer claims that Angeli was only following the “orders” of the President, and should receive a full Presidential pardon.

QAnon believers are awaiting “The Storm”, when President Trump will order martial law and take over the government.  They are convinced that the President’s opponents, and particularly the Democratic leadership, are pedophiles who actually eat children.  Their “godhead” includes a living John Kennedy Jr, who will reappear to ally with Trump and take over.  They are probably excited that troops line the streets of Washington DC today – they surely see this as proof of their prophecy.

If it sounds crazy, a result of too much time in quarantine and on the internet, you’re probably right. But they are true faithful – look back at the front of the Capitol in January 6^th and see the number of “Q” flags and symbols.

Supremacists

Then there are the more typical white supremacists; the ones we got to know so well in Charlottesville.  “Jews will not replace us” was their battle cry then, and I’m sure there was a search for Schumer and Schiff and other Jewish legislators in the melee.  Probably they aren’t aware of the religious preference of Congressman Lee Zeldin, a staunch Trump supporter, though it’s hard to imagine they don’t know Jared Kushner’s background.  

And, of course, they searched for “the Squad”; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib.  These Members of Congress, women of color, felt so threatened by their fellow Congressmen that they didn’t stay in “the extraction site” where Members were taken for protection.  They believed that some of the others Members might communicate their location to the “mob” outside.  AOC isn’t telling the entire story yet, but at least she had a close encounter with a dangerous situation that day.

Who To Sleep With

White Supremacists, QAnon supporters, Boogaloo Bois, Proud Boys:  there were “fine people” on all sides of this riot.  And then there were the “regular” Trump supporters, egged on by Giuliani and Congressman Mo Brooks and Don Junior, as well as the President himself, to “march on the Capitol” and “fight, fight, fight”.  They should have looked around to see who they were marching with.

The media and law enforcement now call this a “white supremacist” riot.  At first, I was confused:  I just thought this was Trump supporters having Trump’s promised “wild time”.  But as we look back at January 6^th, we see the emergence of a threat even greater than Donald Trump himself.  This is a threat not of the normal “conservative right”. It is extremists who threaten to take our world back to the “good old days”, the time of Calvin Coolidge.  That was when the Ku Klux Klan marched fully robed and hooded down the streets of Washington, DC, twenty-five thousand strong. It was the height of their political and social power.  

Trump supporters: look around.  Is this who you want to “sleep” with?  Because these are the groups that chose Donald Trump.  And he is happy to “bed” with them.

Inaugural Memories

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

It could be the final paragraph of Joe Biden’s inaugural address this coming Wednesday, January 20^th.  America, strained in passion has found its “bond of affection” stretched to the breaking point.  The “mystic chords” of our shared memory and history, of battlefields and patriots, our flag and anthem, seem not to be enough to hold us together.  Our “better angels” seem absent.

I haven’t received an advance copy of the Biden Inaugural Address.  This quote is not from Joe Biden’s text (at least as far as I know).  It’s the closing paragraph of Abraham Lincoln’s first Inaugural, done from the same front portico of the Capitol building.  And like Biden, Lincoln was surrounded by troops. The newly seceded Confederacy loomed close.  Virginia, a bridge away across the Potomac, while still in question at the moment of Lincoln’s speech, but would soon leave the Union.

Militarization

And there’s more in common between Lincoln’s and Biden’s Presidential beginnings.  Lincoln arrived in Washington aboard a special train from Baltimore, whisked through that city in the middle of the night.  A plot to kidnap him was about in the secessionist city, and Lincoln was secreted through.  Biden has travelled from his home in Delaware to Washington DC by train for his entire career.  He planned on doing it again, one more triumphal ride from Wilmington’s Biden Station (yep, he’s been doing it that long) to Union Station by the US Capitol on Monday.  But, like Lincoln, concerns for his security cancelled that journey.  Biden will arrive in Washington on a Marine Helicopter (not Marine One – only the serving President gets that designation).

Protection

Security in Washington DC is as high as any time since Lincoln was sworn in.  Seven thousand National Guardsmen line the streets and protect the buildings.  Another fourteen thousand will arrive before Inauguration Day, to supplement the Federal police forces and the DC Metro police.  Threats abound on the internet, despite the closing of social media to the insurrectionist mobs.  They are still communicating, plotting, and preparing for their “day” of the QAnon “Storm”.  The National Mall, where thousands always gather to watch the spectacle, is closed.  There will be no argument over whose crowd was bigger, Obama’s, Trump’s or now Biden’s.  Biden loses: the crowd is not allowed to enter.

Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington has asked folks not to come to DC at all.  There is an evening curfew.  Roads in and around the Capitol building are closed.  Air B&B’s are cancelling their Washington reservations for the inauguration period.  Hotels are cancelling suspicious bookings.  There are no Inaugural Balls, though there will be some “virtual” concerts.  For those with my musical bent:  Carole King and James Taylor are among the performers.  The other benefit – it will reduce the spread of COVID.

The Biden Agenda

The task ahead for the Biden Administration is as daunting as any President has faced since Lincoln.  The economy is slowing crumbling under the weight of the pandemic.  Unemployment numbers are growing, and the temporary reprieve of the last COVID relief package will run out soon.  The “Build Back Better” infrastructure program might fix that, but there’s COVID to end first. The pandemic itself is growing.  By the time Biden takes the oath of office on Wednesday, more than 400,000 Americans will be dead from the disease.   The Civil War death total of 600,000 is not far in the future.

The vaccine distribution is far behind the “Operation Warp Speed” goals.  But more insidiously, the entire process of combatting COVID is mired in political tension.  Wear a mask, get the vaccine; support Biden. Don’t wear a mask, refuse the vaccine, support Trump.  With millions of Americans conflating politics and medical science, Biden must find a way to depoliticize the path to recovery, or the pandemic will be prolonged for months, even years.

As if not enough, there are the heavy expectations of Democrats: reforming policing, health care, student loans, diversity in government.  And, by the way, don’t forget climate change, and the America’s role in the world.

Reunification

Beyond all of that, our nation is so divided that thousands thought it was “OK” to invade the Capitol building to stop Congress last week.  It takes a paradigm shift:  IF you believe that the Presidential election was stolen, as the President, his minions, and right-wing media claim, then it’s not too far a leap to determine that Congress was the final “rigging” of the election.  Sure there were the “crazies,” from Proud Boys to QAnon to Boogaloo, but there were a lot of folks that honestly thought they needed to “stop the steal”.  The fact that they are misinformed insurrectionists doesn’t change their personal certainty.  Biden needs to combine determined accountability for the acts of insurrection, with the need to bring as much of the nation together as possible.  As Lincoln said, in his second inaugural:  

“With malice toward none, with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Lincoln never got the chance.  God Speed, Joe Biden.

Outside Trump Tower

Donald Trump, in one of his famous rallies before the election of 2016, was overwhelmed by the love of his “MAGA” crowd.  How much “love” did he feel?  “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose any voters. It’s like, incredible.”

Taking the President at his word, what would Congress do if the President actually did just that.  Say he took an ivory handled pistol, and stepped outside of his former home in Trump Tower. He walked into the middle of Fifth Avenue, raised his pistol and without aiming, fired it down the street. And, what if the bullet struck a spectator walking into the nearby St. Patrick’s Cathedral? 

What would be the result?  He didn’t aim.  There was no proof of his intent to hit the 87-year-old grandmother, coming to light a candle for her late husband. No evidence that he meant to insight panic among those waiting in line to enter the Harry Winston Jewelry store, where one was trampled to death.  He was “just” firing the gun in the middle of Fifth Avenue.

Immunity

The President is immune from criminal prosecution according to the Department of Justice.  So immune, in fact, that Robert Mueller declined to even posit an opinion as the whether Trump obstructed justice, despite over one hundred pages of evidence to that effect.  The only option the Constitution (and the Justice Department) allows is the Constitutional process of removal – impeachment and conviction.  

Would the House of Representatives hold long-winded hearings to determine whether the President actually intended those folks to die?  Would they “study” the science of bullet trajectory and crowd panic?  Or would they just do the right thing. Would they impeach him immediately and bring him to trial in front of the Senate, a trial just like anyone else so irresponsible as to commit such an act.  And would the Senate wait a week for a “convenient time” to remove the gun from the President’s hand?  Or would remove they him from office, now, so that he can’t do it again.

A Bigger Weapon

On Wednesday, January 6^th, 2021, the President of the United States did much more than just “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody”.  

• First, he gathered a crowd of supporters for a “wild time” (his words) in Washington DC. He brought them to protest the Congressional counting of the Electoral votes.
• Second, he tried to persuade the Vice President of the United States to shirk his Constitutional duty. He demanded that Pence change the elected will of the American people.
• Third, when that didn’t work, he stepped out in front of the crowd, and fired them up to “fight, fight, fight” for him. He sent them down the National Mall to disrupt the Congress: : “March down Pennsylvania Avenue and take back our country”.
• Fourth, as the mob attacked the Capitol building, he sat in his office, watching on TV and refused to intervene.

He stepped out of the White House onto the National Mall, intentionally “aimed” the mob at the Capitol, and set them off against the Congress. He did it as surely as if he had stepped out of Trump Tower onto Fifth Avenue and fired that gun.  Six people are dead, tremendous physical damage done, and psychologically America is shaken to the core.

Remove the President

Sure there are multiple reasons to impeach and remove Donald Trump.  But there are two most important points that need to be made.  First, the sooner that Donald Trump is out of the Presidency, then the sooner the “gun” is out of his hands.  No one; not the Democrats, not the Republicans, not the Vice President, not the White House Chief of Staff, can pretend to know that Donald Trump won’t call forth the mob once again.  But we do know that he still has the “Bully Pulpit” of the Presidency in his hands.  

And second:  the precedent must be established.  The head of the executive branch has set “the mob” against the legislative branch.  It’s the first time in all of the acrimonious periods in United States history that has happened.  Jackson didn’t send the mob against Congress when they censured him in 1834.  Nixon didn’t try to rouse a mob in 1974.  Even Trump himself didn’t try that tactic just a year ago when he was impeached the first time.

It cannot be allowed to stand, not for a moment.  The voice of the Legislative Branch must make it clear to the Executive, to the Nation and to the World, that mob rule will not be the “American Way”.  

The Senate should take The House impeachment up – today.  If they don’t it is a failure in Democracy.  Should they refuse to do so (and Mitch McConnell has) it is just another black mark against the the Trump apologists of this era. They have enabled the “fake news” of this rogue Presidency to triumph once again.

House Republicans

Liz Cheney, the only Congressman from Wyoming, entered the US Capitol only five years ago.  She is now the Chairman of the Republican Caucus, the third highest job in the House Republicans.  Meteoric rise doesn’t quite describe Cheney’s ascension to power in a body where longevity is the path to influence.  But Liz Cheney doesn’t just represent Wyoming.  She represents President Ford’s Chief of Staff, the first President Bush’s Secretary of Defense, and the second President Bush’s Vice President. She is the daughter of Dick Cheney. The full weight of his career and power in the “old” Republican Party is fueling her rise.

Dick Cheney is best remembered for his “cold, hard” visage in the immediate days after 9-11.  Speaking from his “undisclosed location”, Cheney was the sharp-edged blade behind the Bush response to the attacks.  And while his attitude may be to blame for the excesses of the US Government response, particularly the CIA dark sites where prisoners were tortured and killed, it solidified his position as the leader of the “neo-cons” in the Party.

And his daughter, either through genetics or example, has inherited his gravitas.   

Cheney’s Statement

On Tuesday Liz Cheney, Republican Congressman from Wyoming, Chairman of the Caucus, and daughter of Dick Cheney said this about Republican President Donald Trump:

“Much more will become clear in coming days and weeks, but what we know now is enough. The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.  I will vote to impeach the President.”(CNN)

Senate Republicans

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is called “the turtle”.  Like a turtle, McConnell is often quiet, hiding his intentions beneath his “shell” of silence.  And like a turtle, he moves inexorably in a single direction, with no obstacle enough to deter his motion.  McConnell has taken some pride in another nickname, “the Grim Reaper”.  Dozens of bills, passed by the Democratic House of Representatives, have “died” on McConnell’s desk.  He refuses to bring them to the floor for debate, or a vote, or even to refer them to committees.  He has stood as a single roadblock to progressive legislation.

McConnell doesn’t send signals very often.  His tactic is more one of quiet surprise.  But when the New York Times and CNN report what McConnell is “thinking”, it’s likely not a mistake.  It is Mitch McConnell’s way of communicating to someone, in this case, the President of the United States.

 “Senator Mitch McConnell has concluded that President Trump committed impeachable offenses and believes that Democrats’ move to impeach him will make it easier to purge Mr. Trump from the party, according to people familiar with Mr. McConnell’s thinking.” (NYT)

Nixon

I was just graduated from high school in the summer of 1974, painting houses to earn some money as I waited to begin my freshman year at Denison University.  July of that summer was one of political tumult.  The Supreme Court ordered the “White House tapes” be revealed, and America heard the voice of the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, obstruct justice, plan bribes, and prove all of the worst charges of the Watergate conspiracy.

After the tapes came out, Nixon was still the President.  The House of Representatives began the process of impeachment, with the House Judiciary Committee under Congressman Peter Rodino holding hearings on the impeachment proposals.  Meanwhile, rumors emerged from the White House of a President, deep in his “cups”, speaking to the Presidential portraits on the walls.  America was vulnerable and the nuclear codes were still within Nixon’s reach.

After the committee confirmed the resolution, sending it to the floor of the House for debate and vote, a few Republican leaders went to see Nixon in the White House.  Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, House Minority Leader John Rhodes, and Senator and former Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater didn’t tell the President to resign.  What they did make clear was that Nixon’s support against impeachment was gone (ARZ).  No one would stand up for him. Nixon was a lawyer, and well aware of the consequences of impeachment and conviction, particularly the financial impact of losing his Presidential pension and perks.  The next day, Nixon resigned from office.

Entrenched in his Defiance 

Thanks Hallie Jackson of NBC News – that’s the perfect phrase!

Mitch McConnell sent his quiet signal.  Liz Cheney painted hers in giant letters on the wall.  Even Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House Minority Leader, is said to be polling his friends as to whether he should vote for impeachment or not.  While no one feels welcome to walk over to the White House for a conversation with Donald Trump, they cannot signal him more clearly.  His support still exists, but the number of his supporters are dwindling.  And Trump’s powerful tool used to bludgeon Congressmen and Senators into line, the “Tweet”, is no longer available. 

Donald Trump has only a few days left as President.  As Nixon once said, “every fiber of his being” is telling Trump to stay and fight.  Trump, like Nixon, not only faces impeachment and possible (and with McConnell maybe probable) conviction.  It’s not just finances, though Trump definitely could use the money now, with even Deutsche Bank cutting ties.  It’s also the legal consequences, with Trump facing Federal charges for insurrection with a ten-year possible prison term.  And while Trump has fallen out with his Vice President, Mike Pence, there still is a “deal” to be made:  a resignation for a pardon.  

Don’t hold your breath.  “Entrenched in his defiance” is an apt description of the President, who is listening to no one but his own “gut”.  And the “gut” is saying: “ I can’t be a loser”.

Law School

I spent a semester at the University of Cincinnati Law School.  It was one of those things I had to know.  After graduating from college and three years of high school teaching, I still had to find out if Law School was for me.  I don’t regret a second of that semester.  I worked hard in school and also managed a political campaign in Cincinnati.  But in the end, buried away in the Law Library, I figured out that while the law fascinated me, teaching was my calling.  It didn’t help that the UC track was right down the street from the Law Building.

So when my old boss, superintendent Pete Nix, interrupted studying for my final Torts exam and asked if I wanted to be an eighth-grade history teacher and the high school boys track coach, I didn’t hesitate.  I said yes.  The hesitation came when I had to call Dad and tell him what I was going to do.  It took several months to win him over, though once he came around, he supported me throughout my career.

I don’t claim expertise in the Law.  What I have is twenty-eight years of explaining the Constitution to eighth graders through seniors.  They asked all of the easy questions and most of the hard ones, and fact-checked my answers year in and year out.  So while my advanced degree is a Masters in Education, not a Juris Doctor, I do have some understanding of the United States Constitution.

A Clock and A Calendar

Today’s essay isn’t really about politics.  It’s about the United States Constitution, and the how it applies to the Congress and the President of the United States today.  Time is running out for the Trump Administration, with only eight days to go before the clock runs out at noon on Wednesday, January 20^th.  That, by the way, is a Constitutional mandate, specified in the 20^th Amendment, the one that moved the Inauguration from March 4^th to the January date.  Think about how much happened from November of 1860, until March of 1861.   Multiple states seceded, Ft. Sumter was under threat, and the incoming President Abraham Lincoln could do nothing about it for four months.  And it took more than seventy years, until Franklin Roosevelt’s second term, for the date to be changed.

Impeachment

Yesterday a resolution to impeach Donald Trump was introduced in the House of Representatives.  The House has the sole power to impeach a President, that is, to bring charges against him.  It takes a simple majority vote.  And this time, unlike a year ago (seems like a lifetime), there won’t be long involved hearings and legal testimonies.  

The House will bring the Impeachment Resolution directly to the whole body for a vote, probably tomorrow, bypassing the usual Committee process.  Their argument:  the actions of the President are so apparent, inciting the “sacking” of the US Capitol to stop the Electoral ballot count, that the committee hearing process isn’t necessary.  As Donald Trump would say, he literally stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shot someone.  There isn’t really a whole lot to argue about those facts.

Why Impeach

The question is, with only a few days to go, why Impeach the President at all?    First, if the Senate was willing to act with the same alacrity, Donald Trump could be removed from office within the week.  He wouldn’t be able to use the Presidency to further damage the nation.  But we all know, the Senate, controlled by Mitch McConnell and the Republicans, won’t do that.  

Second, impeaching the President will give Donald Trump an American “first”.  He’ll be the only President to be impeached twice, a dubious honor.  And the word “impeach” has greater historic weight than the other House option, a “censure”.  Several Presidents have been censured, but even I had to go back to the “books” to remember who they are.  But Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump are the only Presidents to be impeached.  (No, Nixon resigned before the impeachment resolution was passed by the House).

It would tell future President’s that Donald Trump’s actions were unacceptable.

Conviction

For the Senate to convict on the impeachment, it requires a two-thirds majority vote (sixty-seven Senators). There are two Constitutional penalties that can be applied.  The best known, is that the President is immediately removed from office.  But with the this timetable, Donald Trump will already be gone before an impeachment trial starts.  In fact, Leader McConnell’s plan would have the entire trial occurring in the new Democratic controlled Senate, after the Inauguration of Joe Biden.  

It is the second lesser-known penalty that would be applied.  The Democrats will control the Senate, but only by the tie-breaking vote of the new Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.  Conviction of impeachment would require all of the Democrats and seventeen Republican Senators to agree.  But if they did, the second penalty can be imposed by simple majority vote.  And that penalty is disqualification from ever running for Federal office again.

That’s what the true penalty would be.  Donald Trump could never run for President again. 

Insurrection

And there is another, lesser thought-of Constitutional process that could be applied.  A strong case can be made that Donald Trump incited insurrection. The law, 18 US Code §2383 defines insurrection as:

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

That’s the legal definition, to be applied by a Court if somehow Donald Trump is charged with the crime of incited insurrection.  And if that happens, and Trump is convicted, he is barred from running for office.

The Congress has another way to approach the insurrection question.  It all goes back to the end of the Civil War and the series of Amendments called the “Reconstruction Amendments”; the 13th, 14th, and 15th.   The major reason for the 14^th Amendment was the Southern invention called the Black Codes, laws that treated the newly freed slaves as a second and lesser form of citizen, with fewer rights and more legal restrictions.  The 14^th defined and required a single class of citizenship for all those in the United States.

The 14^th

That was in the first clause of the Amendment.  But in the second and third clauses, the Amendment dealt with the issue of the citizenship rights of the defeated Confederates.  The critical phrase that applies today is in the third clause:

“No person shall…hold any office, civil or military, under the United States…who, having previously taken an oath… to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.”

On January 20^th, 2017, Donald J. Trump made the following oath:

“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

So if he incited insurrection on January 6^th, 2021, then he technically violated the 14^th Amendment, Clause 3.

And Clause 5 of the Amendment states who decides whether insurrection was committed:

“The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article”.

So the House and the Senate could, by majority vote, determine that Donald Trump committed incitement to insurrection, and bar Donald Trump from running from office.  It circumvents the need for conviction on impeachment, and it also would bypass immunity from Court action as a result of Presidential pardon.  

If the Congress did this , it certainly would result in an appeal to the Courts, as some legal scholars claim that would be a “bill of attainder”, banned by the Constitution. It would end in the Supreme Court, with an uncertain outcome.  But it’s the third option.

Open Discussion

If you were ever in “Dahlman’s Class” maybe the best part was “open discussion” days.  And this would have been the perfect topic for an open discussion, though it might have gotten too deep for some.  But it has it all:  current events, Civil War history, intricate Congressional maneuvering, and, of course, that favorite history phrase, “what if”?  So, I hope you enjoyed our open discussion today. My best advice: avoid the Mexican pizza in the cafeteria, it smells like my running shoes. Stick to the peanut butter and jelly “Lunchables”.

How bad is the division of America?  Is our nation destined to fail because of a divide in “facts” and minds?  What direction need we go to find unity once again?

The Civil War

It was the last Presidential Election before the Civil War. America was so divided that there were four candidates and four political parties.  We know the “main” candidates, Abraham Lincoln representing the Northern (and western) Republican Party, and his Illinois arch-rival Stephen Douglas representing the Northern (and western) Democratic Party.  But the Democratic Party split at their convention in Baltimore.  The Southern Democrats walked out when the Party refused to recognize their right to absolute slavery. There was a “rump” Southern Democratic Party, led by Kentucky’s John Breckenrige, the serving Vice President of the United States.

And then there was a fourth Party, the Constitutional Union Party.  Their nominee was John Bell, the Senator from Tennessee.  They tried to create a “middle ground”, squarely straddling the issue of slavery by ignoring it. They campaigned on the slogan that they: “…recognize no political principle other than Constitution of the country, the Union of the states, and the Enforcement of the Laws”.  While they knew that Bell had no chance of electoral victory, they hoped to deny Lincoln a majority of the Electoral votes, and throw the election to the House of Representatives.

Death of Compromise

They failed.  Lincoln won the Electoral College, and in the months before he took office (at that time the new President was sworn in on March 4^th – think about that) the Southern states began to secede. In the Senate debate of the time, compromise after compromise was offered to avoid splitting of the nation.  But Charles Sumner, Senator for Massachusetts, summed it up best.  He believed there was no legislative answer to secession and that those looking to compromise misjudged the secessionist movement. “Deeming it merely political & governed by the laws of such movements, to be met by reason, by concession, & by compromise; whereas it is a revolution.”

A Revolution

The first question in our current crisis then is this:  is there still a Republican Party, or is there a former Republican Party and a “Trump Party”?  The answer to that question will determine our next step.  Our nation can still find “common ground” with the “old” Republican Party.  But the “Trump Party” has clearly stated its goal with the insurrection of January 6^th.  To paraphrase Senator Sumner, they cannot be met by reason, concession or compromise:  they are a revolution.   And unlike the secessionist movement of the 1860’s, the “Trump Party” not only has its own ideology, but it also has a whole separate world of “facts”.   There is no reasoning when there is no common ground, no common basis of knowledge.  No compromise can work when the parties cannot even agree on the hand counting of the votes.

Joe Biden desperately wants to be the President of unity.  And our Nation faces a crisis that requires unity:  COVID has already killed more Americans in less than a year than died in World War II.  That “butcher’s bill” is likely to get even worse in the next few months, the “dark hours” before the vaccine can kick-in.  There is a solution to avoid those unnecessary deaths.  It is in unity:  unity in wearing masks, social distancing, and getting the “shot”.  

But Joe Biden will not reach those willing to storm the Capitol and literally hang the Vice President and the Speaker.  There are not “…to be met by reason,” they are a revolution.  They don’t believe that distance, masks and shots will prevent death.   And millions of Americans agree with them – so how will Biden end a pandemic when they refuse to participate?

The Future

Biden is a “man of the Senate”, steeped in its culture of fierce debate followed by compromise and geniality.  And perhaps Biden can reach out to the “old Republican Party” of McConnell, Grassley and Portman.  But there is also the “Trump Party” of Cruz and Hawley in the Senate, and Gaetz and Brooks in the House.  They have sold their souls to the Trump Revolution and there can be no turning back from that choice.  How can there be compromise with such cynical and self-serving demagogues?

The future of the American experiment in Democracy will depend on the majority being willing to work together.  For the near future there will still be “the Revolution”.  They will be “true believers” who cannot negotiate, cannot compromise, and will not concede.  It will be up to “the rest”; the “Old Republicans” and the “Biden Democrats” to find enough common ground to make America work.  It will be through their success that the “Trump Revolution” will fade away.  Or, if that compromise fails, our Republic will find ourselves like the Constitutional Union Party:  the answer to a trivia question.

Insurrection

The more we learn about Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol, the more at risk we should feel.  What looked on the screen like a high school prank gone far wrong turned out to be so much more serious.  Five people died in the attack, including a Capitol Police Officer who was doing his job, denying entry to the masses invading the building he was sworn to protect.  It was no accident; he was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.  

And one woman was killed.  She was part of the mob, smashing through the doors to the House of Representatives.  The police officers were barring them, buying time for Members of the House to evacuate the chamber.  The rioters looked through the glass windows and saw guns pointed at them.  They continued to batter the glass until it shattered.  The woman jumped up to go through the window, and was shot.

And we now know that some of the rioters had plastic handcuffs.  They were looking for the Leadership, and particularly Vice President Pence.  They were told by President Trump that Pence “refused” to give Trump the election.  Protestors were shouting “Hang Pence”, and gallows was actually erected on the Capitol grounds.  While many of the rioters might have been “swept along” into the Building, for some, it was an assault, with a mission, and a goal.  Bombs were present, as well as Molotov Cocktails.  

This wasn’t a greased pig let loose in the halls, nor alarm clock set in the lockers.  This was an attack, and while many of those participating surely didn’t know it, those masses were providing cover for a real threat to our nation’s leadership.

Proximate Cause

There is a legal term called “proximate cause”.  It describes the “first domino” knocked over, the beginning event that if absent, the whole rest of the chain of actions fails to occur.  If the drunk driver doesn’t get behind the wheel, the car doesn’t swerve, the accident doesn’t happen, and the child doesn’t get killed.  The direct cause is the car swerving, the proximate cause is the impaired driver.

What is the proximate cause of the attack on the Capitol?  Certainly, there were many who arrived in Washington with some assault in mind.  The bombs weren’t made on the spur of the moment, the plastic handcuffs weren’t stolen from the Capitol Police (they didn’t have them – and were strangely unprepared for the attack).  

Not everyone who listened to the President and the other speakers at the rally near the White House marched to the Capitol.  Many, including folks that I know, listened to the orations, cheered the speakers, then stayed in the National Mall.  Others did march to the Capitol as the speakers told them to do, but stayed outside.  We see them crowded around the building in the media.  

But for many, they followed the directions given to them by the President and his representatives.  They were told to fight for their cause, that the election was rigged, and that the Congress was about to confirm a corrupt candidate.  Donald Trump and his subordinates did not lead the march to the Capitol.  They did not batter the doors down, nor desecrate the floors with feces.  But as surely as if they were in the front, they “lit the fuse”.  They literally gave the marching orders and told the crowd to go to the Capitol and stop the vote.  They were the proximate cause. 

Attack on the Legislature

So, Congress is faced with a choice.  The sitting President of the United States literally launched a physical attack on the legislative branch.  The lives of the Congressmen and Senators were at risk.  If a few staffers hadn’t had the presence of mind to grab the boxes of Electoral certifications, the actual process of determining the vote would have been even more delayed.  While there are copies, if would have been another day at least, before the Congress could have ratified the Electoral vote.  What might have happened in that day?  And if the Vice President, or the Speaker, or others had fallen captive to the mob, what might have occurred?

Congress was attacked.  The President of the United States remains in office, for now ten days.  What steps should the Congress take to protect itself from an Executive who isn’t just making threats, but actually carrying them out?

Remove the President

There is an easy choice.  The Vice President and the Cabinet can remove the President, and make Vice President Pence the Acting President.  There’s a twenty-one-day window for the President to appeal to Congress, but of course, the new President will be inaugurated by then.  But the Vice President shows no stomach for that.  It’s a political choice more than a Constitutional one.  Pence plans to run for President himself in 2024.  He’s already “in trouble” with the “Trump base”. After four years of subservient fealty to Donald Trump, Pence failed to do what Trump wanted.  Pence did not subvert the law, ignore the election results, and try to proclaim Trump the next President.  

Mike Pence is making a political decision.  He doesn’t want to be the “final nail” in the Trump coffin, because he perceives it will cost him the primary votes he needs in 2024.  So, all the Vice President will do is “hold his breath” and hope that Trump will stew and simmer in silence for ten days.

Trump could resign.  And even though it might make legal sense (assuming Pence would offer him a pardon as quid pro quo for the resignation) no one expects “the Donald” to so acknowledge failure.  So that’s off the table.

McConnell’s Move

Then there is impeachment, the process already underway in the House of Representatives.  Tomorrow a resolution will be placed for debate on the Floor of the House.  Many Republicans will likely demand investigations and hearings, and decry the Democratic “railroading” of their beloved President.  But all of those members were impacted by the attack, the know what happened and why.  Again, they will measure the politics before all else.  Those Republicans too will face primaries in 2022, and they need the Trump voters.

But the majority Democrats and a few Republicans will pass a bill of impeachment, again.  Donald Trump will be the only President impeached twice.  He will finally gain his singular place in history.

And this gives Mitch McConnell his final political moves as Majority Leader of the Senate.  McConnell controls the Senate until January 20^th, Inauguration Day. On that day the now 50-50 body will lose Pence as the tie-breaking vote, and gain the new Vice President, Democrat Kamala Harris.  McConnell refuses to bring his Senate, now in recess, back to Washington before January 19^th.  And by refusing, he allows his Republican members to avoid taking a stand either for or against the President.  At least until Trump is gone.

Responsibility

And he also throws the whole “responsibility” for the results of the impeachment on the new Democratic Senate.  It’s unknown if enough Republicans will join to reach the two-thirds threshold to convict Trump.  If that occurs, it’s likely that the then more important simple majority to disqualify him from further office will be reached. But then it’s the Democrats fault, not Republicans.   Don’t be surprised to hear that echo into the campaigns of 2022 and 2024, whether Donald Trump himself can run or not.

The President of the United States sent a mob to the Capitol to stop them from acting.  That much is clear, and should be punished.  And that same President remains in office, a threat to the Constitution for the next ten days.  But what should be a simple decision based on fact will be decided by politics and by the continuing power of Donald Trump over the minds of many Republican voters. 

Hugh Hewitt

Man, I despise Hugh Hewitt.  Hewitt is a conservative radio talk show host out of Wisconsin.  His show is on the Salem Radio Network, and can be found on most “mainstream” conservative stations. When you’re falling asleep at the wheel, he’s a great choice.  Whatever they’re talking about, it’s bound to raise your blood pressure.  By the end of the show, you’re mad, frustrated, and wide-awake.  There’s your highway safety tip for the day.

I don’t despise Hewitt for his views.  Lots of folks, many of whom I call friends, share his positions.  Hewitt was a conservative before Donald Trump, working in various Republican Administrations and the Justice Department.  In fact, I respected Hewitt in the months leading up to the 2016 election.  He stuck to his conservative “guns”, in spite of Donald Trump.  He called Trump “as he saw him”, a charlatan and a fool.

No my big problem with Hewitt was his conversion to Trumpism.  In a few short weeks in January of 2017, Hewitt went from a conservative critic to a Trump mouthpiece.  Every Trump talking point became a Hewitt battle cry.  I’m sure it didn’t hurt that Hewitt’s son was working in the Administration.  And it that’s convenient change of heart that frustrated me.  I knew Hewitt before, and I knew him after, and I don’t like what I know now.

Derangement

So it isn’t a surprise that Hewitt wrote a long editorial for the Washington Post calling on Americans to let Trump finish out the eleven days of his term.  Hewitt does not want Trump impeached; he sees that as a form of revenge and retribution, not justice.  He even pulls out the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” claiming that those who wish to remove Trump before January 20^th are simply suffering from some mental disorder.

Just an aside – I hate the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome”.  It is the way that pro-Trump folks use to denigrate those who oppose Trump.  It’s all about “well the stock market set records,” “our taxes went down,” and “he built the Wall”.  It says that because of the “mental disorder”, hatred for Trump, those suffering from the “syndrome” are ignoring all the “good” that Trump achieved.  I’ve got to tell you – it’s hard to find much good achieved in the past four years.  And the bad so outweighs the good:  ask 375,000 Americans dead in the last ten months.

Donald Trump fomented an insurrection.  He did it by promulgating false information about the American election, claiming that there was massive fraud that took “a beautiful landslide victory” away from him.  Trump convinced millions of Americans that their storied Republic was being subverted.  He called them to Washington DC, on the day that the Electoral ballots were counted.  And he sent many thousands of them to the Capitol, primed to “defend their President”. 

Trump didn’t have the “balls” to lead them into the Capitol building.  He was the ugliest kind of leader:  an arsonist who lit a match then went back into the White House and laughed as the mob smashed into the seat of our Democracy.  

Wink and a Nod

And then the President issued a staged video, telling his loyal followers that it was now time “to accept the results”. I didn’t see “the wink and the nod”, but the entire nation is still waiting for it. We all know how this works; we saw it after Charlottesville. “There were good people, on both sides; I know it and you know it too”. Trump is incapable of accepting the loss; he will call on his “people” again. Maybe we should call that “Trump’s Derangement Syndrome”.

So I’m all in favor of getting Trump out of office as soon as possible.  Vice President Pence and the remaining Cabinet members could do it.  This is one of the scenarios the 25^th Amendment was written for.  Unfortunately, Pence and Pompeo have made the political calculation that they will need Trump’s “people” to fulfill their own ambitions.  Pence should get a couple of “Atta-boys” for doing his job and counting the votes, but I’m sure that’s as far as he goes.  And Pompeo (rhymes with pompous) is hiding from the world, probably in an “undisclosed location” in the State Department. 

Or Pence could cut a deal with Trump:  a resignation for a pardon.  I can hear President Pence’s speech to the nation now, subverting Gerald Ford’s “now our long national nightmare is over” speech after the Nixon pardon.  But I’m not holding my breath for that either.

Insurrection

And I don’t blame Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats for seeking any means to remove this President before he can do more damage to our Constitution.  He literally tried to overthrow the government.  Men were walking through the Capitol Building with handcuffs.  A gallows was erected on the Capitol lawn.  Sure they looked like fools at a drunken college riot after losing the football game, but America was close to seeing some South American style power grab.  As long as Donald Trump is in the White House, the risk is still there.

But damn, Hewitt’s right.  Impeachment won’t get us there.  Mitch McConnell’s final act as the Majority Leader of the Senate will be to shelter Trump one more time.  He’ll do what he does best – delay.  Like Pence and Pompeo, it’s not about protecting Trump, it’s about protecting Republican Senators from taking a vote on Trump’s removal:  politics.

 Impeachment won’t get Trump out of office any sooner.  What it does do is exactly what Hewitt claims:  revenge and retribution.  And while there is no one more deserving of both than Trump, we have better processes for that than impeaching and removing a man who will no longer be in office when we get there.

We have the Courts for that.  And if Trump pardons himself and his family, we have the Courts for that as well.   If the Courts fail, we can always resort to the ballot box.  Meanwhile we need to hang onto our Republic tight for the next eleven days.  It is at risk.

Dallas

It was 1964, the year after the Kennedy assassination in Dallas.  The Warren Commission was doing the grim work of determining how an American President was shot down.  Lyndon Johnson, sworn in as President on the tarmac of Dallas’s Love Field with a bloodstained Jackie at his side, governed without a Vice President.  John McCormack of Massachusetts, the seventy-one year old Speaker of the House, was next in line for the Presidency. But there was no provision for replacing a Vice President

It was a year of the Presidential election and the passage of the Civil Rights Act. And it was the year when the critical early decisions were made that mired the United States in the Vietnam War.  But a few members of the Senate, led by Democrat Birch Bayh of Indiana, were looking at how our Constitution could be improved.  They were studying the Presidency, and more specifically, how our nation could replace the President.

Replacing the Vice President

The first question was easy:  how to replace a Vice President.  In the original Constitutional times it didn’t seem so important (Hamilton – “John Adams doesn’t have a real job anyway”). But in modern times holding a dual role, a job like the Speakership and being next in line, was complicating.  It was essential to be able to replace a Vice President, whether that person resigned or died, or was elevated to the Presidency.  So they took the standard Constitutional language for executive appointments, cabinet members and the like, and expanded it.  The President could nominate a candidate for Vice President, and with two-thirds approval of both the House and the Senate, a new one could be appointed.

Presidential Disability

Then there was the second grim possibility.  What if Kennedy had somehow survived the Dallas attack but was incapable of serving as President.  There was no mechanism for removing a President, temporarily or permanently, short of a resignation or impeachment and conviction.  There were the historic examples.  Woodrow Wilson’s stroke left him disabled for the last months of his Presidency and his wife, Edith, the actual Chief Executive. And more recently, Dwight Eisenhower was disabled for months after a massive heart attack.

This was the nuclear age, just two years after the Cuban missile crisis when the world stood at the brink of destruction. The President was the critical decision maker.  There was no time for long-term rehabilitation like Wilson or Eisenhower.  It was the age of a thirty-minute window from launch detection to nuclear holocaust.

So they established a provision that allowed the President to temporarily step aside from the office.  With a simple signed statement, the President could transfer the powers of his office to an Acting President, the Vice President.  With that same simple statement, the President could resume the powers of office.  And if the President was incapable of signing such a statement, then the Vice President and the cabinet could, by majority vote, replace him with the Vice President.

Who are the “Cabinet” for the purpose of determining this decision?  They are the “principal heads of the executive departments”, the Vice President and the “Secretaries”.  While many Presidents “elevate” other offices to Cabinet status, only those who are in the actual line of succession to the Presidency are part of the process of replacing the President. 

Nuclear Dilemma

Then there were the deep, dark fears of the 1960’s at the advent of the nuclear age, the era of Mutual Assured Destruction.  What if a single person, a B-52 Bomber pilot, or the General in charge of the Missile Battalions, or the President, cracked under the pressure of controlling the “nuclear button”?  They are all human, what if they somehow lost their minds, and determined to start a nuclear war?

For the pilots and missile launchers, the military developed the Fail Safe system.  It took more than one person, on the bomber, or the submarine, or in the missile silo, to launch an attack.  For most there were also secondary controls from central command that could prevent the launch even if both the “key-holders” tried.  And for the Generals and Admirals in charge, there were layers of command, with no one person in total control.

Except, of course, the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief.

The authors of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution absolutely contemplated a President who cracked under the pressure.  The process of temporary removal was quite specifically designed to provide an alternative to a President who lost his mind.

Coup d’état

But it also created a quick path to a “coup d’état”; an overthrow of the duly elected leader of the nation.  So they put a process in place, where the real President could appeal to the Congress to get the job back.  If the President was replaced, he could petition Congress. They are required to begin deliberations within forty-eight hours, and make a determination within twenty-one days.  To keep the elected President from regaining office, it would take two-thirds agreement of both the House and the Senate.

All of the contingencies were studied.  They thought about a President who simply had to have a medical procedure requiring anesthesia (George W. Bush), or one needing emergency surgery (Ronald Reagan).  They contemplated a Vice President who resigned (Agnew), or through death, removal or resignation, was elevated to the Presidency (Ford).  And they also thought of a President who was no longer capable of serving in office.

The Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution passed Congress by two-thirds vote in the summer of 1965, and gained the necessary three-fourths approval of the states in early 1967.  

Affirmative Duty

The Twenty-Fifth Amendment created a duty for the Vice President and the Cabinet.  If the President of the United States was unfit for office, it wasn’t enough for them to simply to look away, or even resign.  The Amendment created an affirmative duty for them to contemplate replacing the President, if, in their judgment, he no longer had the capacity to govern.  The powers of the Presidency are now too awesome to allow even a few days grace for someone unfit for office.

There are twelve days left to the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.  We can only hope the Vice President Pence and the remaining Cabinet members (two have resigned) are aware of their duties.

The Capitol

In the winter of 1977 I worked in Congress.  I was just twenty years old, attending American University on their Washington Semester Program.   But I was also a paid intern with Congressman Tom Luken of Cincinnati.  I spent that winter and spring learning the “inside jobs” of a Congressional office:  answering phones and mail, researching legislation and doing the most important work, constituent service. It was heady stuff, with the words “this is Congressman Luken’s office” opening doors that were slammed closed on “regular folks”. 

It also gave me some license to roam the Capitol Building.  The Capitol is much like a giant hospital.  Sure there’s the main building, the actual Capitol with the iconic dome.  But there are buildings spread all around “the Hill”, mostly office buildings for the 535 Congressmen and Senators and their staff as well as all of the Committee staffs, research support staffs, and the people who actually made the building run.   Tunnels and subways connect the main building to all of the others.  It’s a huge web that you can get lost in just as easily as finding your destination. 

Snow Blind 

In that February I took a weekend to visit some friends in Pennsylvania.  They lived in a town called Mahoopany, just up river from Tunkhannock and Scranton in the Northeast corner of the state.  It was normally a four-hour drive, and I jumped into my 1967 Volkswagen Squareback and headed out of town into Washington’s Friday afternoon traffic.  The route worked its way north, into Pennsylvania, and into the mountains above Harrisburg.  And I drove right into a mid-winter blizzard.

I was twenty, invincible in my rear-engine and rear-wheel drive Volkswagen; Crosby, Stills and Nash blasting from the speakers.  I soon found myself far ahead of the trucks, driving through deep unplowed snow.  It became difficult to find the road.  I picked my way up the mountainside carefully, going until I felt the road go soft under my hands, then dragging the “Squareback” back to the center in an “anti-submarine” maneuver.  There were no guardrails, no visual cues as to where the road edge ended, and the mountainside began.

Looking back on those hours in the mountains, it wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done.  My white Squareback would have blended away into the snow-covered mountainside if I careened off the edge.  They wouldn’t have found it, or me, until the next thaw.  But I managed to avoid the fall, and arrived at my friends in Mahoopany full of pride deep in the middle of the night.

Precedent

From the beginning of the American experiment in government, we depended on “guardrails” to maintain our Democracy.  President Washington realized that the Founding Fathers couldn’t write a “law” for every possible contingency.  So he was acutely aware that each of his actions as President established the precedent for the future.  

The most obvious example of that was choosing to serve only eight years as President.  Washington could have stayed for life and few would have complained.  But as Lin-Manuel Miranda so eloquently recognized in Hamilton, Washington realized that he needed to establish the final precedent of voluntarily leaving, of making Presidential power only temporarily linked to a person, rather than the office.  He needed to “Teach Them How to Say Goodbye”.  It wasn’t a “rule”, but it was the norm, the guardrail of American government:  until it wasn’t.

That lasted for one hundred and forty-two years, until Franklin Roosevelt chose to drive through that guardrail and run for a third term in office.  After he died in office in his fourth term, that guardrail was erected in law, the 22^nd Amendment to the Constitution.

And we have depended on other unwritten guardrails to maintain our Democracy.  As hard as it was to accept it, our Presidents honored the will of the people and transferred the power of their office when their time came, even when they suffered electoral defeat.  The modern “one termers”, from Herbert Hoover to Jimmy Carter to George HW Bush, made sure that the next President had every opportunity to succeed, even though they were electoral rivals.  They followed Washington’s precedent, and put the nation before their own ambitions.  That worked:  until it didn’t.

No Guardrails

There are no guardrails for a President who refuses to accept electoral defeat.  We have no precedent for a leader who calls on the people to come to Washington and  “…be there, it will be wild”.  And when he vented to them for seventy minutes on the Mall yesterday, they followed his suggestion to “…go down to the Capitol and cheer on our brave Congressmen and women”.  They knew why they were there:  because “…we will fight…we will never give up, never concede (to the) Democratic explosions of bullshit…” (US News).

Reverend Al Sharpton, a civil rights leader who has organized many marches on Washington, DC, recognizes the power of his words on the National Mall.  He knows that if he incites his crowd to commit crimes, he would be held responsible for their actions.  But he also knows how to maintain control of the ten of thousands who came to support his cause.  He wants them to be a symbol of support for change, not for destruction.

And so does Donald Trump.  He knows exactly what he was inciting his followers to do.  It shouldn’t be a surprise that thousands followed his command:  they marched down to the Capitol and they didn’t give up until they got inside and stopped the,  “Democratic bullshit”.

There are thousands who didn’t defile the Capitol, and who peacefully protested for “their” President.  But anyone who watched what went on yesterday recognizes that it wasn’t just an “aberrant few” who smashed their way into the sacred halls of Congress, and stopped the Constitutional process of certifying the Presidential election.  It was “the mob”, incited by the President and by months of “fake news” designed to convince them that their “will” was being thwarted by political “elites”. 

Off the Road

Yesterday afternoon our government felt like it was off the road in the blizzard, teetering on the edge of crashing down the mountain.  It would only take a few of the pipe bombs and Molotov Cocktails that were hidden away in a nearby car (WUSA) to make yesterday’s invasion so much more than just “touristing” in the legislative chambers.  Our Democracy was at the edge.  And there were no guardrails.

What can we do?  There are some physical guardrails now:  literal barriers of National Guardsmen and Police to stop the next mob heading down the Mall.  But the answer isn’t more police.  The man responsible for “lighting the fuse” should be held to account for his actions.  President Trump has twelve days remaining in office.  That’s twelve days for the Republic to “survive” without guardrails. 

Or it’s twelve days to send our Nation into chaos.