Thursday, February 28, 2019

From Watergate To Watershed

The hearings left me exhausted and after the first few Republicans I muted their nonsense.  As several observed, they didn't discuss the evidence that Michael Cohen brought with him but kept going over the fact that he has admitted to, that he was a liar who engaged in corrupt activities.  They went over that over and over again.  As was also pointed out, most of the lying and corruption that matters to the public, was done on behalf of Donald Trump and his family.

I don't like Michael Cohen, I don't admire him but I hope that he was sincere about this being the start to him turning himself around,  I didn't admire John Dean either and I'm sure we'd disagree about many things even now but I do, now, have respect for him. 

The Republicans were a disgrace and a shame on the districts that elected them.  Jim Jordan - whose professional association with a pretty disgusting sex abuse scandal would have destroyed any Democrat with a tenth of his involvement - was positively vile as were the rest of them.  Why Jim Jordan isn't being pilloried in the media is just one more in the endless examples of the double standard that is in effect at all levels of the American media, and, so, the legal system and government. 

It is as clear as Trump's zig-zag signature on the smoking-gun check that Michael Cohen brought to be placed in evidence that he committed a known felony while in office, one that he lied about while in office.  And, from what I hear, not being a lawyer, there were other crimes that were exposed yesterday, crimes by Trump during the campaign and while he was in office.  Not to mention the exposure of his family business as little more than an organized crime operation, Trump signing off on all aspects of it. 

I think, now, the next thing will probably be Congress getting his tax returns and, with that, as some are saying, the various prosecutors will likely take the Trump crime family down, "taking buildings away" as Donny Deutsch put it.   If it will extend to people like Trump's criminal sister in the judiciary, we'll see. I doubt we will have the satisfaction of seeing any of them hard up, the richest criminals never seem to have to pay the same kind of consequences that even those who are innocent pay at the lowest income levels.  There are so many people involved in the various crimes and acts of wrong doing that produced the Trump criminal regime who deserve to be punished and fined so they won't do it again, especially those in the media.  But I doubt that we'll see that kind of satisfaction, either. 

But, according to the Constitution, even if that doesn't happen, Trump should be removed by impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate, which we all know is not going to happen.  And the only real way that the United States gets rid of its worst presidents and vice presidents is by cutting a deal with them.  It's not supposed to work that way but that's the way it does under the corrupt Constitution in real life.  Which is disgusting.  There's a reason that countries that copy the American system so much more often devolve into dictatorships, though they are not perfect, parliamentary systems have proven they can do, sometimes, what we cannot, get rid of a bad chief executive.  Our system doesn't do that except by corrupt bargain.

Though with Trump those features of the Constitution that put him there (the goddamned Electoral College, the courts protecting voter suppression and gerrymandering, etc) and keep him there ( the anti-democratically apportioned Senate) should be overturned or those parts of the country that aspire to good government should get shut of those parts of the country that are obviously addicted to fascism.   I am torn between noting that the regional and state identities of Trump's thuggish protection racket on the committee was as could be expected, though it wasn't uniform and recognizing that even the most benighted states have significant minorities of voters who aspire to democracy and the rule of law instead of partisan thuggery.   But I'm tired of living in a country dominated by Republican-fascist thugs, in elected office and on the courts.  I think a coalition of the states that have carried some of those benighted states for decades should say either we correct the corrupt Constitution or we're out of it.  I think the abolitionists who petitioned to abolish the Constitution were on to something worth thinking about.  I'm tired of having states like Ohio and Kentucky and Tennessee and Georgia and Wisconsin giving us the line of Republican crooks and criminals we've gotten since 1968.  I hope to die in an egalitarian democracy which is governed for the common good and know my nieces and nephews have a chance of growing up in one.

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