To Comfort The Afflicted
And Afflict The Comfortable

To Comfort The Afflicted And Afflict The Comfortable

Friday, November 8, 2024

Observercast

A Republic At Risk

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As I write, it’s the day after the Super Bowl. The “president” congratulated the Chiefs of Kansas City, er, Kansas. Too bad the Chiefs stadium is in Missouri. Never mind. He does this all the time.

And how about those Senate Republicans? Aren’t they something? Has this country ever elected a more spineless, pathetic group of cowards to govern us? The answer is simple: No. Not ever!

Not even in 1860 were our legislators so cowed by an idiot. Not in the North. Not in the South. Irrespective of their positions on slavery, they had the courage to legislate. Not this bunch.

Why do I so chastise Republicans? Well, it isn’t that hard to do if you have read the Constitution even once, or heard Barbara Jordan’s speech defending and protecting our founding document.

No, these Republicans of today, in both the House and the Senate, are playing at governing without the slightest intention of doing so to protect our republic from the vagaries of Donald Trump and William Barr and Mitch McConnell.

Lindsey Graham is happy being Trump’s caddy while wearing his knee pads. Yes, this is vulgar, but the collective behavior and “opinions” of the entire lot of Republicans in our federal government these days is worth of such vulgarity.

These Republicans seem to not mind defiling themselves and the Constitution at the same time. Remember, it’s their billionaire donors who are on their speed dials for permission to breath and not vote for the law. But that’s just part of the dissolution of our republic.

It’s the other creatures not worth a pinch of dirt in the wind like Lou Dobbs or anyone on Fox News, especially Sean Hannity, Trump’s favorite ass-kisser and disseminator of B.S. They all add another fetid element to the smell of a dying republic.

When we feel the Earth move under our feet, it means that Hannity, or anyone on Trump’s propaganda networks has told the truth. My coffee continues to be stable and un-rippled.

But back to the duet of dolts that are working hand-in-glove with perhaps the worst human being to soil the halls of our Congress or any government since Ivan the Terrible … Barr is now the unapologetic law pretzel maker. McConnell, with his Jabba-the-Hut grin, is the executioner of democracy in our great experiment. He has totally suborned the Constitution, the rule of law and any understanding of decency in government for the sake of … wait for it … maintaining Republican control of the Senate.

Oh. Does that mean that he isn’t finished filling open federal judgeships with his drooling fools from the Federalist Society? Or maybe he’s hoping that Ruth Bader Ginsberg will keel over any minute and he can put another right-wing reactionary child molester up for the Supreme Court.

Judge Roy Moore would certainly fit that bill, wouldn’t he, Mitch? He’s just waiting for your call.

Of course, before McConnell can do anything, he has to speed dial is financier, Oleg Daripaska, for permission. Otherwise, he might not get his aluminum processing/polluting plant for Kentucky if he misbehaves.

One must also ask him how that corruption in the Department of Transportation is going. After all, Moscow Mitch’s wife, Elaine Chow, Transportation’s Secretary, is busy shuttling federal contracts to her father’s and family’s transportation business, isn’t she? Has she stopped doing that?

All this daily corruption pales in the face of the impeachment “trial” in the Senate. Who needs documents and witnesses in a trial when the jurors are already suborned and in the pocket of the defendant. Gutless cowards all, those senators.

But let us not forget the idiotic and utterly embarrassing display by House Republicans during the impeachment hearings that preceded this fake trial by the fake senators.

With honorable, veteran career government servants testifying, the Republican questioners were completely befuddled by their honesty, their strength of character and forthrightness. Even Gordon Sondland spit out his Trumpian bit and told the truth: “Everyone was in the loop.”

And yet … there sat Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan and a host of other forgettable wretches all trying to use their camera time to throw up on themselves. All that integrity from the witnesses was just too much for them to bear up under. The Republicans on the dais collapsed completely in front of the whole nation and a good portion of the world. I was totally embarrassed by the Republicans’ display of ignorance, dishonesty and story-telling. But wait. The trial in the Senate hadn’t begun yet.

Trump’s law team in the Senate trial tap danced so fast around the truth and the facts that I thought I saw the carpet start to smolder and smoke behind the lectern. Alan Dershowitz was like watching a Boy Scout trying to light a fire by rubbing two sticks together … except Dershowitz was anything but a Boy Scout as he re-wrote the dictionary and the law books while yammering about how impeachment should suddenly be struck from the Constitution and that what Trump did [bribery and obstruction of Congress – he’s still doing it] was not impeachable irrespective of what the Constitution said in black ink. Amazing.

Why only last century when a Democratic president was being impeached for lying about a sexual encounter [you know, the kind of behavior that would cause our enemies to launch missiles], Dershowitz was all in for following the letter and intent of the Constitution and the laws. Not this time, Alan. Why not?

Why indeed are all these old, white men and a few disoriented women senators and their “legal” council so afraid of fulfilling the obvious criminal activity specifically called out by the Constitution. Bribery and abuse of presidential power is impeachable. Our founders said so and wrote it into those magical 7,000 words that define our democratic republic.

Why, then, did the Republican caucus show so little respect for our founding document, never mind their disdain for the people who elected them and the rule of law?

They’ve been thumbing their noses at the voters ever since the Republican-dominated Supreme Court gave corporations and money the same status as speech. Now, it’s the donors who wag the dogs of Republican senators and Congress people. It’s that obvious, and they simply don’t care who knows it.

To have sold their souls to the lowest bidder in order to protect the most fundamentally incompetent and most likely psychopathic creature to ever sit in the Oval Office tells rational people all they need to know about what corruption means.

These despicable wretches who pass themselves off as representatives of the good people who elected them are rotten to their cores. You don’t have to look very far or listen to too many news broadcasts from anything not called Fox, Breitbart or InfoWars to see it.

These are the reasons elections should be publicly funded. These are the reasons Election Day should be a national holiday. These are the reasons gerrymandering and lobbying politicians should be illegal.

Forget term limits. I’ll settle for an honest, un-compromised Congress for just one term. Seeing them in action might make us want to re-elect them. Imagine that.

Vern Turner
Vern Turner
Denver resident Vern Turner is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer. His latest book, Why Angels Weep: America and Donald Trump, is available through Amazon.