Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

How long will we play the game, by rules written over 200 years and 43 presidents' contrivances ago? They (GOP) has stopped playing by anyone's rules but their own self-serving ones. From the beginning of the Trump Administration, but in a larger sense since the mid-sixties, over two-thirds of America has placated, been a tote to a party who displays very little—in spite of their numerous pledges to the contrary—of what it means to be an American. Half in politics struggle to prove that they are compassionate human beings deserving of their inherent Christian ethic and will unapologetically conflate biblical passages to advance their own agendas.

A mutinous scenario has scuttled angrily past my eyes a few times. It took Trump to do it, to bring me to that level of chagrin, but many presidents in my lifetime have hovered over that button as though it were the one with which they were most entrusted. Few dare push it and it has stayed a point of negotiation, a lever, codes of leverage to cloister at least a third of the world in darkness. From the beginning strains of this country, from the trajectory set during the Continental Congress, with its convoluted decision to use a team of electorates to select a president, America has drown many times, many swallows, only to buoy itself repeatedly while drowning some more. It does sound similar to water-boarding.

Many, supportive of Trump, assure us there will be another Civil War if their pope were impeached, when the white smoke exhausting from the castle fades to black. Civil War II is worth keeping on a corner of the table. That is a war with which I would definitely want to be involved. A political war has been going on for decades as two parties struggle to do what's best for the majority of the American people. And that my fellow Americans, to a grossly obvious way on the right, beginning with Nixon and ending with Trump, is the greatest lie of all. Was their ever a vested, unconditional, rooted interest in what the real physical majority of Americans want. When has, after every person could vote regardless of race or gender, one man one vote amounted to anything that could begin to fit a Democratic schematic?

In my forthcoming book American Bus Ride: movement toward a fair Democracy I trace the lines of certain minority groups that were, and to a greatly lesser degree, still suppressed in America. I note how Democracy works, how it's worked to advantage the other 99 percent and also disadvantage that most lied to group of Americans. They played by the rules, while their adversaries used parlor games or stacked the deck when they sensed they were losing control of the situation. They unconscionably used violence when the other 99 percent remained peaceful. During much of the 20^th century pacifism was probably prudent. Today, however, in the 21^st century watching the unmitigated harm done to our Democracy, the utter ignorance for anything expected from a POTUS, the total disregard for actions perpetrated in the name of racism. . .I really question the very real option of a call to arms. For god's sake, it's a political game, derivative of a handful of mostly white old men who operate under the assumption that they are entitled to rule more than two thirds of the country.

The jig should have been up on Wednesday February 27 when Mr. Cohen presented the check signed by Mr Trump, his payment to hush Miss Clifford that violated campaign finance laws. It found its place as the first of many “smoking guns” yet to come. Face it, America pigeon-holed itself. A reprobate like your Mr. Trump got himself elected in part because this is America with an intentionally rigged system. He is allowed to prosper, to defile America because it is America. In most countries his acts of betrayal and obvious motives to enrich himself and his class would be kept in much tighter check. We got rid of Nixon, we got rid of LBJ when he lost his senses, and don't say Germany had a dictator follow a Democratic regime. The situations are different. Yes, a race of people is hated but keeping them out of the country is all that's being asked. No one is threatening genocide, no storm troopers, no secret police. America is not economically ruined to the point of mass starvation. People get health care, for some price. The right to own firearms is a constant in this country, baked in the red, white and blue cake, god bless us everyone. And that's where the rubber hits the road. As long as a government keeps a right to bear arms alive and well, it will have a very hard time getting people to fear it. Let's hope it does not come to that, to taking up arms against our aggressors, but the people, the NRA, the senators themselves, keep that option open.

I watched the Reagan show. I took note of the Bush double feature, the second much more damaging than the first. The Trump show tops them all. Each Republican president to set foot in the White House, each Republican majority to hold the middle-class is the pug who gets in the ring, gets knocked down, takes dives, floats and stings to get knocked down again. For decades those lower classes have been marching, sitting, standing singing “we are not afraid.” I think it is high time that such fearlessness manifest itself in more overt ways, ways that adversaries have not been conditioned to expect, methods that do not always follow the rules. The jig is up. As a sleazy mob boss, a real estate hustler, an incurious, uneducable racist looks to dictators as models on how to preside over a country, the jig is up. Is congress going to sit and hear the testimonies of 80 people, exhausting millions of dollars of Americans' money? Are we going to wait for a six figure Mueller report only to possibly see a much redacted portion? Time, human suffering and terror, destruction of America's interior, of its democracy, and money has been frittered away in the last two years; probably more than in the last five prior to that. In 1945 Harry Truman made a calculated decision that he thought would ultimately save blood and treasure. The Japaneses refused to surrender then, the GOP refuses to surrender, to dump Trump, now. They have stayed with their strength, the moral low ground, in the chaos that has followed the Trump White House from the issuance of Fire and Fury, from what now rounds out to 9,000 lies or untruths. “When they go low, we go high” is worn, hackneyed. The phrase has matured beyond all usefulness, fathomed its credibility. Democrats are playing by the rules, Trump does not know the rules, has not read the American constitution, and has no desire to learn anything. A second Civil War, hot or cold, is a distinct necessity.