Impeachment of Trump will only further enrage his base- with dire consequences

Two weeks ago, January 9th, I posted the following essay: 

Impeachment of an ex-president is legislative malpractice 

The Democratic party has embarked on something never done before, approving articles of impeachment against a president who cannot be removed from office. It would be appropriate to vote on a censure, which would be a statement of condemnation of this president for his encouragement of the invasion of the Capitol by his acolytes. This may have gotten not only unanimous Democratic support, but probably a good chunk from Republicans, depending on the exact wording. Rather, the Democrat leaders of both houses of Congress are rallying almost all of their members into not only voting for this, but treating it like a moral imperative designed to put the final nail in the figurative coffin of a reprehensible individual.  

The legacy of this individual doesn't require an impeachment trial, as it already took place on November third, with a decision made not by elected officials, but by the citizens of this country. Trump's attempt to convince us that his election was rigged, based on a convoluted fantasy that ignores all rational evidence, has failed. 

 At noon, January 20th, President Trump will become citizen Trump, with all of the vast authority of office gone, along with its immunities. There is another aspect of Democrats attempting to use the impeachment process to ensure that this individual shall never be President again. This would be a travesty, an affront against Democracy itself. This impeachment conviction with the clause of his never being allowed to hold government office again would have one effect, that the body politic, the citizens of this country, would be denied the right to nominate and elect Donald J. Trump to the Presidency. 

The next three years could find Trump excoriated further, or it's possible that he would be more appreciated in comparison with the administration that replaces him. This decision by the public is the essence of a democracy that should never be foreclosed.

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January 30th

Today there is a different argument that incorporates the previous one. Mainly, Trump is no longer President who controlled the levers of power in this country, which included the military. His time was running out then but it could not be known whether out of desperation he would attempt to marshal the outrage of his acolytes to take up arms against the enemies of "Trump's USA". 

He had candidly discussed his following being armed and willing to defend his America against their common enemies. He had boldly encouraged such actions, calling for insurrection against the Governor of Michigan and others, leading to her almost being kidnapped and executed.  He did the calculation that while he had full support of maybe only 40% of the public, they owned armor piercing machine guns, with the will to use them.

Now the persistence among Democrats to impeach and remove citizen Trump takes on a surreal absurdity, especially since the Chief Justice who is charged with residing over presidential impeachments has refused to do so. This is  affirmation that removal from office is only to prevent imminent damage by the commander in chief of the military, certainly not to stigmatize one with no more authority than any other citizen.

I checked whether the Democratic party may have started to come to its senses before I posted this, and they seem to be doing so: From this article in the  Washington Post. Jan. 27, 2021 at 12:05 p.m. PST 

The prospect of likely acquittal for Donald Trump at his Senate trial has some Democrats contemplating an off-ramp that would condemn the former president but stop short of impeachment and a ban from future office.

 Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said Wednesday that he has been exploring drafting a bipartisan censure of Trump that would short-circuit a potentially lengthy trial that could impede progress on other Democratic priorities. “It could be an alternative,” he told reporters, saying he wanted the Senate to focus on responding to the coronavirus pandemic and confirming President Biden’s Cabinet. “

To do a trial knowing you’ll get 55 votes at the max seems to me to be not the right prioritization of our time.” Kaine’s focus on an alternative, which has been brewing since the House voted to impeach Trump over his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, came a day after the vast majority of Republican senators signaled doubts about the constitutional basis for trying an ex-president on impeachment charges.

Donald Trump is now citizen Trump.  He certainly could have arranged that farewell trip on Air Force One to leave a day earlier to fly him to a country with no extradition and to live a life of luxury without facing  any law suits, but he did not.  We rightly focus on his insensitivities, the policies and actions that we abhor. But let us not make the mistake that he was personally responsible for the death and suffering caused by the pandemic.  The challenge of making rules for fifty different nation-states was not trivial. 

Hatred, the raw encompassing drive to destroy an enemy is in the nature of our species.  "Trump, the monster" is now vulnerable.  So too was Emperor Hirohito who approved of atrocities of millions of innocent civilians. Forbearance of revenge allowed post-war Japan to be a major force in the United Nations in the ongoing quest to advance a humane enlightened world.  Indulging in the shaming of Mr. Trump, bringing him to a trial that has been deemed by the highest jurist in the land as invalid, will only perpetuate  and fuel the very divisiveness that Donald Trump advanced in his term of office. 

One does not have to have compassion for this individual, but overarching seething contempt for him is a luxury that dare not be indulged.  The hatred of those who invaded the Capitol that afternoon of January 6th defies reason.  It had nothing to do with rejecting the policies of the Democratic Party, rather it was the affirming fealty to a leader whose adulation transcends logic.  In a flash, Trump's subservient loyal Vice President who dared to flaunt his orders, was transformed into one of the hated enemy. 

This ransacking was an orgy of hatred, which we now know is continuing after he is no longer President,  Those of his party who had condemned him for his promoting the insurrection are now genuflecting to their leader,  begging to be forgiven for their brief loss of deference

Trumps depredations should not be construed to mean that his successor, Joe Biden, is the personification of all that is wise and decent.  The Biden administration should be subjected to the same objective criticism of his predecessor which at the least should define the "reality based party" as not enshrining a supernatural god.  The challenge of transition to a world where artificial intelligence in a flash replaces eons of the evolution of human cognition will require adjustments that have no precedent. 

This will take the combined effort of all of humanity, with no indulgence in revenge against any single individual.  

 Law Review article history on centrality of  Chief Justice participation 

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This was only an introduction, one person's thoughts.  It will only have value if others share their views by commenting.   

Is Treatment by China of the Uyghurs really "Genocide" -- and why discussion is impossible

This started with a heated discussion with my wife. She sympathises with the women who were required to limit number of children, mostly through birth control, along with a very few by surgical sterilazation. I took the position that was posted as a comment in the N.Y. Times, but there was still some tension. This polemic is going further, to illustrate how people tend to treat as reality that which fits there predispositions. China is a communist dictatorship, yet ruling by a type of consensus that is far beyond my knowledge to explicate, perhaps requring years of graduate study and emersion in the culture, including speaking relevent languages. Only such an autocracy that limited their idnigious polulation to the same kind of birth restrictions as now imposed on the Uyghers for several decades could have have moved from the dark ages to the advanced prosperous billion plus populated country that now is poised to be the most influential in the world. One metric is telling, that every child starting in the third grade studies English, while less than two percent of Americans children study their language.

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To The New York Times:

Using the word "Genocide" to describe the action taken by China against the Uighurs is a gross distortion of the meaning of this word.

The word "genecide" was coined in 1944, referring to the arrest, transportation and murder of minorities, mostly Jews by the Nazis. We now know that their death was not "humane," rather they saw their children killed and the their death was slow and agonizing. Opposition to the Chinese effort to transform the Uyghurs makes the assumption that the norms and traditions one is born into is sacrosanct, not to be objectively evaluated, especially if it defined as religion.

China is officially an atheistic government that has managed to increase life expectancy and living standards dramatically over the last century. The process of eliminating the religion of the Uighurs will end their culture, yet they, and their progeny, especially women, will have the opportunity to live and to thrive,

Hundreds of pages of thecomprehensive program is available and worth studying at this link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

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Then,a few day's ago The Washington Post, had a similar article: With allmost unanimous concurrance in comments, until I came across this sole contrary one:

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Give me a break. The whole Uyghur suppression story is nothing but a PR job by the World Uyghur Congress that lives on US tax dollars and is headquartered in DC. George Bush found a small group of Uyghur separatists in China's Xinjiang useful and invited their leaders to DC in 1990s. Since then, the group who called themselves the Eastern Turkestan has been the US sniper from time to time to wound the CCP politically. A divided and weaker China is the US' interest. In the court of laws, you need to provide material evidences along with testimonies. In the Uyghur story, it is just he said and she said with building photos that at best serve as circumstantial evidences. Repeating the story a hundred times, it becomes truth. All the suppressed Uyghur story tellers are asylum seekers. Aren't they?

A suggestion to China. Send a half million Uyghurs to the US by boats as refugees, as Cuba did in 1983 to help US politicians avoid paying lip service only.

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One can easily go on the Wikipedia article on this ethinic group which would include it's history with China. (with relevent links it's a medium sized college text book) But few will, as the human propensity to accept the thinking of their political party, religion or social group is more than a tendency, but overwhelming when compared with the exploration required to resarch a complex issue. -----

And thus we are brought back to the political divide in the U.S.A. of our times, one that was reflected by the visceral hatred between those who love Trump and those who hate him. Those who hate him demand that he be further shamed by the use of an impeachment process that was never intended for this purpose. Considering whether it will perpetuate his connection with those who revere him is not even explored. That's how powerful group hatred of an enemy is, with higher education have no deminishing effect.

While the transition from Trump leadership to that of Joe Biden may seem to be historic, in many ways it defies historic precedent. As of this writing (1/27/2021) Democratic legislators of both houses are unanimously are committed to hold an impeachment trial against Donald Trump. The letter and the purpose of this constitutional provision is clear enough that the individual, the head of the Judiciary branch of government, has declined to preside, with no other interpretation than that Chief Justice John Roberts considers this trial without the defined punishment of removal from office a misinterpretation of the Constitution. (Those interested in further explication this text is from the Library of Congress)

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Trump has given us Biden -- May God Help Us Now

I write this the day after the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the same day that Donald J. Trump started as the most powerful man in the world with the ability to literally (actually) destroy the civilization of human beings.  He soared into the air on an airplane, the one with the encapsulation of human achievement that allowed this single individual, by pressing a series of buttons, to initiate the destruction of humanity.  Most Americans believe that this destruction of humanity has happened before,  none more so than the man who represents Trump's antithesis, who now has control of this magic plane with the doomsday button. 

Martin's Poem:

Life on a roller coaster, oscillating from hither to yon, no respite for the iconoclast,  wandering from dusk to dawn. Conjuring strange thoughts foreign and twice forbidden, like Prometheus unbound, this Nobelist climbs in vain to Andean peaks, seeking what most would proclaim insane. 

Why, he ponders, are there no answers to protean questions when others thinking cleanly and simply with Occam’s sharp razor proclaim what seems obvious given the beam of their unerring laser. Nature, happily unfettered with philosophy, or with cunning, or with intent moves relentlessly onward or even backward with energy unspent while we mortals test and probe with twinkling machines blinking precisely at each movement, striving to unravel its irresolute randomness, its fathomless, unlimited, meaningless rush into spiraling chaos, oblivious of its multitudinous trials & errors which we pontifically believe must be unerring truth & resolution.

With the above paragraph I bid farewell to most readers, those who out of curiosity may have read this far  lured by the title, or maybe even know me.  We are now a species, more so in the USA, who demand immediate gratification, the pleasure of belonging to something encompassing that defines common beliefs-- including who we revere and who we hate.  

In my lifetime of eight decades, the transformation of technology, that which underlies Airforce One, now allows a single individual with the title of POTUS to initiate events that can destroy civilization.  Trump could have done it yesterday, and Biden can do it today.  

The same process of random evolution has enabled one person of one sub-species of primates, this writer, to connect with what we call "intellectuals."  It has allowed me to be the intermediary between opposites, Noam Chomsky and Charles Murray, whose views on cognitive differences in sub-species of homo sapiens are so opposed that they refuse to speak to each other. 

Chomsky is the intellectual leader of Liberals, and Murray of Conservatives.  (Note: hyperlinks allow readers to reference Wikipedia articles that elaborate on this essay)  The two, now retired, overlapped as professors at MIT, probably eating at the same cafeterias and lecturing to the same students. Yet now there is mutual hatred between these two elderly men.  Neither of them call it "hatred," rather both see the other as hopelessly unreasonable.  It's a bit of an accident that I connected with Chomsky a decade ago, my trying to find moral support countering a distortion of a N.Y. Times article.  He emailed me a brief note that he often got the same brush off from this newspaper, leading to the beginning of our extended conversation.

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Martin's Poem, cited above is part of the Nobel Prize Award of 1994  to Martin Rodbell (my second cousin),  He was married to Barbara Lederman Rodbell, whose life in Amsterdam as part of the resistance is explored in this three part oral history.  It is almost three hours of candid incisive retelling of her personal experience, beginning with her being part of a group of children that included Anne Frank.   

We did connect once, and she gave me the greatest complement I'll ever receive, that my analysis of her husband's motivations was a perspective she had never realized previously.  And thanked me for it.  Barbara survived to live a full enriched life, while most, such as Anne Frank, were cut short with unimaginable suffering.  This transformative technology of the internet facilitated the group hatred that came close to destroying this nation, and in my view, the same weaponized discourse will put us in the same perilous position again, except the other side will hold the world hostage.   

Another Civil War can be prevented -- But at a great cost

We look back to the drama of the unfolding crisis of 1860 as a morality play, with the star being the young Abraham Lincoln, now known as the "Great Emancipator."  If he did earn this approbation, it was by default rather than intention.  Lincoln was a man of his times, who was the moderate compromiser who was grudgingly accepted by those who actually were willing to go to war to emancipate the enslaved people in the southern states. 

Now some six generations after this civil war, we are on the verge of another one, this one with unfathomable  death and carnage. While the number of militants in the insurrection at the Capitol were numbered in the thousands; those poised for committing violence at the inauguration and afterwards would be in the millions, made up of those who revere Donald J. Trump with the same intensity that he is hated by his adversaries.  

At this point the actual count of the Presidential vote on November 3rd is irrelevant.  Personally, I believe that the minor errors, those that occur in all elections, were nowhere near enough to have changed the result,  For the sake of this proposal, it really doesn't matter.  

Donald Trump actually did win the election of 2016. For this, for him becoming the most powerful person in the country, maybe the world; he should not be blamed. Rather it was the American people's decision in casting their votes.  He could not transform who he is, and to castigate him for it may be cathartic, but at this crossroads; when there is an opportunity to prevent a national catastrophe, we dare not indulge in this visceral hatred, when there is an alternative.    

President Donald Trump (his title remains when retired) could become the founder of a new entity, an association of States that would have looser ties with the United States of America.  Article Five of the United States Constitution provides for a constitutional convention, that could result in coalitions of states with their own rules. . Our founders included this in the realization that unforeseen events could occur such as we are now experiencing.   

The violence, hatred and death at the Capitol on the January 6th will be repeated after the inauguration unless there is a resolution that is not predicated on the vilification of Donald J. Trump.  His militia, perhaps in the millions, is already in transit, on the way to the National Capital, along with many Capital cities, with their machine guns in the holding section to be retrieved at their destinations.

Appeasement takes an emotional toll, yet the alternative, in my opinion, is worse. 

Impeachment of an ex-president is legislative malpractice

The Democratic party has embarked on something never done before, approving articles of impeachment against a president who can not be removed from office.   It would be appropriate to vote on a censure, which would be a statement of condemnation of this president for his encouragement of the invasion of the Capitol by his acolytes.  This may have gotten not only unanimous Democratic support, but probably a good chunk from Republicans, depending on the exact wording. 

Rather, the Democrat leaders of both houses of Congress are rallying almost all of their members into not only voting for this, but treating it like a moral imperative designed to put the final nail in the figurative coffin of a reprehensible individual.  The legacy of this individual doesn't  require an impeachment trial, as it already took place on November third, with a decision made not by elected officials, but by the citizens of this country.   

Trump's attempt to convince  us that his election was rigged, based on a convoluted fantasy that ignores all rational evidence, has failed.  At 12: noon, January 20th, President Trump will become citizen Trump, with all of the vast authority of office gone, along with its immunities.    

There is another aspect of Democrats attempting to use the impeachment process to ensure that this individual shall never be President again.  This would be a travesty, an affront against Democracy itself.  This impeachment conviction with the clause of his never being allowed to hold government office again, would have one effect, that the body politic, the citizens of this country would be denied the right to nominate and elect Donald J. Trump to the Presidency.  

The next three years could find Trump excoriated further, or it's possible that he would be more appreciated in comparison with the administration that replaces him.  This decision by the public is the essence of a democracy that should never be foreclosed.   

 

There is one Democrat who is not supporting this non-removal impeachment, who rather than using the moral authority that he possesses, is rather silent on this movement. 

His name is President Elect Joe Biden.  

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Democrats persist on impeachment, ignoring restarting a raging conflagration that is slowly dying

The fate of Donald J. Trump

January 8th, 2021

In the card game of bridge playing a trump card means you win the round, often the game and for a few, the world championship.  This person will be be admired and envied until sometimes, as he ages he loses his memory and eventually retires -- only faintly recalling how important he once was.  

Donald J. Trump, is the 45th President of the United States of America, from January 20, 2017.  (The date of this presidency ending is the subject of this essay.)  This is only important in the annals of future-history, as it will mark him as an either a malevolent failure or place him among those few who have achieved a full term of President of the United States.

This is written by someone who is more like Donald Trump's brother Freddy,  who drank himself to an early death. I'm among the teaming masses of humanity who struggle to get by --- to make it to the finish line.  One thing that banishes such pain is belonging, whether to a religion, a political party, or even a club with a closed membership.  Most people in our country have taken sides, immersing themselves in the issue of the moment, which is whether Trump will be allowed to finish his term or to be banished with a stigma that will tar him throughout history.  

Serious scholars and pundits are debating whether he should be impeached or removed by another method, the 25th amendment.  Very few acknowledge that neither method can possibly be utilized to force his removal in the few days remaining until his term ends.  There is a fevered rush to erase him from history, that denying him a respectful exit will diminish him, that his being shamed will be a lasting message to others who attempt to follow his political path.  In the words of another one of his acolytes, "This is a high tech lynching..." which will be as counter productive as it was against Clarence Thomas who now is the senior member of the Supreme Court.  

We are now writing the first draft of the Donald J. Trump story, which is about to have a first chapter describing how his political opponents attempted to negate the legitimacy, not only the individual himself, but of the one third of the American population, his admiring base who have the absolute opposite view.  The distortion is so profound that of the hundreds of leaders of his opposition, pundits and politicians alike, none have explored the actual function of the 25th Amendment that differentiates it from impeachment. This amendment is a procedure for a president who is expected by all parties to recover from a temporary disability as described in this authoritative article.

The assassination of Lincoln had the effect of deifying him; a limited human becoming a distorted idol that negated the harsh realities of existence.  There are divides in America now, but the central one, faith in the Judeo Christian God, is never a discussion in the national political arena.  This results in the two parties both claiming to rest on belief in the reality of "God Almighty."  The presidential candidates of both parties will not end a public speech with out affirming their fealty, usually several times.  

The "God" in our Pledge of Allegiance and our national motto, did not come from God himself, but from a single individual, President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1954; his thinking it would be good if children became more religious.  If the Congress that approved it had any idea how this would become a central part of our country in generations to come they might have at least had some debate.  They could have foreseen the danger of our country, citizens all indoctrinated by the daily pledge, might believe that God and Country were inherently intertwined.  

Liberals, this essay is a plea to cease hating Donald J. Trump, soon to be another citizen just like the rest of us.  Presidents make decisions that inherently favor some to the detriment of others.  Politics requires alliances to obtain and then sustain power.  With less than two weeks remaining in Trump's presidency, we should consider how meaningless would be his being removed from office a few short days before he will be just another citizen. 

Rather than the attempt to nail shut the coffin of a defeated enemy,  it would be better to use this pivotal moment to go beyond the players, the leaders of the political parties.  Only the old can grasp the shortness of life, and when the end is in sight, we can only hope to convey the appreciation to have taken the trip, whether in the Captain's quarters or steerage. 

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