Do Your Duty, Dems

Hour by hour, day by day, the Constitution is being shredded and the rule of law mocked by a man who is a rapist, liar, adulterer, cheat, grifter – an egomaniac who would sacrifice this country on little more than a whim.

Is this country's collective conscience so battered and bruised that the citizenry who should rise up – as so many women, in particular, have – go back to their cable TV and social media, narcotized by the endless stream of venom and cruelty that have replaced civil discourse?

Admittedly, this is a hard country to get by in if you're in the ever-shrinking middle class or below. The daily crimes that are being committed by this administration seem to wash unnoticed over a significant portion of America. They are too busy just hanging on. They want the old days when they had a fighting chance, and, like the slick serpent he is, that is Trump's bottom card in promising to go back to the times when white men were firmly in charge and women knew their place. 

I think that Nancy Pelosi is too much the politician by half. Her father  was mayor of Baltimore and her career has been a pilgrimage to the lofty  position she has twice held. She is a master politician, admittedly, but I think we need more than that now. We need someone to take the gloves off – political risk be hanged – and follow the constitutional imperatives to call this jowly megalomaniac to account, to stop his shitshow and begin the impeachment process, doomed though it may be in the Republican-held Senate. The call to impeachment is now more a matter of current conscience than the distant political risk that seems to be Pelosi's preoccupation. 

The Mueller Report was a call for the House of Representatives to follow both its constitutional and political consciences. So far it has not. The endless ignoring of subpoenas and stonewalling by the Trump administration should by now have demonstrated to this branch of congress that by the time anything is settled by the courts the horse of democracy will be long gone and we will be left with the empty barn of America.

What can be lost by impeachment? Very little. Trump's base will always be his base. He can cry “Witch hunt!” ever louder, but so what? A doomed trial in the Senate will give the American voting public a theatrical look at what our nation has become. Doubtless, witnesses called by the Senate will refuse to appear, and an increasing row of symbolic empty witness chairs will reinforce the danger to our democratic ideals. An impeachment trial would be better than the endless questions being asked by congressional committees to witnesses who calmly refuse to answer or refuse subpoenas or laugh at contempt charges.

The televised testimony of Robert Mueller on July 17 will draw the huge ratings that Trump fears. A televised impeachment trial will be even more damaging. The millions who didn't vote in 2016 will be swayed.

Go for it, Dems. There is nothing to be lost. The children must be uncaged.