Hero or Coward?

Why are we not surprised?...Because we knew all along.  So now….finally….we are talking about the disaster in the White House in an open manner.  I guess that is the first step. 

Awareness on the part of the general public needs to be jarred into attention.  Maybe this is the instrument.  I am, of course, talking about the anonymous editorial in the New York Times.  The canary in the coalmine is finally screaming his warning.  It remains to be seen what happens now.

So the real question is whether this anonymous person is a hero or a coward.  Should the writer of this editorial step up and take responsibility to attempt to be the spark that finally ignites the long missing patriotism and courage of the Congress?  In order for something to change and for us to emerge from the shadow of real danger that a madman like Trump can pose to all our lives, should the writer reveal his identity?  That is the debate this morning.

The harsh reality is that there is so much evidence and confirmation of the erratic and amoral behavior of President Trump from so many various sources (including books by Michael Wolff; Omarosa Mannigault-Newman, and now Bob Woodward) that it is now impossible to deny the reality of the moment.

Everyone in Washington, including the mute Republican members of Congress, knows that the danger is real.  Will they act?

There is a tipping point somewhere in the more or less immediate future.  I don’t know what it will be, but it is clear that there is an ‘ending’ to this coming.  Will it be Mueller’s report that finally breaks the dike, or will Trump do something truly egregious that puts the world at true danger, or will it at long last come from a sweeping Democratic victory in the midterm elections?  What this editorial has finally done is fling open the doors of awareness that the fear of true disaster lives in the minds of the actual people IN the administration.  This raises some other troubling questions however.

Who is really running the government?  It now appears that we have a coterie of unelected individuals who are ‘sub-rosa’ making policy and procedural decisions that are intended to ‘protect us’.  Is that the way our democracy is supposed to operate?  Not really. 

The impotence of Congress as a ‘check on the Executive’ is now completely apparent.  Republicans as a group still show their allegiance to special interests, party, and an unstable individual over the importance of patriotism and love of country.  These people have essentially rejected Democracy as a system.  They prefer to ignore the rules of proper order, the rule of law, and the difference between right and wrong.  Just look at what is happening in the Senate Judiciary Committee right now as the Republicans have abandoned fairness and transparency in their effort to ram through Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. 

Think about it…..a President who is amoral, unhinged, and an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal criminal felony nominates someone, who most probably will decide his fate; whose decisions reflect predisposition to consider the President above the law.  And the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee are doing everything they can to hide and restrict documents showing the nominee’s predilections from the Committee members who will question him.  When will ‘country’ become more important to these people?  I actually think NEVER!  The only thing we can do is to vote them out of office so we can stop the corruption.

They are the ‘swamp’.

So where does that leave us with regard to the actions of the anonymous editorialist in the New York Times?  There is clearly so much wrong with our democracy right now that only dramatic action seems to get our attention.  I think the New York Times publication of this editorial is heroic in itself, given the constant attack the Times suffers at the hands of Donald Trump.  It had no choice really.  It remains for the author to take the final step in his or her effort to alert us all to the danger posed by this administration.  He or she will be a hero only when they step forward and ring the alarm bell without shame in the effort to save our republic.  Until then, we might assume that they feel their ‘job’ is more important than the salvation of the United States of America.