Patriotism

Yesterday was truly a sad day in American Government.  Watching the Cohen testimony from the House Oversight Committee hearings, the only emotion I could conjure up was disgust.  There were so many unsavory elements of our tawdry American drama on display, that I wonder if we will ever recover our pride and integrity as examples of the world’s only true liberal democracy.

Listening to Cohen’s description of Trump’s behavior and character is something that most of us have come to understand and accept as truth.  The man is despicable on so many levels.  We already know how he lies, cheats and cons all of us—well maybe most of us do-- including his base!  The harsh reality is that a major segment of our population doesn’t care.  That is the true tragedy.

To watch the Republicans on the committee return time after time to the mission of destroying Cohen’s character and labeling him as the consummate liar was tedious.  Yes, it’s all true, he is a liar.  But what about his mentor?  Where is their analysis of whether the facts and evidence he was presenting supporting his claims are, in fact, true?  Not once did any minority members of the committee try to defend their President against any of the claims.  That wasn’t as important as trying to skewer Cohen over and over again—to what end?  The Republicans seem to have abandoned all reason and concern for the health of the country at the hands of a megalomaniacal narcissist.  Their eyes are blinded to our final destination—the pit of despair to which we are being led, as we witness the gangrenous morphing of our republic into an autocratic mean- spirited failure.

‘Populism’ (Autocracy) is on the rise worldwide.  And here is the sad truth:  America is perhaps the only country in the world with a government that was originally conceived around a ‘Creed’ rather than ‘Blood and Soil’.  240 years ago, our founders labored to create a place that eschewed the tribal character of nations that base their legitimacy on singling out portions of the population as unworthy or privileged.  Now we have a ‘leader’ who promotes racism, privilege and fear as tools of leadership.  It is happening across the globe, and we all watch with great apprehension as the specter of discrimination and anti-semitism again takes shape from the muck of anger and fear.  Trump is a symptom of this movement, and his followers blindly support him while ignoring all his obvious flaws and anti-humanistic behaviors.

If we are to survive as a democratic nation founded on the notion of the rule of law and truth, we must mobilize to make our voices heard in the 2020 elections.  We must take note of the people who defend the destroyer of our social fabric in our government and reject them, and most of all reject the leadership of Donald Trump who will only do all he can to promote himself and the unrelenting destruction of our representative government.  2020 is closer than you might imagine.  There are many that fear that even if Trump is defeated in an election he will not relinquish his power, as is the tradition of American Government over the past 242 years.

The Special Counsel’s report is eventually going to appear.  But notice:  there is no promise from William Barr, the new Attorney General, that ‘we the people’ will get to see the findings.  What is that about?  We are the government—we MUST see what the findings are.  Who are those who deny us that right?  Where is their authority to do that? 

There are certainly countervailing forces in the Democratic Party that will try to assure that we will see what Mueller has discovered, but it will be a struggle because there are those who want to maintain their power and deny us the option of deciding for ourselves if our country was undermined.

Just think about this:  Flynn, Sessions, Manafort, Gates, Papadoupolis, Stone, Cohen and 27 Russians indicted already!  These are the people who surrounded and were drawn into office by Donald Trump.  The fact is that our country has been attacked by all these people.  Our fundamental founding principles have been trashed by these people.  Our prime adversary in the world has effectively co-opted these ‘agents’ to do their dirty work to undermine our society and our place in the global order.  Their mission is to destroy our global alliances, cripple our economy, denigrate and dash our concept of ‘creed’ driven equality to those in the world who look to America as a bastion of hope and opportunity.  They are succeeding.

It is up to us to preserve what all Americans have revered over the course of our national history—equal opportunity, the pursuit of happiness, freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom of speech, freedom of worship.  These concepts are vulnerable and under attack.  We must do whatever we can to preserve what has been built over the past 242 years.  The next 20 months are a crucial battleground. 

True patriots will understand the stakes.