House Democrats have filed an article of impeachment against Donald Trump on felony and misdemeanor charges, accusing the president of “inciting violence against the United States government” and including a reference to the 14th Amendment, which prohibits anyone who has engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States from holding office in the future. The measure has 218 co-sponsors to date, enough to warrant passage, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) has said that if the vice president does not invoke the 25th by Wednesday, the House will move forward with impeachment.
Watching/reading the coverage of bullying and crime on Capitol Hill, pushed by white supremacists, it is comforting to see how US politicians with normal integrity, mostly Democrats, cannot buy the behavior of the Republican congressmen who helped Trump for four years and then either kept silent in the face of all the lies and false attempts to overturn a democratically successful election, or joined in and supported that travesty.
Who even now are mute and in hiding, apart from those who have the nerve to accuse the Democrats of fomenting disunity with their insistence on holding Trump to account and moving forward with impeachment.
What about Vice President Mike Pence? The crowd chanted “hang Pence, hang Pence.” Neither he nor any other Republican believes that Trump did not cause the violence on Capitol Hill that killed five people, or that he has any sanity left.
They are fully aware that Trump could start a nuclear war today, within five minutes, and that internationally, the US has been horrendously shamed, its reputation as a bastion of Western democracy shattered. The damage caused by this president has spread throughout the world. The planet.
But Pence and the Trump cabinet members who haven’t resigned don’t want to invoke the 25th. Are any of them worried they might have more blood on their hands? Do you think they will get a warning before Trump does worse? You would have to be brain dead to believe that they are not thinking of that, or to think that they do not quite know the risk they are taking, on behalf of those whose lives they have been chosen to protect.
No wonder the Democrats are mad with justified anger. Who among us can accept behavior like that of this gang of Republican politicians? It’s counter-intuitive for decent people. Humans aren’t supposed to be like this. Intellectually, we can understand the total betrayal of normal values and point to all the examples of it in history (past, recent, and still ongoing), but our hearts and souls still react violently. We are not made to believe that humans can be evil, cynical, consumed by greed and the lust for power.
So thank you Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and all the Democrats and a couple of Republicans who have always spoken out against Trump and are calling for him to be ousted and barred from running again. Those who show his face on television and speak openly of their disgust, outrage, contempt and horror despite the very real and present danger they are exposing themselves to doing so.
The world owes them a debt of gratitude for their alertness of mind, strength of purpose, and tremendous courage.
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