This will be no ordinary summer.
For these are not ordinary times.
Although our daily commutes and blasé routines may presently be convincing us that all is well, know that beneath this veneer of normalcy, there is an American Republic that is in perilous straits.
We are in a social and moral civil war; a war not between northern and southern standing armies, but rather a war between partisan corruption and independent justice; a war between
“alternative facts” and real ones. Cannon and musket fire has been replaced by volleys of “deep state” conspiracy theories and White House propaganda assaults on once independent institutions, such that our republic is now in as much danger as it was during the 1860s, albeit in a much less physical but equally corrosive way.
For the first time in American history, a demagogue — who unabashedly flaunts his authoritarian tendencies— sits atop the executive branch in a dangerous standoff with American
rule of law as we know it.
Through some strange combination of impulsivity and media-savvy calculation, he is day by day testing the waters to see what he can get away with and just how complicit selfish
politicians and career-jockeying senior public servants around him might be.
With each day that passes, this demagogue only grows more emboldened and erratic as he bullies and attempts to undercut anyone who appears not to revere him with a cultish
loyalty. He’s already normalized so many unethical behaviors and attitudes that we can hardly keep track of them all now.
In the coming months, we should expect him to get all the more dangerous and toxic the closer America gets to learning the full extent of the corruption and greed that is the very
essence of the Trump brand and presidency — from swindling American contractors on development projects, to the too-good-to-be-true real estate deals with Russian oligarchs, to the Trump family’s assortment of dealings with organized criminals and Kremlin-connected lawyers.
And let’s not forget the sexual misconduct, the endless lying and outrageous acts of defamation that are putrid hallmarks of this thin-skinned bully.
Donald J. Trump is not above the law, although he seems to think he is. To be clear, for Trump and his legal team to so much as toy with the idea that a sitting president can pardon
himself for any crime is just a fancy way of them saying America should be a dictatorship.
With a lifetime of corruption under his belt, Trump now cries “witch hunt” with the fervor of a cornered criminal. He’s resorted to abusing his office to torch as many of our core
democratic norms and institutions as he can, lest history should be able to finish writing its chapter on this childish conman and lifelong cheat.
Under ordinary circumstances, America would be able to trust that there are enough members of Congress out there — who possess at least a fraction of a backbone — to carry
out their Constitutional duty to serve as a check against an erratic and paranoid president’s abuses of the office. But sadly, thus far there have been few indications that today’s Republican-led House and Senate leadership has the moral fortitude to act as such a check for the good of the nation —a far cry from the Republicans who once saved America’s rule of law from the clutches of President Richard Nixon during the Watergate era.
The Republican party is most definitely not the party of Lincoln, and it hasn’t been for a long time. As former House Speaker John Boehner adeptly pointed out, there is no Republican party anymore. It is now the party of Trump. And there’s danger in this cataclysmic political realignment, although not because Trump is an “unconventional” politician. It’s because he’s a distinctly antidemocratic one.
The feckless hodgepodge into which Congressional Republicans have unfortunately morphed bears a striking resemblance to the sorts of petty “combinations and associations”
George Washington warned us against in his 1796 Farewell Address. In describing the self-interested factions that inevitably arise out of unrestrained partisan warfare, Washington
foresaw the very danger we are now facing: “However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of
time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” We are now closer than ever to seeing Washington’s timeless warning become a dark reality that has the potential to eviscerate the grand American Experiment of our founders.
America has arrived at a pivotal crossroads, a proverbial Gettysburg, in which the “better angels of our nature” will face off against our very worst — those fallen and ever so dark
angels embodied in every way, shape and form by Trump himself. This will be a battle for the soul and very survival of the American Republic.
Such is the magnitude of this juncture in American history. We must pay careful attention to how Congress reacts should Trump be implicated in any corrupt activity in Special Counsel
Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Should Trump attempt to suddenly halt the investigation in some variant of a Saturday Night Massacre, we must pay even closer attention.
A Congress that takes no action in the aforementioned scenarios is a Congress that will have to be challenged with unrelenting peaceful protests by everyday citizens.
Otherwise, America could quickly erode into a system of government that takes us back to a system not unlike the one from which we gained independence:
autocracy.
As we march along this historic crossroads, every American of integrity and character must cast aside political persuasions and take up positions on a proverbial Cemetery Ridge.
For a titanic clash between corruption and justice is not far off, and not unlike the historic Battle of Gettysburg, the outcome will determine the very fate of the American republic.
It is a clash that will determine whether our republic lives or if it dies. So in the months ahead, keep close watch on America’s demagogue-in-chief and an even closer watch on a Congress that has capitulated to him far too many times.
