February 17, 2020
Today we commemorate Presidents’ Day. Notice I did not say celebrate. I do not know how we can in good conscience
celebrate a day with that name at this time.
Perhaps we need to be a bit more specific as to what we mean to
celebrate in these unprecedented times when most Americans yearn to be unpresidented.
Two of the very few worth
celebrating
Our current im-potentate has sullied and degraded the office
of president practically beyond recognition.
What Ben Carson did for the public’s perception of brain surgeons, Donald
Chrump is doing to the very idea of president.
You are likely sufficiently well aware of the particulars at this
point. If not, this might be a good time
to steep yourself in Chrump’s myriad depredations. His attempt at wrenching another term from
the grasp of the American electorate is another of his crimes-already-in-progress,
and along with it Chrump’s final solution for the Great Experiment of American
Democracy.
Alexis Coe, author of “You Never Forget Your First: A
Biography of George Washington” recently told an interviewer, “When people ask
me, ‘What do you think Washington would make of this time?’ I say: I think he
would have a huge problem with Trump, but he would have an even bigger problem
with the Republican Party. And they are
everything he feared a party could be. This
moment in America is really his greatest nightmare.”
George Washington warned against fealty to party over
country in his farewell address. I don’t
know if the descent was steady, few things in history are. I do know that blind loyalty to party – particularly
the Republican’t Party – is at peak perversity.
No one exemplifies this deterioration of the Framers’ intentions more
completely than petulant poster child for party über alles Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell.
Moscow Mitch, as he prefers to be called, has unabashedly and
repeatedly made clear just how obsessed with party over country he and his fellow
travelers have become. McConnell made it
clear when he said his primary job was to make Barack Obama a one-term
president, and then proceeded to prevent Obama from accomplishing any of the
goals he was elected to achieve.
McConnell reiterated his disdain for our nation’s protocols
and beliefs when he blatantly obstructed the nomination of Merrick Garland to
an open seat on the Supreme Court – McConnell manufactured a rare smile telling
an audience that, “One of my proudest moments was when I told Obama, ‘You will
not fill this Supreme Court vacancy.’” Nice
work (Beelze)bub.
McConnell’s most recent attack on our country, in favor of
his political party was his happy admission that (and he was not alone in this),
“I'm not an impartial juror,” in advance of taking the special oath as part of
his participation in the impeachment trial of Donald Chrump – an oath that specifically
demands impartiality as part of a trial that until McConnell included witnesses
and evidence. While it could be said
that few senators could be completely impartial in such a process, it would be
nice to think there was some attempt to discern the facts before rendering
judgment.
With any luck and the electoral equivalent of what Nancy
Pelosi did to her copy of Chrump’s Misstatement of The Union speech, Presidents’ Day might one day be
something to celebrate without having a 16-ton asterisk hanging over its head
and a 16-ton president hanging over ours.
George Washington is known as the Father of Our Country, and with good
reason. Donald Chrump will be known as
the Executioner of Our Country, especially if he gets another four years to
complete what he started when he oozed down his golden escalator in 2015.
The beginning of the end
I.
Mangrey reporting.
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