The Time Is Now

Congressional Democrats, the time to act is now

For these so many achingly long days since foolish dupes and arrogant abstainers sealed the fate of this nation I so love, I have kept my writings to social media. Mostly, I’ve shared the memes and words of others; now and then adding enough commentary of my own to nearly qualify as a column.

But words are merely words and the pen is not always mightier than the sword. When monsters lumber about the halls of power, words are nothing more than wind and vapor because with monsters such as these, words have no other effect than to draw their vengeful attention to the writer.

I am an oddly observant human – noticing everything while generally appearing to notice nothing at all. I got an apology from a professor who had thought I was very nearly uninhabited until he read the journal I had been assigned to keep and realized that nothing had gotten past me – not one iota of it. But I can’t honestly say just when I began to realize that the Democratic politicians were essentially devoid of a spine. No vertebrae. No spinal column. Nothing. When Trump was installed by the traitorous Electoral College, whose job it was to function as our country’s last-ditch protection against the election of a president devoid of moral character, suffused with greed, rapacity and corruption and immediately began humiliating us on the international stage, Congressional Democrats were flaccid at best. When his malfeasance was the direct cause of 40% of US COVID deaths (per The Guardian article citing the Lancet study), the Democrats said little that I recall.

Had anyone else had a body count of over 400,000 US Americans*, that person would have been charged with mass murder.

One must first understand that Donald Trump is nothing if not acquisitive and when he took the presidency the first time, he genuinely believed that he had acquired the United States of America as his personal property – and all of us along with it. This explains his narcissistic rage when he lost to Biden; not only had he been thwarted, Biden had stolen what Trump considered to be his property and he wanted it back by any means necessary. It should come as no surprise that he has gone full fascist this time around – he has his possession back and he has no intention of giving it back. Ever.

For the first time – and I will give them credit for this – the largely disempowered Democrats have been making some noise. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Corey Booker and Bernie Sanders (who is technically an Independent) come to mind. But where is the action? Too many have gone along. Too many have confirmed nominees to political posts that are almost literally the foxes running the henhouses. Too many are voting with the Republicans on bills like the budget that are akin to an axe murderer in hot pursuit of this country’s vulnerable.

And nobody is doing a damned thing. Not one action. Just words.

You can protest all you like but, what did I just say about that? It’s like defending against a grizzly attack with a feather. If Trump can ignore the Supreme Court with impunity, no matter how many millions of us roar, it will make no difference at all. We have been unforgivably naïve in assuming that the government designed by the founders was adequately structured to prevent such a disaster. In our naivete, we did not install fail-safes for a situation such as this. If we survive this horror, we must rectify this immediately. But first, we must survive.

So, Congressional Democrats, here’s a place to start – learn from the opposition. They’re known to be focused, organized and driven. They rarely squabble, they play dirty and they win when all too often when they shouldn’t have because most people are against their agenda. Democrats squabble over everything. They squabble over tiny, picayune points that do not matter whilepeople who want to destroy all the things good about this country are furthering that agenda. Get it together and use their own techniques against them.

Thwart them at every turn. They don’t have the numbers. Their margins are razor-narrow. Thwart them on big issues but don’t neglect the small ones. Fight them on every single issue. Every single goal. Like that vile old turtle, Mitch McConnell, who vowed to his fellow Republicans that he would ensure that Obama wouldn’t get a damned thing done, Democrats must be an implacable impediment at every turn.

Seek out allies from the other side of the aisle. Find the people who actually care about this country and the Constitution and remind them that the people of this country will end their careers if they allow democracy to die on their watch. That to support Trump is to be as much on the wrong side of history as any despot has been. It is perfectly acceptable to do this in a covert manner. Why not? That’s what Republicans would do. They have sacrificed their moral compass in hopes of becoming part of that tiny, oligarchical elite, never realizing that they will never, ever be accepted in that heinous circle. This is not the time to clutch at pearls and get prissy over protocol. This is war. Understand that clearly.

Once you have the numbers, impeach and remove. You have plenty of ammunition. There is plenty of proof. Allowing Elon Musk to eviscerate the government. Removing people loyal to this country and its Constitution and replacing them with loyalists. Making a profit by creating a crypto currency predicated on Trump’s status as president. Our new alignment with Russia and Putin. The list is too long to enumerate here in its entirety. Do it without delay. You are not a freight train. You do not need to start slowly. Speed is of the essence because there is every chance that Trump will declare martial law and then all hope will be lost of resolving this without either complete capitulation to the destruction of democracy or a civil war that will haunt our children and their children long after the dust has settled and we are gone.

* I use the term US Americans to differentiate between the USA and all the other countries on this side of the world, all of which are part of “The Americas.”