After Trump, What?

October 28, 2019

As the political process, and make no mistake about it, impeachment is a political process, seems to be finally grinding exceedingly fine against a man who really did not want to govern in the first place, Americans need to consider what lies ahead.


While the president thinks that the “phony emoluments clause,” is not what Alexander Hamilton and James Madison had in mind for pretenders to despotism, it is exactly what they had in mind. Both Hamilton and Madison feared an “unfit usurper with despotic tendencies” by writing into the constitution Article II impeachment provisions, and In the Federalist papers, expressing deep concern about “unfit magistrates,” drawing upon sanguinary English history for the definitions of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”


The argument that Trump is simply a blaggard rings exponentially truer. His thinning congressional apologists fear that his candidacy in 2020 will potentially bring them down in a cascade of voter outrage. Even immoderate Republicans sense the danger, worrying what will come next.  Will they all lose their jobs? Will the Democrats get carte blanche to correct the continuous train wreck of impulsive ineptitude?  Or, is Trumpian politics the new normal?


I think not. The debates among Democrats so far has been civil; we suppose that a conscious decision has been made to follow Ronald Regan’s directive of not speaking badly of one’s fellow party members, even opponents aggressively vying for a win.


The damage done so far to American foreign policy, betrayal of our allies, ignorance of governance, the skeleton staff at the White House, and uncertainty of world leaders should abate once the president is ignominiously shuttled to jail or to his golden tower, perhaps sporting a GPS ankle bracelet, railing how the system victimized him. His twitter followers and congressional enablers will have to wait until the next opportunity. But Trump will probably fade away, a small man, made smaller by his vindictiveness, vulgarity, and “victimhood,” his ignorance, hubris and mendacity. 


One of the key aspects of a democracy is forbearance and respect for other’s perspectives. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt of Harvard argue in “How Democracies Die,” illustrate how democratically elected leaders, become intolerant of their opponents by attacking them and a free press. This tactic will ultimately fail in America. It did not fail in Weimar Germany, but we are not Teutonic militarists, emerging from a great depression.


Profound ideals of freedom are expounded in our constitution by the founding fathers, a brilliant constellation of leaders who emerged at just the right time. Flawed though it was (slavery) our constitution has provided a framework for both the left and for the right, for conservative and progressive, a document for the ages.


It is that document that now threatens the authoritarian demagoguery of Donald J. Trump. The perversion of the presidency will not last, nor should it. We will get through this aberration, this assault on American values. 


America, granted, is under challenge from technological displacement, by the rise of illiberalism, by Russian revanchism.

by stagnant wages, by inequality, by climate change.


Americans have a great opportunity now to cleave together, as we did in World War II, as we would have if Abraham Lincoln had not been assassinated, and racist Andrew Johnson allowed the confederacy to win the peace after 700,000 Americans lay dead at Antietam, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, the Wilderness, Chickamauga, Vicksburg, and Fredericksburg to preserve the Union and free the slaves.  After Marian Anderson sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt who resigned her place in the Daughters of the American Revolution when racism did not allow the great soprano to sing. And After Dr. King marched on Washington awakening our Republic from its sleepwalking through segregation, lynching and racial injustice.


At the same time, the Constitution provides an escape from the road to totalitarianism. From the would-be intolerance and autocrat-admiring Donald Trump. It is the lynchpin of freedom in America, not because it is hermetically sealed in the national archives, but because the people of this county believe in it.  It is in that belief, in that faith in the American ideal, that weathers the storm of malign Trumpism. It is the belief in the “better angels of our nature,” that America will regain its bearings, like a sailing ship as expressed in the verse of Longfellow.  “Sail on, oh ship of state, sail on, oh Union strong and great; humanity with all its fears, with all its hopes of future years, is hanging breathless on thy fate.”

Share This Post

Recent Post

Why the West is allowing Ukrainians to Bleed and Die

By Engage Team • February 17, 2025
During his “wilderness years,” Churchill understood Adolf Hitler’s ambitions, presciently shouting to a deaf world the dangers ahead. The Rhineland. Sudetenland. Czechoslovakia gobbled up while appeasers twiddled. England and France could have sent Hitler packing. Instead, they gave him three more years to arm. It was too late. Fifty million died. Stalin, double-crossed by his former Poland-dividing German friend, decided too late that he had to fight. Millions of Soviets soldiers and civilians died because of his dithering. FDR had to contend with America Firsters and could have entered the war sooner; he had third term political considerations in in 1940; but he knew he had to fight, too. Eventually. WE RELIVE THE MISTAKES OF HISTORY AT OUR OWN PERIL, LIKE WILEY CAYOTE CHASING THE ROAD RUNNER. PUTIN INVADED A SOVEREIGN COUNTRY. STOP HIM, GERMANS. STOP HIM, FRENCHMEN. STOP HIM, NATO. STOP HIM, AMERICA. UKRAINIAN CHILDREN ARE FREEZING AND STARVING. PEOPLE ARE LOSING THEIR LIVES TO A RUSSIAN BLOODTHIRSTY PYROMANIAC, A HANNIBAL LECTER. Here’s the rub: using time as his weapon, like Hitler, Putin is conscripting, propagandizing, and gradually conscripting massive manpower—constructing his war machine, gaslighting his people, building support, slowly, craftily, cunningly, odiously. Russians believe his lies about Ukraine as a Nazi haven, a virtual pizza parlor filled with basement dwelling pedophiles, or in this case, jackbooted storm troopers. Despite President Zelensky’s Churchillian appearance before congress, we must move swiftly, because time is on Putin’s side. A war of attrition is not on Ukraine’s side. Even with US Ordinance, rockets, drones, artillery. Western fear is Putin’s ally. Time is Putin’s ally. Wars start slowly but inevitably spiral out of control; aid the west provides the Ukrainians resembles aid the US gave to England in 1940, followed by exponential materiel increase from the great American “arsenal of democracy.” It was not enough. Not in 1940 and not enough in 2022; it will not be enough in 2023, 2024, 2025 as this war drags on. Too many Russians, too much manpower. Too much time. Victory requires a credible threat of NATO mobilization—an army ready to do battle. And an ultimatum. But that will not happen, I fear. Billions of dollars for weapons in a proxy war with Ukrainians fighting Russians has been impactful. Americans can watch Netflix war movies while Ukrainians bleed. They can watch Tom Hanks storm the beach at Normandy. Much less dangerous. Let’s just ship some more rockets to Ukraine instead. Yellowstone is on. Even so, it was heartening to see the bipartisan support for Ukraine in the Congress. Military planners in the Pentagon and in Western European capitals should be preparing for a wider war. It would be malfeasant for them not to do. We just don’t realize it yet. NATO is obliged to tell Putin to get out of Ukraine or face an allied army to evict him. Putin must be given an ultimatum to get out or face military force. Germans and French, British and American, Canadian and Australian. Putin understands naked power. The west must mobilize. He does not understand anything else. Lenin said, “push forward the bayonet. If you find soft flesh, push. If you find steel, retreat.” Putin learned Lenin in school; Lenin is in his DNA. He learned it in the KGB. He learned it in Mother Russia. He wants it all. He is Czar Nicholas, Comrade Stalin, Comrade Lenin all rolled into a painting in the Hermitage, his hometown museum, where he went as a schoolboy, where his parents took him, where he learned of the greatness of Russia. Where the Czar had palaces. Russians never had democratic traditions. Ask Nicholas II and his family, brutally executed by Bolsheviks. Ask the millions starved by Stalin in the Ukraine during his communized agriculture plan. Ask the people sent to the Gulag, or the Hungarians who dared to revolt against the Soviet hammer and sickle. Ask the subjugated Poles carved up by Stalin and Hitler. Ask all of the subjugated and terrorized people who suffered behind the iron curtain. Ask Alexi Navalny, a political prisoner, poisoned once, and now jailed in a Russian gulag. A delusional revanchist KGB agent in the Kremlin tries to raise the Soviet corpse by terrorizing a sovereign nation. A nation which had its own history before Lenin and his desciples created a dark Bolshevik empire. NATO, led by Germany and France and then the United States, face the eventual inevitability of mobilizing an army to kick Putin out of Ukraine and Crimea. The alternative is too grim to contemplate. Trench warfare. Stalemate. Ukrainians under siege. Massive Russian armies. Possibly being defeated. World economic disruption. Continued war crimes. A war of attrition, cold and misery. I hope I am wrong about this.  Western ambitions about this outrageous war ending through negotiation are delusional. If Putin sees that we are serious about the sovereignty of nations, he must face a serious military threat-- mobilization of NATO forces. Only then he will likely back down. Until then brave Ukrainians will bleed, freeze and die bearing the brunt of our fear.

George Bush has His New Book Out.....

By Engage Team • February 17, 2025
George Bush has his new book out. I have not yet read it, but I have heard him interviewed on TV and have read reviews of the book. This frat boy, this pious peddler of religious virtue, this hypocrite now wants to sell his writing (if he wrote it at all) as though he would be regarded kindly by history. He will not. He lacks no chutzpah. Ignorance surely is bliss. His absence of remorse for sending our young service men and women to fight and die or have a leg or an arm blown off, is an exemplar of hubris and rationalization with which history will be able to evaluate his Presidency for its true worthlessness. Claiming to "protect Americans," he invaded a country that did not present an existential threat to our national security, violating his oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the constitution. Arguably he is a war criminal, having authorized torture and assuming responsibility for the unnecessary deaths of thousands of American youths, as well as around 100,000 innocent civilian Iraqis. Speaking of audacity, the current occupant of the White House could use some. His potential compromise of the Bush tax cuts, favoring the richest of Americans threatens to perpetuate a growing disparity between the super rich and the rest of us. Imposing taxes to implement social policy, despite Republican protestations, is not a new phenomenon. Seems that the American people have been fed and are voraciously consuming the malarkey of the conservatives who, despite evidence to the contrary, still believe that these rich folk are benefactors who create more jobs when they fail to pay their fair share of taxes. These are the same people who spent two trillion dollars on two wars and insist that we need a fleet of warplanes and billion dollar aircraft carriers to fight an amorphous band of illiterate religious fundamentalist terrorist thugs who have to smuggle explosive-laden printer cartridges onto airplanes or fill a truck with explosives to attack us. Now we need to get spending under control, they say. No present day politician, Republican, Democrat or Tea Partier seems to have the courage to tell us exactly what they will cut. Social Security? The defense budget? Veterans Benefits? Medicare? The truth be told, no one dares. It must be the fault of the lawyers

Thank Goodness the Election is Over

By Engage Team • February 17, 2025
This is my first blog entry, and a fine time it is for it, if I must say so myself. Florida has now elected an ethically challenged Republican governor, who essentially flooded the airwaves with negative ads about Alex Sink, the democratic candidate. People who have voted for him will not be surprised if he disappoints by trying to shut the door to the courthouse to "protect" businesses which despoil the environment, drill for oil in pristine seas off the coast, or manufacture harmful products. On the national scene, people are amazed that tea partiers have gained so many seats in the House of Representatives, by mouthing standard platitudes of how they are going to slash spending. But where? They do not say. Elected to the United States Senate is Marco Rubio, a 39 year old tea party conservative, who has railed against a woman's right to choose, waffled on global warming, and thinks that America is moving in the wrong direction. He expects to cure this problem by slashing the budget and making "hard choices," but has failed to specify which choices. Not social security because his 80 something mother is a beneficiary, but more likely because he fears the wrath of Florida's seniors. He is supposedly a rising star in the Republican party and since the other tea partiers are pretty crazy, he probably won't be around for his full term, unless he keeps his seat while running for higher office a la Joe Lieberman. The selling of candidates like bars of soap continues, and the insulting, demeaning ads are over, but the consequences of the electorate not having to think too much about the candidates or listen seriously to debates about complex issues should be troublesome to any thoughtful person. People in Florida should not be discouraged, however. Now that the GOP has some power, they will be held responsible by the punditry, including yours truly in the next election.