Finally, It’s Here. Finally, He’s Charged: An Almost Anti-Climactic Saving of the Nation

It seems like almost an anti-climax to the biggest event since⎼ I don’t know when. The pandemic, which was or is a three-year catastrophe? The Russian invasion of Ukraine? Any of the recent mass killings? The Jan 6, anti-democratic, mostly white nationalist attack on our nation, that is still creeping along, threatening so much we hold dear? None of these will be forgotten by so many of us. Joe Biden’s defeat of DJT? Now, that was something. DJT being elected in 2016? The world is still reeling from that.

 

So many of us have waited and hoped and now it’s here. It’s taken three plus years. Such events, in a democracy and nation of laws and millions of people, can take time. This is the first time in U. S. history a former President faces criminal prosecution, and for charges that include conspiring to undermine the constitution.

 

This event began Tuesday, in the late afternoon, with the announcement that the court in Washington, DC indicted someone. We could guess, but we didn’t know for sure. On Wednesday, the indictment was released, and we knew for sure. The document was devastating in its completeness and quality of evidence, dramatically written, even elegant. And Thursday, the arraignment.

 

No charge of treason, despite fairly clear evidence that he probably did just that. He tried to end democracy. No charge that his speech led to the death of police officers as well as attackers, or to police suffering from lingering PTSD from the attack.

 

David Leonhardt of The New York Times reported the evidence of treason would not be easy to prove⎼ especially if the goal is to complete a trial before the next election. DJT “never directly told those at the Jan 6 rally to attack Congress.” He was crafty in his language.

 

He did lie, repeatedly about the election being stolen, and so much else. Sixty plus court cases show that he had no evidence for his claims. His own Attorney General and many others told him that. His Vice President has said that DJT lied about Jan. 6 and will be held accountable by history for the lies.

 

What DJT did say, on Jan. 6, was, “All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing. And stolen by the fake news media. That’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing. We will never give up; we will never concede…

I’ve been in two elections. I won them both and the second one, I won much bigger than the first.… I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard…. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore….” Etc.

 

He was charged on four counts. Obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the U. S. government, and conspiracy to prevent others from exercising their constitutional or civil rights, to vote and have their votes counted.

 

The indictment starts out with simple and direct charges. “The Defendant lost the 2020 election. Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power.” It shows that he knew that his claims about the election of 2020 were false, were a lie, yet he did it anyway. He showed no concern for who was hurt, and the awful effects on our nation. As the Special counsel, Jack Smith, said, we should read the indictment. It’s also available as a podcast, read to us by MSNBC reporter Ali Velshi.

 

Yet, I expected more. Maybe the heavens to part. Maybe love to spread through the nation, or civil war. But luckily, none of the reactionary violence we might’ve feared has occurred. All big events, if they don’t cause unforgettable harm can take time to reach us and can create this sense of “wow, has it really happened?”

 

Maybe we will finally get to see him led off to serve time for crimes no one, certainly no President should ever commit. Maybe the trial will lead those in the GOP to become a party that cares at least somewhat about the nation and laws. Maybe. But as New York Times columnist David French said, it is surely “a trial America needs.” A trial that will hopefully get out the vote in November 2024, to save our world and democracy. Let’s make it so.

 

Today, he was formally arrested but not handcuffed as accused criminals are on crime shows. He was arraigned in a federal court. He was read his rights. And he was released on several conditions, including not communicating with witnesses without counsel being present, or trying to influence jurors, or commit a crime. Judge Moxila A. Upadhaya was the magistrate judge for the arraignment and Judge Tanya S. Chutkan will oversee the actual trial. The hearing to set the trial date will be August 28th. And then DJT was allowed to walk out of the courtroom.

 

He is now facing 3, and soon possibly 4, trials. Over 1,000 Jan. 6 attackers or seditionists have been prosecuted so far. This was made possible by so many of us standing up for democracy and the rule of law or just doing our jobs responsibly. This includes not only the Capitol police and FBI, Democrats, and old-line, not MAGA Republicans, in Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere, election workers and others throughout the nation. These people sometimes risked their lives, homes, jobs to do so. This shows, I hope, that we can save and improve this fragile thing called democracy, and stop those in our midst who would destroy it.

 

Another long and dramatic event will now play out in this nation. An event that might determine if we have Presidents in the future or Presidential dictators or just dictators. We will be immersed in a legal battle that might determine how well we sleep at night and if we get to vote or have our votes counted in the morning. So, we take a deep breath. And we watch and listen.

 

 

*This blog was syndicated by The Good Men Project on Sunday, 8/06/23.

The Biggest Threat to All of Us and Everything Is the GOP Way of Thinking and Acting

I must admit I enjoyed watching President Biden’s State of the Union Speech. Actually, it was one particular moment I most enjoyed, the one reported most in the media afterwards, when he went off script to respond to GOP jeers.

 

He had been talking about GOP plans to cut Social Security and Medicare. And I guess many GOP couldn’t stand their malignant plans being held up so publicly to their faces, so they screamed out “Liar.” It seems Biden expected such a response and had set them up so competently. When Marjorie Taylor Greene and others called him a liar, he responded by asking if their yells meant Social Security and Medicare were now off the chopping block, right? And they cheered. And Biden ad-libbed: “All right, we got unanimity!” The programs might now be safe, for this year.

 

Of course, the GOP did, in fact, plan to cut Social Security and Medicare, and almost all programs that protect the well-being and healthcare of most Americans. And they’ve been doing this for years. In 1935, almost all the GOP voted against the programs. The Reagan era GOP not only proposed big reductions in Social Security but eliminated thousands from the rolls who collected due to a disability, delayed and proposed cuts in COLAs.

 

Recently, GOP Senators John Thune and Mike Lee talked about slashing the programs. Senator Rick Scott famously proposed putting the two programs, along with Medicaid, on the chopping block every five years. Senator Ron Johnson increased it to every year.  Former President DJT proposed, in every year he was in office, to cut the programs. In 2017, the GOP attempted to cut or eliminate not only protections for those with pre-existing conditions, but the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid, all to pay for tax cuts that most benefit corporations and the wealthy, as in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

 

And in the House, the GOP have recently weighed different ways to target the programs. Back in 2015, most of the GOP now in prominent positions voted to raise the retirement age to 70. Luckily, they failed. They consistently resisted efforts to make these social programs more solvent by the fairest and easiest manner ⎼ raising the payroll tax cap so rich Americans pay taxes on their whole income. They pay taxes now on wages only up to $145,000. Wages above that are untaxed. The Republican Study Committee instead plans to cut or eliminate benefits.

 

The GOP is now not simply the party of DJT. They are not, for the most part, simply a new fascist party, or a party of white Christian nationalists. They are not simply a party of racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Asian, anti-any gender other than male-dominance. Or the party of autocratic, oligarchic, plutocratic, kleptocracy. Or the party of narcissistic hate, greed, grievance, and ignorance. They include, simply, all of these, and continuously make use of all these forms of manipulation and profiteering from undermining others.

 

How else do we explain someone like George Santos, or a party that supported the actions of such a person until he became too toxic? Some Party officials knew about his lies even before the election. Many, including Speaker McCarthy, are working even now to keep him in Congress.

 

Santos is so lacking in a moral compass, and is under investigation for so many possible crimes, the news stories about him are almost unbelievable. He is being investigated for perpetuating fraud against his constituents and donors, fraud in Brazil in 2008, and stealing money from a GOFUNDME for the dying dog of a homeless veteran. He has been accused of sexual harassment by a volunteer in his office. Reliable reports say he lied about his mother being killed in the twin towers on 9/11, lied about his own name, education, ancestry, and history.

 

Or Marjorie Taylor Greene, who heckled President Biden during the state of the Union. According to Salon, she did this under orders of DJT. She already, according to USA Today and her own tweets, had “liked” calls for violence against Democrats, called school shootings fake, staged events, repeated theories that space lasers caused California wildfires, and of course the big lie, that DJT had won the election in 2020, which he didn’t; and that he didn’t initiate deadly events on Jan 6, 2021 to set himself up as a dictator, which he clearly did.

 

Or GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert who followed Biden’s speech the next day by praying for his death; this was not the first time she had done this. Or the sex trafficking and corruption of Matt Gaetz. So many examples.

 

The GOP are not capable of governing. They do want power, prestige, but don’t seem to care about getting the details right or solving the problems we face, or whether they might hurt anyone. They lie instead of studying the reality. They scream and threaten others as if they have a direct line to God and no need to cooperate with anyone who doesn’t agree totally with them. This is an unbelievably dangerous way to think and act.

 

And I am saying all this not because the efforts by many GOP are new; most Americans, I believe, already know what the GOP have done. We’ve been living with these GOP for years. And I am writing not just out of the sheer joy I felt seeing President Biden so dexterously deal with the sneers and jeers.

 

I write about this, so it doesn’t become old and normalized.

 

I write about this because the actions and way of thinking of many GOP constitute a threat beyond anything I ever wanted to let into my mind; a threat so unbelievable, I and others have trouble believing it’s true. But I can’t let myself be frightened into feeling helpless, or so angry I feel we’ve failed if we don’t better the situation immediately. Or give up hope. Or stop caring. Listening to Biden, remembering the last two election wins and the Jan. 6 Committee Hearings, I feel hope.

 

In a democracy of millions, holding the powerful responsible takes time. Seeing the results of our action takes time. We all constantly affect each other in ways subtle and profound. Just imagine the difference being in a room with someone filled with greed, hate, and lies compared to being with someone who acts kindly, compassionately, knowledgeably. So, supporting each other, in what we do, how we think and act, matters. Change creeps, until it erupts.

 

*This post was syndicated by The Good Men Project.

Recovering from the Trauma of DT and Creating A More Democratic Nation

When I listen to the news, I still find myself ready to cringe. We’ve grown used to one attack, one shock after another, continuing assaults on our lives or humanity. It’s been such a relief since President Biden was inaugurated. But the trauma of 4 years of DT, culminating with the domestic terrorist attack on January 6th and his escape from being prosecuted in the Senate for his role in inciting that attack will not go away easily.

 

This is partly because the threat is still here. The politics of hate is all still here. We face a domestic terrorist movement built on hate, lies and a grievance mentality that have walled off about one third or more of this nation from the truth. As Bill Moyers put it, “a democracy can die of too many lies.”

 

And we have a mutating virus that has killed over half a million people. Ken Burns said that we face three viruses: COVID-19, white supremacy, and misinformation.

 

An article by Jeremy Adam Smith from the Greater Good Science Center talks about how to recover from the trauma of the Trump years and the pandemic. These last four plus years have been extremely traumatic, especially 2020. What we face now is grief. We grieve not only the lives lost due to the virus and DT’s malignant mismanagement of it, but the loss of hope, sense of security, and the activities and contacts that sustained us. Many of us have lost our livelihood and home.

 

And we can’t simply let go of grief. Smith quotes psychologist Frederick Luskin, who said, “When we lose something, human beings have a natural reintegration process, which we call ‘grief.” We must integrate it, feel it, suffer it, and understand both the fact of the loss and how we feel about it.

 

We can ignore it for only a short time. We have gone through hell. “January 6 happened, and it can never unhappen. COVID-19 happened. At this writing, 466,000 Americans are dead, and they will never come back.“ “The research says that people who go through horrible experiences but keep it to themselves suffer more, not less.” Sharing the load with others can help lighten the load. Caring, compassion for ourselves and others will lighten the load.  Recognizing how the trauma has affected us can change so much for us all. But even more is needed, more ways of speaking.

 

The DT and GOP attack on our rights and freedom has been building since Ronald Reagan said in his first inaugural address, “Government is not the solution to our problem.  Government is the problem.” Fareed Zakaria, in his book Ten Lessons for A Post-Pandemic World says anti-Federal feeling and distrust in centralized government is in the DNA of this nation and Reagan re-invigorated that sentiment. After all, the American Revolution was a revolt against a King.

 

But Reagan also re-invigorated a concentration of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. So his assault on government actually was a masked assault on democracy. It was an assault on the power of the people in favor of the power of the few, the rich. It was in favor of people who want to be kings⎼ or dictators. Or who want a dictator to rule.

 

This anti-federal feeling also led many people to not participate in government. In 2020, we had the highest rate of citizen participation in recent history, 66.7% of eligible voters voted in the presidential election. This was the best turnout since the early 1960s. That means that even in this most meaningful and contentious election, about one-third of adult Americans didn’t (or weren’t allowed to) vote⎼ or speak. According to the Pew Research Center, the U. S. is 30th out of 35 developed democratic nations in terms of the percentage of people who voted in recent years. Since voting is the primary voice of the people, we were censored by ourselves or our government.

 

Our representatives are supposed to represent the interests of all citizens, but they don’t always do that and we’re in trouble if we think of democracy as letting our representatives do all the governing for us. Nor can we allow the GOP to win by preventing us from voting. For example, the lawyers for the Arizona GOP in a Supreme Court case admitted recently that without suppressing the vote, they lose.

 

Many of us hope and/or expect President Biden will get pandemic relief passed, protect voting rights, re-build infrastructure, re-structure health care, free young (and older) people from overwhelming debt from schooling, end Global Warming⎼ and end the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, end the concentration of privilege and power in the white, rich and male (that has existed ever since, or before, our nation’s founding). Do we intend to hold him responsible if it all doesn’t happen, and quickly? Or hold democracy itself responsible? The GOP would love that.

 

On FB recently there was a meme saying, basically, “Why did we elect Biden if he can’t even get us a guaranteed minimum wage of $15 an hour?”  Why? We know why. Four years of DT is why. Just look at how Biden is managing the pandemic. Despite all the challenges, he is assuming responsibility, one thing DT never did, and doing it with compassion and competence, while recognizing the need to fight inequities in our health care system and government.

 

Biden is a president, not a dictator or wannabee dictator. To pass the New Deal, F. D. R. needed not only Congressional action but the support of the people. And in February the research firm SurverMonkey reported 72% of Americans supported not only pandemic relief but most of Biden’s recovery plan.

 

But as Fareed Zakaria pointed out, our legislative system only works when there’s a willingness amongst our representatives to work cooperatively and to compromise. This isn’t the situation today. The GOP have made cooperation almost impossible. 147 of the GOP in Congress voted to overturn the 2020 election and a few still refuse to recognize that Biden won. Some even assisted in or supported the 1/6/21 assault on our nation, assisted in an attempt at a coup. They are a coup itching to happen.

 

We are still recovering from DT and we need a break. But the forces lined against Biden are powerful and desperate. So, let’s support his efforts while pressuring him to foster policies that sincerely meet our needs. We have a new administration that is more inclined to listen to us and do what serves us, so let’s take advantage of this opportunity. Led by Black Lives Matter protests against the murder of George Floyd, racist policing, and the policies of DT, Americans created the biggest sustained protest movement in modern American history. Millions of voices together can help turn this system around.

 

As we take responsible action to change the state of the nation, to make calls to Congress and find other ways to speak, we consequently act to overcome the trauma of DT and change the state of our hearts and minds.

 

**This post was syndicated by the Good Men Project.

 

 

 

From Snow Dancing to Sun Shining: The Day We Saw an Inauguration of Hope

I woke up to snow, huge flakes dancing, not falling, but spinning in the wind. Playful. I haven’t seen the heavens be so playful for years. But here it is, the earth dancing. To see trees and people, snow and wind, different ways of being coming together, dancing together.

And now the sun shines.

A new President was inaugurated today, pledging to speak the truth and act with decency. To recognize the threat of white nationalism instead of hiding it. To advance and protect democracy instead of undermining it. Amanda Gorman spoke. She danced with truth in her words, personal strength and insight. Poetry replacing shouts, incoherence, and lies.

Two moments today when so many of us felt tears break out. May this be a new America. May we win the new Civil War or, as President Biden put it, Uncivil War, even better, may we defeat the impulse to go to war, to go to hate, to go to self-serving greed.

This is our chance. May we take it.

DT, the would-be dictator, the only President in our history who incited an attack on our Congress, our nation, the Congress and nation he swore to protect, the President of hate, lies, and grievance, is now gone from the White House if not from our memory or pain or nation. We must do everything in our power to make sure no one like him is ever given power again. “Never again.” To make sure those guilty of assaulting Congress in an attempt at a coup or to stop Congress from recognizing the will of the people, or who incited and assisted the assault, or worked in Congress itself to destroy democracy- they need to be punished, not out of vengeance but justice.

We need to make sure DT is never allowed to approach a government office again, except for a courtroom. We need to let the whole nation see his crimes.

What a morning and afternoon. We needed this. It’s a lesson and reminder⎼ we must be prepared⎼ to fight, to speak out. To take to the streets not to destroy the power of the people but to secure it. Not to thwart the rule of justice but to make it rule. Not to force a lie on the nation, not to mock truth but proclaim it. Not to kill but heal. That these efforts can and did, for now, succeed. We did succeed.

We need to take a breath. We need to dance. We need to sing.

And then speak out once again, for impeachment in the Senate and for new policies. To quickly have a new cabinet approved. To care for those who are sick and to protect us from becoming sick. To pass new relief legislation. To protect the nation from the violence of internal hate as well as external. To pass new legislation to protect our voting system, right to vote and right to equal justice. To improve our infrastructure. To fully fund an equitable public education system that protects its students and teachers, teaches the history and responsibilities of freedom and democracy, and fosters critical thinking. That makes good health care available to all. And that protects our earth. Our home.

A new day. The inauguration of hope has begun. Let us make it so.

 

 

**Here is a list of those we can call. The first 5 are probable votes for impeachment. The next 6 possibly possible. If you think of anyone else, let us know.

Sasse 202-224-4224

Toomey -202-224-4254

Murkowski 202-224-6665

Romney 202-224-5251

Collins 202-224-2523

 

McConnell 202-224-2541

Grassley 202-224-3744

Lankford 202-224-5754.

Portman 202-224-3353

Capito (202) 224-6472

Thune 202-224-2321

 

This blog post was syndicated by The Good Men Project.