Is our Constitution all that it should be?
May 7, 2019
As my daily, limited dose of news damages my ears, I feel anger rising. Having spent 30 years in uniform defending the Constitution and the nation which sprang from it, I am saddened.
It would seem that we are living in a nation of chaos not a nation of laws, as is so often said, ruled by a Constitution and those laws properly enacted by Congress. As well, we are supposed to be a population that I thought was moving along the path necessary to lead the world to a safer plane of existence, a place in which justice, common sense, and common values were key, a place in which we and the greatest number of our fellow planetary citizens could prosper. Instead, our progress has apparently come to a screeching halt.
It seems that we have a chief executive who violates the Constitution and those hard won laws on a daily basis. His team has erased decades of rules that were solutions for lessons learned thus making our nation a better place for all to live. Rules such as these are not necessarily laws but typically supplant the lack of morals, ethics or common sense in areas to which they apply. Yes, we had a lot of them. They were, apparently, necessary. What does that say about us as people?
While we have a House of Representatives, the body of the government that is most representative of We the People, fighting the good fight, we have a Senate that represents a sycophantic fealty to that law-defying chief executive thus prohibiting what is becoming the only course of action or remedy available: impeachment. To foment such action, the chief executive has taken up taunting the House. Where is that written in the Constitution?
Let’s be clear, impeachment is a terrible thing. It is a stain upon our whole nation even as it excises a life-threatening tumor. It is divisive. It is clearly a last course of action. But it is the only real remedy available in some cases. At this point, we seem to have one or more of those cases occurring simultaneously.
But impeachment is really insufficient. Were he and his team vanquished, we’d still have that portion of the population that put him in office, that portion of the population that he plays to daily. Our fellow citizens who, through some misbegotten series of steps, some distortion of the same things I’ve learned, believe him to be everything from the Second Coming of Christ to one of them bullied and victimized by anyone who doesn’t agree with him. Sounds like Bush 43’s “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.” How did you, my fellow citizens, come to these conclusions? I really want to know. I really want to understand. Trump’s not a victim, he’s not a sheep, he’s a predator in sheep’s clothing, a master manipulator, someone who would sell you out or stiff you in a nanosecond. He has sunk his talons deeply into your psyches. If you have not paid the price yet, you will.
The arbitrator in such cases is supposed to be the third branch of our government, the Supreme Courts and all those courts subordinate to it. All are currently silent. Our system of courts is a passive, that is, unless suit is brought, it remains silent. Does it have to be silent? With the situation at hand, the passive nature of the Courts renders them ineffective and, in any real-time, useless. How can that be? It appears that the chief executive plans to tie everyone’s hands by invoking the due process afforded by our system of courts. Until adjudicated, he gets to do his worst. That could be years.
Compared to the Congress and the Judiciary, the chief executive is a single individual whose specific election defies the concept of a democracy. Only 58% of eligible voters voted in 2016. A plurality of popular votes elected someone else by 2.13%. The inconsistent Electoral College elected an individual based on less than 78,000 votes out of 134,771.204 votes cast or 0.06%. That’s only 0.035% of the total eligible voters. The votes that counted were cast in just three states, 6% of our states and 8.65% of our total population. Neither candidate had a majority. Our nation is supposed to be about majority rule, not plurality rule. Maybe a runoff between the two highest achieving candidates is appropriate in such cases.
Then there is the election tampering by Russia. The two choices are: conspirator or dupe. The reality is there was a lot of contact and inroads between the Trump team and elements of the Russian Federation. Director Mueller et al. says no conspiracy which leaves the domain of dupe.
Is the Russian Federation capable of developing the technology and farming the situations in which they might be employed to destabilize its chief competitor for about a hundred years? YES! And along comes a perfect dupe with a kakistocratic organization characterized by impetuous, narcissistic, privileged, criminal, win-at-all cost sychophants. Game on! To the Russians, a sentiment of conspiracy, denial of conspiracy and everything in between all work to accomplish the Russian Federation’s primary mission: destabilize the United States of America. In so doing, destabilizing the Free World was just a bonus! Mission Accomplished! Vodka and rubles for everyone!
One hanging question remains, however: “Did the Russian Federation’s efforts change the outcome of the election?” Think about it. How could they not. I give you Pizzagate, one of the ploys used. Paraphrasing Lot’s Rule, if you change only one vote, you have changed the election’s outcome. Based on a plurality in the electoral college results, a clear loss in the popular vote count, and the reality that at least one vote was changed — the guy who went on a gun-toting mission to stop Hillary’s child trafficking ring run through a Pizza shop (since proven to be a Russian Troll Farm ploy) — the election of Trump, one could contend, was illegitimate thus making Pence and everything that has transpired since equally illegitimate. But our Constitution has no provision for such a scenario. The complexity is simply mind bending.
Enter Part II, the world of obstruction. Mueller et al.’ s report offers ten, real cases of presidential obstruction. Don’t believe me? Read it for yourself. There’s enough not redacted to get the general idea. It is likely that the redactions are even more damning. The Mueller Team presented their findings in such a way as to be investigational report for action by Congress knowing that they, the team, could not indict a sitting president. Mueller is a true servant of the law. But the recent reports of a growing number of former federal prosecutors stating that was such evidence given about anyone else, conviction at trial would be likely if not guaranteed. Then there is the haunting question of “Why would one obstruct an investigation if one were totally innocent?” Got an answer? The preponderance of evidence suggests one.
It has become obvious that the Constitution and all the laws passed under its procedures do not apparently apply to the chief executive in office today. How is that even possible? His unelected, often un-consent-ed (unapproved by the Senate) minions are allowed or expected to thumb their noses at duly elected legislators doing their job? The Attorney General of the United States is allowed to become the chief defense counsel for the chief executive and lie before Congress? I guess I’m going to have to review decades of Civics lessons and precedences so numerous that they are uncountable to even begin to understand how I became so ill-informed.
At this moment in time, vociferous members of Congress on both sides of the aisle rule the day. The hard thing to accept is that most of the chief executive’s party who have sworn an unconstitutional fealty to him in lieu of upholding their oaths of office in which they swore allegiance to the Constitution. It’s appalling. They, the sycophants of Trump, are doing the greatest harm to our nation since the real witch hunts of one Joe McCarthy. It is ironic that these so-called senators and representatives would have been targets of their forebearer, Joseph McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin, who saw everyone as an agent of communism or the Soviet Union. Or was Joe simply before his time?
“Let it go,” we’re told, “Vote him out in 2020.” I can live with that. Then along comes word that the chief executive wants an extension in office. False prophet Jerry Falwell, Jr. concurs. The parroting and re-tweeting is insidious. In which article or amendment of the Constitution is the extension in office clause? Does Obama get a do-over as Trump claimed Obama wasn’t born in the U.S.? Then there’s McConnell who deprived Obama of a Supreme Court pick because he interpreted the Constitution as giving him the power to do so. Where is the lame duck clause on nominations written?
But the most frightening issue is as follows: In Michael Cohen’s testimony before Congress, he suggested that if Trump lost the next election, he would likely not leave office willingly. That’s merely of concern but when the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the third highest ranked official in our government says that she is concerned about that issue, I have real trepidation. Theatrics aside, we know a popular vote loss and an electoral college win can put the wrong person in office, so how many popular votes does it take to allay the Speaker’s concerns? The peaceful transition of power was long been one of our proudest accomplishment. Is it still?
On so many counts, the Constitution doesn’t seem to be as iron-clad as we, I, once thought it to be. Apparently, it was general guidance that, among rational, sentient, law-abiding patriots, was a sufficient road map to a nation that was truly special. At this moment in time, however, it appears to be an illusion that may one day be the subject of fiction much like the Round Table of King Arthur’s lore, you know, where “Might does not make right.”
So, Senators and Representatives of Trumplandia or Gilead or whatever you think of yourselves as, when will you have your “Come-to-the-Constitution” moment? Will it be sooner or later? Are you capable of controlling an apparent criminal, a mad man, or will you be complicit in all that follows? Will it be Power or the People? Constitution or Trump? Country or Party? Are you willing to accept the precedencies now being set by you and your co-conspirators when you become the minority party? Please understand, that the day of your minority is surely coming.
I truly hope there is a spark of patriotism left in you. Snap out of it before it’s too late!!!!
Bill Reed
