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| The Dullahan |
WILL PEOPLE LOSE THEIR HEADS THIS ELECTION?
by David Arthur Walters
12 February 2020
President Donald John Trump has evaded conviction and eviction from office for his impeachment on charges of high crimes and misdemeanors, thanks to the influence of Republican partisans who would apparently back him even if he would shoot someone dead on the street, as he himself intemperately remarked during his last campaign. Wherefore it appears that the charismatic Mr. Trump, who has established himself as an opportunistically xenophobic and racist bully on the bully pulpit and proven himself to be a most indecent and exceedingly vain man, represents the basal nature of people with whom he is popular no matter what he does. He shall be their messiah until he morally and materially bankrupts the nation they believe belongs to them alone. Indeed, he appears to them as their Christ as long as his deeds are destructive of the politically correct, “roman” system that sustains them, notwithstanding how obscene he appears to the scapegoated Democrats they despise.
Many of his opponents believe the President is waging a virtual civil war on the Union. Although a few Republican senators, with an eye on their electors back home, admit that the President's behavior was inappropriate or even morally wrong, they insist not only that his crime is not criminal, that the high crimes he apparently committed are not impeachable crimes. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, where the President maintains his palatial estate, absurdly said that, even if high crimes and misdemeanors were committed, that does not mean his president should be convicted and evicted from office. That would be disastrous for Mr. Rubio's version of the nation. And even some of the President's opponents claim that he should not be indicted for judicial crimes after his presidency because that would continue the divisiveness, that the nation would be better off just moving on, as if he, like the kings of yore, were the source of law above the law.
The charges against President Trump were indeed for crimes, that is, impeachable offenses to be tried by the Senate. Impeachable crimes do not have to be indictable crimes tried by courts of law although the Constitutional rights of an accused president are the same and the procedures mirror the judicial process of the lower courts, the Senate being the highest court in cases of impeachment. Impeachable crimes are offenses against the general public rather than particular individuals. If the impeachable crimes are also indictable crimes, a president may be tried and punished by the judiciary after he is punished by removal from office if he is not gratuitously pardoned.
As a matter of positive common law, the definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” is whatever the Senate, the High Court of Impeachment, says it is. President Trump was charged under the rubrics, Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress. The latter heading specifies what is called obstruction of justice, comprising similar kinds of white collar crime prosecuted in courts lower than the High Court of Impeachment.
As for Abuse of Power, the main specific thereunder in the President's case would be called Bribery in the lower courts, for the President was charged with soliciting something of value, an investigation of and damaging announcement about his political opponent, in return for the release of illegally withheld funds allocated by Congress to Ukraine to fight against an historical enemy of the United States. His efforts to cover up that crime would constitute Obstruction of Justice. Furthermore, the high crime of Treason, aiding an abetting an enemy, could also be tried if the Senate viewed Russia traditionally as an archenemy with which the United States is presently at war through its Ukrainian proxy. Therefore if the acquittal of Trump is the new precedent, his acts no matter how reprehensible would not be impeachable crimes in the future. The impeachment clause in the Constitutional would be obsolete because a law unenforced is no law.
The people's alternative reality fool was wearing no clothes and was acquitted in a mock reality show trial after the Republican Senate majority covered up his crimes with absurdities and refused the admission of documentary evidence and potentially damning testimony from a material witness to the crimes alleged, knowing what that witness would say to the Senate after refusing to speak to the House. The process was nothing less than a travesty of justice staged by political partisans dependent upon an electorate they believe to be so cowed or thoroughly corrupted or similarly prejudiced that there was minimal risk to their arbitrarily exercised power. Witnesses who took their oath seriously and answered questions truly are being vindictively fired by the faux reality show king. Wherefore the remark made by Jefferson after his attempt to use impeachment as a tool to smother impartial justice in its crib lest it become a branch of government, holds true , that impeachment is a “farce.” After all, the Senate is the vestige of the king's court, and though the people are now supposed to be king, the noble senators still rule with a temporary king in the White House, in a rotating power struggle around the hog trough. The very conflict of interest makes the rendering of impartial justice highly unlikely, especially given the decline of civilization.
The impeachment process has been said to be merely political not criminal. But judicial criminal offenses themselves are inherently political offenses, crimes against the public instead of crimes against an individual against public policy. Criminals may be pardoned. Mr. Trump entertained the idea of pardoning himself. The White House may with impunity intimidate government attorneys, retaliate against prosecutors who recommend stiff sentences, nominate judges according their political prejudices, get sentences of their satans reduced all the way down to government service in order to preserve the power elite in offices while others are condemned to serve long sentences.
It has been rightly said that might makes right, and that wrong seems right when done long enough. The power elite legalized many of its own crimes as it liberalized the judicial system to go easier on the governed below in order to maintain its own privileges and forestall revolution. The absolute power ultimately desired hence religiously worshiped is, in democratic theory, with the undivided people. But in the actual final analysis, the division of spoils, the greatest share of power and wealth is actually with the ten percent who revolt and rule, divide and conquer, and jealously guard their booty. After all, politics naturally divides the absolute power religiously worshiped among individuals differently, that they may exist as such, in a hierarchical order determined by their relative resistance to circumstances. An absolutely powerful individual able to persist forever without resistance would no longer be an individual for resistance to circumstances, without which there would be no individual, makes the individual.
Ironically, the most egregious abuses of power by the power elite are applauded by a fawning crowd who hope to get close enough to the center of power to get something more than scraps, but whose best interest would be to revolt against the abusers, thus do they assist in the abuse of themselves. One day the current self-destructive disabuse will come to an end, hopefully not in a bloodbath. The question of who shall lead the nation is coming to a head. Will people lose their heads?
xYx
Ron