Update: Since publishing this blog several months ago, things have just gotten worse. We finally have internal pressure building publicly on Pelosi, but still she hesitates. As one of the original comments to this blog said “We are in grave danger”.
In my world, the fact that we have been abusing human beings at the border; coupled with the immediate threat of climate change is existential reason enough to Impeach. There are multiple laws he’s broken; and he’s clearly a criminal.
My wish is that the people in Nancy Pelosi’s district would start making very vocal and active motions to primary the Speaker. Perhaps fear of losing her office will get her to wake up and smell the fascism. Things are dire. Every day Pelosi moves the goal posts for the White House to produce documents is a day closer to a Reichstadt fire moment. Call your Reps.
Original, posted May, 2019:
In an article out this week in the Washington Post regarding the Democratic Party falling in line behind Nancy Pelosi’s anti-impeachment stance, there is a profile of a leader and a political party completely out of touch.
Take for instance this passage with Speaker Pelosi speaking about the prospect of Impeachment:
In the nearly hour-long session heavily focused on health care, Pelosi was the only one to bring up impeachment, acknowledging that some Democrats are complaining.
“Why aren’t we impeaching the president?” she said, parroting their words. “Why aren’t we impeaching him? They get a little down,” she said of frustrated members of her party.
“The point is that we need to show [voters] that we are doing all these other things that they care about so much,” Pelosi said. Not a single lawmaker in the room protested.
That is a remarkable statement by Speaker Pelosi. It is either fundamentally disconnected or dishonest. Or perhaps it’s just hubris as she pushes her position on the rest of us that exists in a past that is long gone in this country. A past filled with more respect for the law and our republic than clearly exists in the current class of Republicans.
Her game is a dangerous one. It reminds me of the one that Europe played in the years leading up to World War II: appeasement. Neville Chamberlain will forever be known as the man that had the power, but through his inaction led to the loss of millions of lives at the hands of monsters.
As Wikipedia documents:
As part of a debate in the House of Commons, Winston Churchill, then the member from Epping, disputed Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir John Simon's motion to affirm "the policy of His Majesty's Government by which war was averted in the recent crisis". For members of parliament at the time, a vote for John Simon's motion would signal approval for Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's signing of the Munich Agreement on 30 September 1938, which ceded the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia to Germany, and more broadly, approval of the strategy of appeasement that Chamberlain had adopted towards Hitler. Though Churchill vehemently opposed both the Munich Agreement and Britain's appeasement policies, he was in the minority, and the day after he gave his speech, the House of Commons voted 366 to 144 to affirm the motion.
In response, then just a member of the House of Commons, Winston Churchill uttered these words from his famous speech:
“I will begin by saying what everybody would like to ignore or forget but which must nevertheless be stated, namely, that we have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat, and that France has suffered even more than we have.
We in this country, as in other Liberal and democratic countries, have a perfect right to exalt the principle of self-determination, but it comes ill out of the mouths of those in totalitarian states who deny even the smallest element of toleration to every section and creed within their bounds.
It is the most grievous consequence of what we have done and of what we have left undone in the last five years - five years of futile good intentions, five years of eager search for the line of least resistance, five years of uninterrupted retreat of British power, five years of neglect of our air defenses.
You must have diplomatic and correct relations, but there can never be friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi power, that power which spurns Christian ethics, which cheers its onward course by a barbarous paganism, which vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses, as we have seen, with pitiless brutality the threat of murderous force. That power cannot ever be the trusted friend of the British democracy.”
You may scoff at this comparison of Trump and the GOP to the Nazi Party, but the threat is real. Even Pelosi herself has said in the recent past that our country is danger of a current president that refuse to relinquish power.
In an interview with the newspaper this week, the Democratic leader expressed worry over a scenario where Trump would not accept the election results if he were to lose re-election by a slim margin, the Times reported.
"We have to inoculate against that, we have to be prepared for that," Pelosi told the newspaper Wednesday.
Additionally, let’s look at Trump’s and/ or GOP policies and words, as the rest of his party covers their mouths and sits on their hands:
I would argue that the 2018 election results were an attempt to transfer power into the hands of the only opposition party to these policies by these same voters Pelosi claims to understand. This was cry out for oversight and mitigation of the GOP’s march towards totalitarianism. The light that Impeachment would shed on this criminal administration would make this clear to the rest of reasonable, but stubborn Americans that are telling pollsters that they “don’t want impeachment.” (Who are these people anyway?)
Speaker Pelosi has become the Neville Chamberlain of these times and this country. And her party – one many had hoped would rise to the challenge of protecting our country against this unlawful power grab – have become America’s version of the 1938 British House of Commons. They will back her due to some guess perhaps (?) that using their constitutionally given power to impeach will somehow sour citizens’ views on their lawful — in fact required by their oath of office — actions.
Comparing our time to the past is just willful ignorance – a political whistling through the Beltway graveyard so to speak. Comparing a party that impeaches a sitting president for lying about a blowjob is not the same thing as impeaching a president for continuing to cover up an investigation into obstruction of justice that was related to a hostile power trying to attack us from within our borders by manipulating our elections. It is a false-equivalency for the ages.
There is no saying what the months between now and 2020 will bring. They could be filled with an extreme stock market crash; another terrorist attack; or any crisis that could be used to declare Martial law by a man that obviously wants to be a king; and a cruel one at that.
What power will Pelosi and her complacent Commons Party have left in such a scenario? Not much. And the rest of us will be still wondering what was in that Mueller report that could have led us off of and away from this precipice hanging above total war on our democracy.
Do the American people want “other things” like healthcare? It sure sounds like it. But how exactly is Pelosi going to be able to accomplish any “other things” in the next year and a half with Trump’s lapdog McConnell? That is a red herring so delusional its a bloody unicorn!
We have talked about how the GOP is complicit with Trump’s agenda. It’s gone way past complicit for them: they are the party of Trump. They embrace his racist diatribes; and launch their own misogynistic attacks one half of the population. They ensure that their base has access to deadly weapons.
It is the Democratic Party that can now be accused with some accuracy of being complicit. They posture and pose with their empty threats for whatever reason. I have speculated here, but only they really know why they prefer to keep rearranging the deck chairs. They have rendered themselves powerless. I guarantee Trump and his cronies in the White House call them “losers” every damn day.
I fear for our country and for all people in this world under the House leadership of Nancy Pelosi. I beg them to reconsider their complacency before it’s too late.