A couple of weeks after the election, someone introduced me to a friend this way: "She hates Trump! She loves Hillary!" I calmly replied that I did not hate or love any candidate, but I love my country.
It is always jarring to be wildly simplified, even after in-depth conversations about policy and outcomes and experiences. But it matters because it reminds all of us how simply complex issues are being processed and consumed by so many. And how they layer their own lack of analysis onto others. It's simple to them, so it must be simple to you.
Showrunner Beau Willimon (“House of Cards”) wrote a Twitter manifesto today outlining the many violations of oath that Trump has committed since taking office and arguing a case for his impeachment. If you know the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, you have been following (and probably decrying) each of Trump & Co’s activities as they are announced. If you don't know those documents, and may even pride yourself on not needing to know them/history/law, then you will dismiss this and other defenses of America as "attacks on Trump." You will be wrong, but you will not care. (You also stopped reading this post a paragraph ago and simplified it to "sour grapes." You have never read the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, and you never will. You will scream and curse at anyone who says that to you, even though it is true.)
For those who do care about the foundations of the United States and how the sitting president is dismantling them, please read Willimon's summary. Despite my resistance to simplifying the complex and life-threatening, he manages to make clean work of this in a series of 140-character tweets. A few snips only because it is a must-read in its summarized form and on Twitter itself, with the responses:
1. DECLARATION OF RESISTANCE
When in the course of American history it becomes necessary for the people to save our Nation from a Tyrant,
2. To safeguard equality for all and their inalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness from bigotry and corruption,
3. To ensure that our Government continues derive its power from the consent of the governed rather than by autocracy,
4. That whenever any President becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to make such demands upon their Congress:
5. Immediate impeachment of the President for crimes committed, or removal from office by way of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution
11. He has purged the State Dept. of its highest level officials without any regard for a responsible continuity of State Affairs.
13. He has vowed to enact policy and legislation which clearly tread on the separation of church and state.
Despite the salacious headline, Willimon's writing is not a "war on Donald Trump." It is a full-throttle defense of the United States of America as codified in our guiding documents. Only Donald Trump and his information-resistant staff and supporters think this pushback is about Trump himself.
I exhaled today after a tense/painful two weeks because our Judicial branch upheld the Constitution, and the Executive branch was placed lightly in check after a streak of egregiously unconstitutional behavior. I do not hate Trump for his ignorant tweet calling a judicial decision a “ridiculous” "opinion." I hate the position my country is in because the current Executive branch does not understand or respect its role in the magnificent balance of power outlined in our governing documents. And I hate that so many Americans have neither the educational foundation nor the personal desire to understand and protect the true magnificence of this country's guiding principles.
But victories matter. We will keep fighting to regain our legal ground as a nation and ignoring those who try to reduce it to a personality clash.
#resist #from45to25in30