We’re seeing an almost unfathomably destructive vacuum of leadership at the national level. To be abundantly clear at the outset, don’t count me among the painfully numerous Democratic politicians and commentators, from the party leadership on down to wags on social media, who bemoan the paucity of leadership from the president. He’s a fascist, and the Republican Party threw in with his fascism. Sure, he’s lazy, stupid, cowardly, and not even really ideological; that’s not the issue. The last thing we need is an assertive, competent, courageous, methodical fascist leader. If he’s facing setbacks and uncertainty, fine, but there is no “be best.” There is only oppose. Confront. Remove from power.
So, this gross abdication of responsibility is not the main point:
As cities burned, Trump stayed silent — other than tweeting fuel on the fire, By Philip Rucker, Washington Post, May 31, 2020
Nor even the literal turning out of the lights on America:
What is the main point is that the president, his administration, Republican legislators, right-wing oligarchs, much of the federal law enforcement and intelligence apparatus, large portions of local police forces, and hate groups are seizing upon this most recent moment of African Americans’ own anguish at the police killing of George Floyd, are seizing upon moral Americans’ challenge to the American system’s legitimacy, all in order to do great physical, psychological, and material harm to people and to further entrench white male Christian supremacist domination.
Combine that with pandemic-driven mass sickness spread by the president’s murderous corruption and bigotry, a horrific death toll from said sickness, dire economic and health care deprivation, and devastation for locally-owned business, along with planetary environmental catastrophe that compounds by the month, and we desperately need the House Democratic majority to use the very real and legitimate powers available to them—legislation, budgeting, investigation, public hearings, impeachment—to their fullest extent, to save the country.
So then, where are we with that?
“No chance.”
Abdication.
You’re on your own.
This cannot stand.
Well-intentioned speech does not come close to meeting this dire moment. Resolutions are not enough. And we can’t wait for inauguration day or even for the general election to start setting things right. In the meantime, congressional leadership’s efforts to expand federal powers, like the re-authorization for federal agencies to log our Internet activity without a warrant, are a sick joke upon us all. Instead we need for the House of Representatives—the federal body of elected officials closest to the people—the one half of one branch of government that a majority of the (ostensible) opposition party holds—to act out of righteousness on the public’s behalf. To stop letting fascists run the country and start materially trying to save it.
To not act, on top of what really does amount to appeasement of or even surrender to fascism, is to actively destroy the meaning of our politics. To take our efforts and hopes, and purposefully render them null.
Please call or write your member of Congress and demand impeachment: on unconstitutional and racist threats to imprison and kill political opponents, on leaving millions of Americans to get sick and tens of thousands to die through purposeful negligence as well as through profiteering like Kushner’s PPE racket, on all of it. And of all of the administration crooks as well: Attorney General Barr, Secretary of State Pompeo, and the lot.
Any one congressperson can bring a privileged resolution of impeachment before the House. It can’t wait for inauguration day or even for the general election, as this president claims more victims every day. Don’t wait for a win by default, which may not even happen, nor for total societal collapse, which would be catastrophic beyond measure. Re-open impeachment, today.