Rage And Anguish

 I'm angry.

It often appears a constant in my life now, but the events of July 13th, 2024 have catalyzed it in a way that leads almost to despair.

Our country is fallen, that much has been clear in the last decade. A six-decade plan by the Republican Party to cede control of the nation to White Christian Fascism continues apace and now we are in a political and ideological battle for our existence as a nation. Just shy of 250 years since the Declaration of Independence said we chose to be free to live our lives as we see fit, we are on the precipice of an authoritarian abyss.

Fifty years ago, as a small child, I watched the Watergate hearings on TV. I couldn't understand the balance of what was being discussed, but I knew enough to know it was serious, because all the other TV shows were preempted for it. The nation was being forced to watch as a painful reckoning was begun. Years later, a lot of what I'd seen and heard made more sense, once I had a better idea of how our government worked.

Flash forward fifty years and the world of then seems but a fairy story, a distant and dim memory closer to the Dark Ages than the 21st Century. We have fallen that far.

Even the simplest mind should be able to make a decision based on the simplest of inputs. There are two men running for the office of the President. One is the President, who has done a stellar job recovering our country from the disaster of the Covid-19 Pandemic; one if the man who created the disaster that was the pandemic. One is an old, articulate man who sometimes stumbles over his words; the other is an old, inarticulate man who routinely confuses people's names and blurts out word salad instead of coherent thoughts. One man had some secret materials in a box and promptly returned them; the other man had boxes and boxes filled with secret material and is still trying to prevent people from taking them away and putting him in jail for an offense many others have been jailed for. One man is capable; the other man is a lousy businessman and convicted criminal.

And yet... the streak of long-simmering anger that has festered in our nation, and erupted like a pustule when Donald Trump rode down that escalator, forces us to confront that this election may be closer than we think, though the data suggests that he is in for an even worse drubbing in this next election, one he will undoubtedly contest and his rabid, sycophantic followers will proclaim fraudulent in his defense, before finally being proved wrong yet again.

Then July 13th happened.

Someone shot at Trump. He was grazed. He is fine. Far from being the "heroic" candidate, he was barely scratched. This was not Ronald Reagan and James Brady being punctured by a dozen bullets. This was not the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Robert F. Kennedy or Abraham Lincoln. It was not even, plausibly, like the attempt on Franklin Roosevelt, or Teddy Roosevelt, who had a bullet in him but stayed and finished a political speech before being whisked off. I cannot speak to the shooter's motives, but they have not done us any favors in painting Trump with a similar brush, making him look less like a Degas and more like a child's finger painting, but nonetheless giving him the "cachet" of having been shot at.

Yesterday catalyzed in me the anger I'd been carrying, that we are having to put up with all this nonsense. That anger was transformed by this moment into anguish. Anguish, that we are not beyond political violence in the 21st Century. Anguish, that society is crumbling inexorably around me, and my family, and I don't know how to stop it. Anguish, that I, as a reformed Catholic, adherent to the words of Jesus, could fall into a miasma of conspiracy (staged?), disingenuous politicking, and worst of all, barely concealed disappointment (missed?) at the attempt. I disgusted myself. I put down my phone, took up my dinner, and went outside to sit in the relative quiet.

I'm still angry, not in the way I was, but mad, now, at myself. That I could allow myself to fall into the sinkhole that is the province of the "Make America Great Again"" crowd. That my dislike and demonization of the man would lead to the untoward thoughts in my head, that I will not repeat here, but which many of you can guess. I'm angry that I've been lowered to the level of a savage animal, seeking to rend flesh from the bones of my adversary. I'm angry that my intellect has been infected by a primal desire to harm. All that anger is now anguish, for what I've allowed myself to become, how sucked into this process I've allowed myself to be. So great is the resolve to see him pay a price, that I am reduced to one of the shouting hordes in the Colosseum, delighting in the combat of men to the death.

All roads lead to Rome," the ancient saying goes. Perhaps they knew more than we give them credit for.

Independence Day

Would you like to know who said this?

"Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism."

Barry Goldwater, in his 1964 Republican Convention acceptance speech.

The one where he opened the door to disaffected White bigots and racists who were put off by the Democratic Party's sudden veering toward "woke." A speech, best known for this utterance:

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

Emphasis mine.

This July, sixty years later, Donald Trump will give an acceptance speech. It will be equal parts lies, self-aggrandizement, and grievance. It will contain invective toward all the progress made in the 20th Century and it will outline a roadmap to how his next administration will dismantle the "Deep State" and create "freedom" through the oppression of anyone he does not like or approve of. He can do so, if elected.

He can do so, if elected, because the hand-picked "originalist" legal sycophants from The Heritage Foundation that were placed on the bench of the Supreme Court by him, along with the current crop of Conservative Justices, handed the President of the United States nigh-unlimited power. They said, in essence, as long as the President is doing their job in an "official" capacity, anything goes. Assassinations. Murders. The rounding up of protesters. The detention of "enemies of the State" in camps. The President cannot be legally censured for any acts deemed "official." Well, not quite true; while in office, the mechanisms of impeachment and removal still remain. But if a President's "official" acts are legal, how do you impeach and remove a President for "high crimes and misdemeanors?"

Mind you, this seems to be at odds with the very document the United States Supreme Court is supposed to be protecting and defending: the Constitution of the United States. Specifically, Article 1, Section 3:

Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

That would seem to be a problem, for a Conservative super-majority court that clings to the nonsensical and improper doctrine of "originalism," which was created out of whole cloth by Conservative jurists. The intent of the Founders was to create a nation, conceived in liberty, wherein each individual was free to pursue their lives as they saw fit, provided doing so did not harm their fellow citizens. And, to do so, free of the tyrannical grip of a monarch or autocrat who assumed the powers of ultimate lawgiver.

This abominable ruling by the Supreme Court came down on Monday, July 1st, 2024, scant days before the celebration of America's official "It's not me, it's you" to Great Britain and King George III. The Declaration of Independence put into words the feeling that a majority of the nation felt: that, having been told they were not wanted in their countries of origin, and having survived the perilous journey to start anew in a foreign land, they were now a little tired of the same authority claiming dominion over them. (Yes, I'm ignoring the indigenous inhabitants and the Black slaves hauled here from Africa, but fear not - their story is not forgotten, merely set aside for this narrative.)

In essence, the Supreme Court Justices who voted for this reprehensible fiat against Constitutional law have violated their Oaths of Office, and deserve whatever punishment can be accorded them, which is, sadly, none, thanks to the American electorate insisting on continuing to give the Republican Party power when it is clear that they do not intend to govern with us, but rule over us. The current Republican-controlled House will not impeach the Justices their party has placed there for the express purpose of undermining the Constitution. Even they are not so stupid as to give up a power they spent sixty years building.

Yes, you heard me right. What will seem to be an out-of-the-blue Judicial Branch overreach, voiding the balance of power expressly set out in the Constitution, simply to allow the putative Republican nominee for President to escape Justice, is all part of a six-decade plan to usurp control of the nation, to toss it officially into the thrall of White Christian Fascism under a pseudo-King. That plan started with that fateful speech by Barry Goldwater, which opened the door to the kind of nationalism and bigoted fervor that would inexorably consume the Republican Party like a antibiotic-resistant bacterium, slowly consuming the flesh of the Party of Lincoln. One would understand, given the circumstances, if the great marble likeness of the man were to rise from his vaulted pedestal and smite ruin upon those who have so sullied the party that defeated the Confederacy and freed millions of Black slaves.

This Independence Day, as many have observed, the American democratic "experiment" would seem to be over. Having ripped Lady Justice's sword from her hand and dashed her scales to the ground, you could be forgiven for thinking that the doors have opened on an America that will soon resemble Orban's Hungary or worse, Putin's Russia. The body blow we suffered on Monday bent the strongest of us, so inconceivable in its execution and timing. The wailing and gnashing of teeth set off by this, was enough to make you think that Jesus had come back and written the whole planet off, rather than bothering with Armageddon.

But...

If we cast aside, for a moment, the pain this has caused us, I think we can see more clearly what this means in a larger context. The fact remains, that the Founders, especially Jefferson and Madison, were of the opinion that the Constitution had to be a "living document," free of the constraints of time, built to match the march of progress, which they, themselves, had seen through the changes brought about by The Enlightenment. They knew that the United States would not remain static, that there were yet to be discoveries made and lands won, that would change the shape and character of the nation. They also knew these changes would take place elsewhere on the globe, and the country had to be ready to meet the challenges that would eventually arise from those changes.

That's why the Constitution was made pliable, via Amendments. The Bill of Rights was a starter set, meant to outline the kinds of things that should be protected, but also not setting them in stone by making them part of the body of the Constitution. They were called "amendments," because it was expected that the Constitution would be rewritten frequently to absorb the changes in American society and the world. This was important, because the Founders, being slave holders to a larger degree, knew that the moral failing of slavery was something they could not address at the time, for fear of destroying the fragile union-to-be. Having spilled blood for it, they were not simply going to toss it aside because they failed to compromise. We look back now at some of those compromises and are aghast that deals could be made to so inculcate slavery into the core of our founding document, but the Founders, perhaps misguidedly, had faith the nation would "iron out" the compromises.

We did just that. Sadly, it took blood to do so.

So, here we sit, in a similar situation, our nation hanging by a thread, unfettered Executive power like a Sword of Damocles over everything we have built in almost 250 years. We are afraid. We are angry. We are frustrated. What is there to do about it?

We must, on this Independence Day, look to the Founders again, for all their flaws and vanity, because they gave us the template, the blueprint, for the radical changes necessary to turn aside monarchic tyranny. It will require a fight, though we hope not the kind where blood is spilled. It will require every one of us to acknowledge the flaws that were exploited to allow White Christian Fascism to ensconce itself in our Federal government, and our own culpability in letting it happen. Then each one of us must use the one tool we still have, to force the changes that need to be made: we must vote. We must act, as the Founders no doubt did when they sent the Declaration off to England, with the intent to defend what we have worked so hard to create. We must make any sacrifice, use any means, to restore the Union to its rightful form of Liberty and Justice for All. Once we do that, we also need to make sure that those words - Liberty and Justice for All - are not a hollow refrain, but the bedrock principle on which the nation must always move forward.

Today, this day, we declare AND affirm our independence from autocracy. Instead of celebration of the past glory of the founding of the nation, we should celebrate the future of the nation, as we once more take up the mantel of Freedom, and defend our shores from those enemies, foreign AND domestic, that would seek to enslave us for their own personal greed and lust for power. Today, this day, is OUR Independence Day.