Same Ole, Same Ole

For those loyal readers that are regular consumers of Urban Curmudgeon, an apology:  The symbiotic relationship between writer and reader demands that the writer produce content for the reader to absorb. I have not done that. The reasons, all having to do with a long overdo attempt to correct a failing limb and the underestimation of the accompanying healing process normal to any component as complicated as the human body but exaggerated by advanced age. As of today I am easing back into the fight buoyed by the plethora of material available even as I am infuriated by it.

I have made one, to me at least, stunning discovery.  The human body is just like the body politic. One would have thought I would have figured that out years ago. But then, of course, none of us are as smart as we would like to think we are.

Even as my body was reacting to the various insults imposed on it by the normal medical processes, the nation was doing the same. Interestingly enough they both reacted pretty much the same way. A system of government set up to protect the people from exactly that which they actually elected, was now under attack. Our constitution, created to protect the people from a would-be dictator is currently under siege from exactly the kind of man it was created to hold at bay, the current President of the United States.

It has become increasingly obvious to anyone with even minimal clarity of vision that Donald Trump has no plan for this country that is in any way in agreement with those of its founders. The latest announcements by his personal lawyers that Trump has the ability to pardon himself for any federal crimes that he sees fit is an unqualified attack on the very constitution that was created to protect the nation from the sort of dictatorship it was, at that point abandoning. Think about it for a moment.

What Trump’s lawyers are saying is that he has no accountability for anything he does.  That is in direct violation of the constitution. That means he has no accountability to anything. He is, in fact, a dictator.

I am writing this piece on June 6, 2018, seventy-four years from the date when Franklin Delano Roosevelt sent American troops to Normandy Beach in France to attack the fascist legions of Adolph Hitler that had enslaved Europe. It was on that day that The United States established itself as the savior that would feed the world’s hungry and free those that had been enslaved. It is an image that has lived down through the years, one by which a nation has identified itself and by which a world has known it. It was built and supported by men like Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Harry Truman, Douglas McArthur and George Patton.

I was reading a letter this morning, written by Ike Eisenhower the night before that invasion in which, understanding the perils of the enterprise he will be leading, he accepts complete responsibility for the failure of the invasion. Of course it didn’t fail so the letter was never published but can anyone reading this column imagine such a letter written by Donald Trump? Can anyone out there even consider Trump accepting responsibility for anything that didn’t go 100% right? This is a half-man who admits no responsibility for anything that doesn’t enhance his hubristic ego, even if he has announced his support for it that morning onTV.

So here we sit, with a President who claims that he can’t be held responsible for anything he does but despite this continues to rant about having done nothing wrong. He attacks those who are investigating all the nefarious journeys into contact with the Russians. He claims they are all perfectly innocent but continues to lie about the details that surround them. Yes, we know that Trump is a sick liar, that the truth rarely crosses his lips, but why lie about something if you don’t have anything to hide? The answer is obvious. Trump has plenty to hide and it will all come pouring out when Mueller opens his bag of tricks and reveals what the last18 months have all been about. At that point everything will be about who is sitting in congress and whether we have elected a few good men and woman to lead us through the chaos that will ensue or whether we have kept the same denizens of the swamp that Trump campaigned so hard against an then fought so hard to keep.

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Famed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz and ABC legal analyst Dan Abrams went at it last week in a knock down, drag out war over the necessity of the Mueller investigation. It was some of the best legal & political TV I have seen in a long while, mostly because it was about something important.  Most TV journalism lately is only about what supposedly shocking Tweet our nasty President comes up with. This was about the reality of what Mueller might come up with on important topics and whether or not it will be prosecutable. Both men put out real arguments for their points of view but in the end it was Abrams who seemed to have the best logical arguments. Dershowitz appears to cast a wide net of innocence that benefits anyone accused of anything as long as they are available as potential clients and bring a serious fee. In this case he is trying very hard to deflect any guilt from our already criminal President. It’s a hard battle and in this case, well fought, but in the end Abrams had too much for the great defender, whose best argument was that there is not enough law already on the books to convict for pretty much anything. That may play strongly if you’re a defense attorney but the fact is, we already have more than enough laws, what we are missing is men of good will to interpret them justly and accurately.

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I’ve always envied guys who could pull a significant quote from somewhere in the hidden corners of their mind and drop it precisely into a paragraph just where it was needed most. Unfortunately, I have never had much of a memory so I have always resented those who could quite easily fish these famous sayings out of the dark recesses of their minds, seemingly only to impress the rest of us.

Historian John Meacham is one of the best of these and he displayed this the other day when he quoted former President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the presidency not being an engineering project but preeminently a place of moral leadership, a position that sets a tone. It emerged, of course, from a discussion on Trump’s monumental failure as a leader, a failure that will stand no matter how many bills he gets passed or how many tariffs he changes. It was Harry Truman, the solid guy, who stated absolutely correctly that the people get the government they deserve. If you don’t think that’s true, just look around at what’s going on in Washington now.

St. Augustine defined the nation as a multitude of rational beings united by the common objects of their love. So what do we love in common? Probably any number of things but guaranteeing fair play for others is the best way to guarantee fair play for us.

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I have been talking about what the Democrats need to do to win the 2018 election ever since the last one and although they claim that they are developing a formula of local issues there is still the need to establish a series of areas of importance including recognizing national failures and how, as a united party, they will go about finding solutions that can work for the people of this country.

Over the next few months I hope to establish a series of basic platforms that will create some kind of floor plan for those politicians who really want to help the country establish a workable footing, a foundation, on which to build the kinds of plans we need to move this country forward into the post Trump world.