The Need for Impeachment is Not Political
It may be our last moral statement as Americans
By Mike Meyer
We are far past the point of making a political correction or even attempting to salvage the US as functioning nation state. The urgent need to begin the impeachment process now is required to maintain any vestige of America as a moral institution. To quote Andrew O’Herir on the need for impeachment now:
Democracy has become a religion, in an age when religion has become hypocrisy. So much of our so-called democracy has become a pro forma exercise, sound and fury signifying nothing, a hallowed ritual performed by doddering, drunken priests who have long since forgotten the meaning of the ancient texts they mumble. Andrew O’Hehir; Salon
There is no longer any real hope of reversing the disintegration of the United States. But failure to impeach someone so blatantly incompetent and so blatantly corrupt would erase the last hope for some eventual moral return.
In this the chosen path of political power above all else is also being played by the Democratic Party and Nancy Pelosi. This is the illusion that this is, somehow, only another stage in the normal play of party politics.
It is not. This is now an authoritarian overthrow of the state however incompetently done. The success of such a shoddy coup is totally dependent on popular ignorance and mass failure to pay to attention. That it may succeed is an insult and a travesty but has long been predicted. Even the pretense of a democratic government is doomed by ignorance and greed.
The age of great change that we are in is no longer appropriate to a quasi-elitist liberal form of government. The sad irony is that it could have been but the leadership of that process was fatally flawed by institutional racism and, finally, willful ignorance.
The full implications of this moral failure are well illustrated by the action of some 8,000 Amazon employees who demanded a corporate policy on the Climate Crisis. The requested policy was presented to the Amazon shareholders meeting who rejected it along with a proposed policy to prevent facial recognition systems to governments.
The obvious conclusion shows that, in America, greed rules all and presenting critical environmental and human privacy policies to a huge organization whose shareholders have been taught that the only concern is increased profit is a waste of time. This is the result of abject moral squalor. The Amazon shareholders rejection of the employee concerns:
. . . shows how our model of capitalism is now unsustainable: a classic example of the tragedy of the commons whereby a group of individuals, motivated only by personal interest and acting independently but rationally, end up destroying a limited shared resource although none of them, either as individuals or as a whole, consciously want to bring about that destruction. Enrique Dans ln Medium
We have two related moral questions that directly address the future of this nation and this planet. The second is so far beyond the mindset of 21st century America that it is barely open to discussion, but the first has the option of immediate action.
Failure to act morally on the criminality of Trump and those that support him while maintaining the validity of an economic system that is self destructive and without regard for this planet and its life, both of which are completely intertwined, will mark America as a force for unrestrained evil.
So what would be gained by impeaching Trump? A last national act of moral judgement. Even as a failure this would announce to the world that there must be honesty and acceptance of an objective morality and judicial system in any type of human administration.
Hypocrisy and crudely reactionary hatred is not the basis for planetary well being and happiness. The time of tribal, national, or imperial rule has ended and failure to recognize that will lead to rapidly escalating death and destruction. That this has been well understood for more than a century may illustrate the ultimate failure of our species, but certainly a condemnation of everything that America once was.
It may all collapse in any case, but at least a plurality if not a majority of the polity would have made a stand for the future. I can’t believe that the absurdity of the fascist facade that has been used to lure confused and angry people will not simply disintegrate in confusion. But failure to call out these people and their greed for power must be done or all current institutions will have to be scrapped and replaced.
This is also, almost certainly, what will have to happen in any case but triggering that change by choice is far different from facing devastation and the genocidal warfare of fascist nationalism and risking the long struggle back from that wreckage. It is becoming increasingly clear that we may not have the time to make that long climb back from yet another period of barbarism.
We are far closer to the end than most of the population currently realizes although the American population is no longer representative of the planetary population if it ever has been. Our youngest generations understands it clearly and is demanding action. But without examples of moral action we all will lose the right to any influence on the actions that will they will need to take.
It is already clear that those actions that are needed and will be taken by our youth in self defense will look little like the current facade of the liberal concept of democratic rule that we know. But it will take all of our knowledge, experience and wisdom shape the new planetary order.
What was the liberal democratic ideal is nearly dead and America, once the hope of history, has been instrumental in its demise. We now have a government that is dancing on the grave of liberal democratic ideals in the name of greed and bigotry. But allowing the memory of that tradition to be desecrated and made a joke could remove what validity even remains in those idea for our youngest and coming generations.
We owe it to our children and grandchildren to help them find an effective and scalable planetary administrative structure to handle the crisis of the next centuries. To abdicate our responsibility because a percentage of our population has accepted bigotry and hatred as the only thing they understand is an even bigger tragedy.
Failure to act against those forces of evil embodied by the current American political structure is that abdication. Even with all the failures of racism, bigotry, greed, and predatory economics we have succumbed to there were and are higher standards that the majority of this nation has always attempted to achieve.
Denouncing and attacking shoddy power, hatred, and fascist ignorance is critical to our future wherever that future goes. That is far more important than political positioning and pandering.
