These are perilous times for our democracy. However, there
have also been numerous other times in our country’s history when our system of
government could have been destroyed, but was not.
Fortunately, there are things we can do now that give homage to the thought in Lincoln’s Gettysburg address:
[...]
that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation,
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Both Rachel Maddow and Heather Cox Richardson just released
new books that examine the perils that we have faced in the past, and how we
overcame them.
Rachel Anne Maddow (born
April 1, 1973) is an American television news program host and liberal
political commentator. Maddow hosts The Rachel Maddow Show,
a weekly television show on MSNBC,
and serves as the cable network's special event co-anchor.Her syndicated talk
radio program of the same name aired
on Air America Radio from
2005 to 2010.
Maddow has received multiple Emmy
Awards for her broadcasting work and in 2021 received
a Grammy
Award for the audiobook version of Blowout (2019).
Maddow holds a bachelor's degree in public policy
from Stanford University and
a doctorate in political science from the University of Oxford and
is the first openly
lesbian anchor to host a major prime-time news
program in the United States.
Maddow wrote Drift:
The Unmooring of American Military Power (2012)
about the role of the military in postwar American politics. Upon its
release, Drift reached the first position of The New York Times Best
Seller list for hardcover nonfiction.
In December 2013, The Washington Post announced
that Maddow would write a monthly opinion column for the paper, contributing
one article per month over a period of six months.
On March 2, 2018, The New York Times published
Maddow's first crossword puzzle, in collaboration with Joe DiPietro. On
the eve of its publication, she said: "This is kind of it, like there will
never be a baby, but there's this freaking crossword puzzle, and I am very,
very excited about it."
Maddow's second book Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the
Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth was
published in October 2019. In March 2021, the audiobook version of Blowout,
recorded by Maddow, won the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word
Album at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards.
Her third book, Bag Man: The Wild Crimes,
Audacious Cover-up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White
House, written with Michael Yarvitz, was published in December 2020.
Maddow's fourth book, Prequel: An American
Fight Against Fascism was published on October 17,
2023. It is based on her podcast Ultra.
I have read all 4 of her books, and recently finished
reading “Prequel”
Heather Cox Richardson is an American
academic historian, author, and educator. She is a professor of history
at Boston
College, where she teaches courses on the American Civil War,
the Reconstruction Era,
the American West, and the Plains Indians. She previously
taught history at MIT and
the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Richardson has authored seven books on history and
politics. In 2019, Richardson started publishing Letters from an
American, a nightly newsletter that chronicles current events in the larger
context of American history. The newsletter accrued over one million
subscribers, making her, as of December 2020, the most successful individual
author of a paid publication on Substack.
Born in Chicago in 1962 and
raised in Maine, Richardson attended Phillips Exeter
Academy in Exeter, New
Hampshire. She received both her BA and PhD
from Harvard University, where she studied under David Herbert Donald and William Gienapp.
In 2023, Richardson published her seventh
book, entitled Democracy Awakening: Notes
on the State of America that she characterized as having grown
from writings she began in 2019 and subsequent interactions with her readers. Those
writings deal with discussion of contemporary events Richardson relates to
historical developments and that were moved from postings on Facebook to her
newsletter entitled Letters from an American and published,
almost daily, on Substack.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Cox_Richardson
I finished reading “Democracy Awakening” recently, and found
that it was similar to Rachel Maddow’s “Prequel”.
Sadly, not enough people will read either book, which is why
our government is sliding towards a society that could become a full-blown
dictatorship if the wrong people get elected in November.
Both women point out that the biggest threat to our democracy
is Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans.
The refusal of House Republicans to fund aid for Ukraine, their insistence on pursuing a bogus impeachment scheme hatched by an indicted Russian FBI source in contact with Russian intelligence services and their unfailing loyalty to an anti-democratic demagogue infatuated with Russian President Vladimir Putin will further aggravate the existential threat facing democracy around the globe. MAGA Republicans’ recent conduct will only hasten the dangerous trend toward authoritarianism spelled out in Freedom House’s recent report “Freedom in the World 2024: The Mounting Damage of Flawed Elections and Armed Conflict.”
The problem we have as a country, though, is that there simply are not enough educated voters.
9 of the 10 most popular shows on television are on the FOX
network, which is actually not a news channel, since it was registered in 1996
as an entertainment channel.
Until Tucker Carlson was fired by FOX in 2023 (for lying about
the 2020 election) he was one of the
highest rated shows on cable television, with an audience as large as 3.7
million people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker_Carlson
As far back at May of 2017, Der Spiegel proclaimed that DonaldTrump is not fit for office.
Although you can read the complete article at the link shown above,
here are a few kay points:
Donald
Trump is not fit to be president of the United
States . He does not possess the requisite intellect and
does not understand the significance of the office he holds nor
the tasks associated with it. He doesn't read. He doesn't bother to peruse
important files and intelligence reports and knows little about the issues that
he has identified as his priorities. His decisions are capricious and they are
delivered in the form of tyrannical decrees.
He
is a man free of morals. As has been demonstrated hundreds of times, he is a
liar, a racist and a cheat. I feel ashamed to use these words, as sharp and
loud as they are. But if they apply to anyone, they apply to Trump .
And one of the media's tasks is to continue telling things as they are: Trump
has to be removed from the White House. Quickly. He is a danger to the world.
Trump
is a miserable politician. He fired the FBI director simply because he could.
James Comey had gotten under his skin with his investigation into Trump's
confidants. Comey had also refused to swear loyalty and fealty to Trump and to
abandon the investigation. He had to go.
Trump is also a miserable boss. His
people invent excuses for him and lie on his behalf because they have to, but
then Trump wakes up and posts tweets that contradict what they have said. He
doesn't care that his spokesman, his secretary of state and his national
security adviser had just denied that the president had handed Russia (of all
countries) sensitive intelligence gleaned from Israel (of all countries). Trump
tweeted: Yes, yes, I did, because I can. I'm president after all.
Nothing
is as it should be in this White House. Everyone working there has been
compromised multiple times and now they all despise each other - and everyone
except for Trump despises Trump. Because of all that, after just 120 days of
the Trump administration, we are witness to an American tragedy for which there
are five theoretical solutions.
The first is
Trump's resignation, which won't happen.
The second is that
Republicans in the House and Senate support impeachment, which would be
justified by the president's proven obstruction of justice, but won't happen
because of the Republicans' thirst for power, which they won't willingly give
up.
The third possible
solution is the invocation of the 25th Amendment, which would require
the cabinet to declare Trump unfit to discharge the powers of the presidency.
That isn't particularly likely either.
Fourth: The Democrats get ready to fight and win back
majorities in the House and Senate in midterm elections, which are 18
months away, before they then pursue option two, impeachment.
Fifth: the international community wakes up and
finds a way to circumvent the White House and free itself of its dependence on
the U.S. Unlike the preceding four options, the fifth doesn't directly solve
the Trump problem, but it is nevertheless necessary - and possible.
According to The Guardian, Trump is
the worst president in our nation’s history – and he would be far worse if elected
to a second term of office.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/20/presidents-ranking-trump-biden-list
There are other sources that confirm that status as well. Here
are a few key phrases from The Guardian’s article:
“Donald Trump finished 45th
and rock bottom of a list ranking US presidents by greatness, trailing
even “historically calamitous chief executives” who failed to stop the civil
war or botched its aftermath.
Worse for the likely
Republican nominee this year, his probable opponent, Joe Biden, debuted
at No 14.
“Biden’s most important
achievements may be that he rescued the presidency from Trump, resumed a more
traditional style of presidential leadership and is gearing up to keep the
office out of his predecessor’s hands this fall,” Justin Vaughn and Brandon Rottinghaus,
the political scientists behind the survey, wrote in the Los Angeles Times.”
Trump is the only
president who has been impeached twice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_impeachment_of_Donald_Trump
The
first impeachment of President Donald Trump occurred on
December 18, 2019. On that date, the House of Representatives adopted two
articles of impeachment against Trump: abuse of
power and obstruction
of Congress. On February 5, 2020, the Senate voted to acquit Trump on both
articles of impeachment, almost exclusively on party lines.
The
final vote in the senate was 52 against removal from office, and 48 in favor of
removing him from office. Mitt Romney was the only Republican voting to remove
him from office.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impeachment_of_Donald_Trump
Trump was impeached for
the second time on January 13, 2021, one week before his term expired.
It was the fourth impeachment
of a U.S. president, and the second for Trump after his first
impeachment in December of 2019.
Ten Republican representatives
voted for the second impeachment, the most pro-impeachment votes ever from a
president's party. This was also the first presidential impeachment in
which the majority caucus voted
unanimously for impeachment. Trump was indicted on August 1, 2023, for the
conduct for which he was impeached.
The House
of Representatives of the 117th U.S. Congress adopted
one article of
impeachment against Trump of "incitement of
insurrection", stating that he had incited the January 6
attack of the U.S. Capitol. These events were preceded
by attempts by Trump to overturn the 2020
presidential election, as well as his pushing of voter fraud conspiracy theories on his
social media channels before, during, and after the election.
At the conclusion of the trial, the Senate voted 57–43 to
convict Trump of inciting insurrection, falling 10 votes short of the
two-thirds majority required by the Constitution, and Trump was therefore acquitted. Seven
Republican senators joined all Democratic and independent senators in voting to
convict Trump, the largest bipartisan vote for an impeachment conviction of a
U.S. president or former U.S. president. After the vote on the
acquittal, Mitch
McConnell said there is
no doubt that Trump is practically and morally responsible for inciting the
events at the Capitol but he voted against conviction due to his interpretation
of the United States Constitution.
Since Congress failed twice to remove Trump from office, the
sole remedy remaining is to remove him from office using the court system.
Trump spent more than $50 million on legal fees last year,
some of which were paid for by the Republican national committee.
More
than a year after the 2020 presidential election, the GOP is still covering
numerous legal bills for the benefit of former President Donald Trump --
and the price tag is ruffling the feathers of some longtime GOP donors who are
now critical of Trump.
In October and November
alone, the Republican National Committee spent nearly $720,000 of its donor
money on paying law firms representing Trump in various legal challenges,
including criminal investigations into his businesses in New York, according to
campaign finance records.
Trump's legal bills have
sent the Republican Party's total legal expenditures soaring in recent months,
resulting in $3 million spent just between September and November. In contrast,
the Democratic National Committee has been gradually winding down its legal
expenses over the last few months.
Traditionally, national
political parties have at times covered presidents and their advisers' legal
fees in matters related to their presidential campaigns. And throughout his
presidency, the Republican Party has footed legal bills for Trump, his family
members and his political allies, going back to the days of Special Counsel
Robert Mueller's investigation into the 2016 election, through the
impeachment proceedings following the Jan. 6
attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In November of 2022, RNC
chair Ronna McDaniel announced that the RNC would not pay Trump’s legal fees if
her ran for president. Recently, Trump forced her resignation, and plans to install
his daughter-in law Lara Trump as the chair.
Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law
and handpicked choice to help lead the Republican National
Committee said she thinks Republican voters would support having the
political organization pay the former president’s ballooning legal fees.
Lara Trump said Wednesday while
campaigning for her father-in-law ahead of the South Carolina primary that she
was not familiar with the RNC’s rules about paying Donald Trump’s legal fees in
a multitude of criminal and civil cases.
But she said she thought the idea
would get broad support among GOP voters who see his legal cases as political
persecution.
“That’s why people are furious right
now. And they see the attacks against him. They feel like it’s an attack not
just on Donald Trump but on this country,” she said. “So yeah, I think that is
a big interest to people, absolutely.”
https://apnews.com/article/lara-trump-rnc-donald-trump-9c25a74e096439cd7b0ac37c96530675
By April of 2020, Trump had been
involved in 3500 lawsuits.
Currently, Trump faces 91 felony
counts across two state courts and two different federal districts, any of
which could potentially produce a prison sentence. He’s also dealing with a
civil suit in New York that could force drastic changes to his business empire,
including closing down its operations in his home state. Meanwhile, he is the
leading Republican candidate in the race to become the next president—though
the Supreme Court has now heard a case seeking to disqualify him. If the
criminal and civil cases unfold with any reasonable timeliness, he could be in
the heat of the campaign at the same time that his legal fate is being decided.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/donald-trump-legal-cases-charges/675531/
He recently was forced to pay over $80
million to E. J. Carroll in her defamation suits.
In the fall of
2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a civil suit against Trump,
his adult sons, and his former aide Allen Weisselberg, alleging a years-long
scheme in which Trump fraudulently reported the value of properties in order to
either lower his tax bill or improve the terms of his loans, all with an eye
toward inflating his net worth.
That case was recently
settled, and Trump was ordered to pay over $500 million
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/donald-trump-legal-cases-charges/675531/
The document
case of Florida is still active, but its timetable has been pushed back.
The Manhattan
hush money case was scheduled to start on March 25, but has been put on hold
while the Supreme Court ponders Trump’s immunity claim.
The Fulton
Country case brought by Fani Willlis is now stalled due to allegations of sexual
impropriety with her chief prosecutor.
Special Counsel Smith has also charged
Trump with four federal felonies in connection with his attempt to remain in
power after losing the 2020 election. This case is in court in Washington, D.C.
When?
A grand jury indicted Trump on August 1, 2023. The trial
was originally schedule for March 4, but Judge Tanya Chutkan said in early
February that the date would change, as an appeals court deliberated on Trump’s
claim of absolute immunity. A three-judge panel roundly rejected that claim on February 6,
but no new trial date has been announced yet. As with the other DOJ case, Smith
will need to move quickly, before Trump or any other Republican president could
shut down a case upon taking office in January 2025. Other tangential legal
skirmishes continue: In October, after verbal attacks by Trump on witnesses and
Smith’s wife, Chutkan issued an order limiting what Trump can say
about the case.
Given the glacial speed that the legal
system operates in, it’s entirely possible that the Georgia case, and Jack Smith’s
will not be resolved until after November election. Worst still, a huge number
of Trump voters would stick with him even if he were a felon.
Several states have tried to keep Trump
off the ballot in their states, but have run into legal issues, which means that the only
way to preserve our democracy is a simple solution:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/03/trump-colorado-ballot-supreme-court-decision/
Vote
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