Tomorrow?
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace of day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle![i]
And what of our tomorrows?
Is the great experiment of rule by the people
but a candle that’s shown its light a few years only to be extinguished by a
return to the rule of the despot and the divine right of the few? The Dane
spoke of the death of an intimate, but the thought lingers as we view attempts
to deaden our senses and watch daily grasps for uncommon power. We see the
march toward executive control, legislative cowardice, and the diminution of a way
of life. Out, out, brief candle?
Reaching for hyperbole, you say! Perhaps, but we
recently watched the impeachment of our President for “high crimes and
misdemeanors.” Then we watched, even more stunned, the expected acquittal by the
Senate that sat as judge and jury while the House Managers proved the
allegations beyond a shadow of a doubt. The answer, known before the question
was asked. For a majority of the senators, it was more important to save the
leader of a party than to do justice. In two other impeachment trials, the
senate also saved their party leader. The candle flickers. A flame dimming?
On December 17, 2019, Mitch McConnell, the Majority leader
of the Senate stated “I’m not an
impartial juror. This is a political process. There’s not anything judicial
about it, The House made a partisan political decision to impeach. I would
anticipate we will have a largely partisan outcome in the Senate. I’m not
impartial about this at all.”
One month later, January 16, 2020, the trial
began in the Senate. Chief Justice Roberts asked the senators to swear the
traditional oath, “Do you solemnly swear
that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John
Trump, President of the United States, now pending, you will do impartial
justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help you God?” McConnell
and the other senators took the oath and signed their names in the oath-book. He
and many other senators lied before God and the American people. They had no
intention to show impartial justice. The flame flickers.
One of the key functions of Congress is
oversight of the Executive Branch, staunchly embedded in its constitutional
implied authority. It is understood that the subpoenas of the Congress are to
be obeyed. The current president issued orders to everyone in the Executive
branch to ignore congressional subpoenas.
Some people did, however, answer the subpoenas
of the House during the investigation leading up to the impeachment. They testified
that the President had in fact held up military aid to an ally until the
President of Ukraine would announce an investigation into the Biden family’s
business dealings. They have all been removed from office, reassigned to other
jobs, resigned, or are waiting for a similar fate. Could this be retaliation for obeying
the law? The flame flickers.
Richard Nixon told people in the Executive
branch to ignore subpoenas during the Watergate investigation and forced to
resign because of it. Our current Senate chose to ignore the President’s
non-compliance, his tacit ignoring of the role of Congress as an equal branch
of government. This flies in the face of two hundred plus years of the
democratic republic we claim to be. The flame flickers.
After the current president was elected, the
Justice Department appointed a Special Prosecutor to investigate campaign
irregularities as they related to seeking and accepting foreign government information
to help win the 2016 election. As a result of the investigation, the Republican
campaign chair is in jail, the assistant campaign chair went to jail, many more
are indicted, and others await sentencing. Just this week, the President tweeted
his displeasure at the DOJ’s sentencing recommendation for Mr. Stone, found
guilty of seven counts of brokering with foreign governments to get “operation
research” on the Clinton campaign. The President thought the recommendation “a
ridiculous nine-year prison sentence to a man that got caught up in an investigation
that was illegal….” The Attorney General announced that he was reducing the
sentencing recommendation. As a result, three key Justice Department
prosecutors resigned from the case and one resigned from the department,
causing one of the worse crises in department history and for the rule of law.
The Justice Department has always been hands-off to the President. When Nixon
tried to interfere in the Watergate break-in, he set off the Saturday-night-massacre
in which one AG after another resigned. The flame flickers.
We just endured a State of the Union Address
filled with intentional lies about the economy, the country’s relationship to
other countries, the positive results of the tariff wars and … The flame
flickers.
The President is a master of reality TV,
programming and marketing. He is the Elmer Gantry of the political world,
rousing his followers to frenzy in rallies around the country. Nearly fifty
percent of the people in the country think he is doing a good job. About fifty
percent of the Democrats think Republicans are horrible people with horrible policies.
More than fifty percent of the Republicans think Democrats are horrible people
with horrible policies. It’s true that there is a conservative-progressive split
among the voters. We have always had that. We have always had one party trying
to beat out the other. The issue is that instead of trying to heal the nation,
reduce the division and compromise on programs to improve the country, the
President and his followers keep digging a bigger gulf between the two parties.
Our government, our rule of law, our upholding of the Constitution, are based
on a trust that human beings will uphold truth and deal fairly with each other.
The flame flickers.
Any time we vote in a different party to govern
the country we expect different policies. That is part of the process. When the
people in the states elected their presidential electors and a Republican won,
it should be expected that taxes would be on the table, that regulations would
be cut, that trade policy would be altered and the court would be in play. What
we don’t expect is a wholesale trashing of our core values of honesty and fair
play, of our proven history of keeping the world safe from war by building
strong alliances with like-minded nations. We don’t expect all the leader’s
confidants to end up in jail, or that the President will interfere with the
Justice Department. No, a president can’t do “whatever I want.” The flame
flickers.
We have seen and experienced this before.
Hitler’s party had one of the largest vote majorities in the history of
Germany. Then he moved into the Chancellor’s office and created a nation, in
only a few years, based on his personality and his hatred on non-Aryans. The
largest majority in Italian history elected Mussolini. He then ruled the nation
as a personality bent on immolating the Nazi party of Germany. We saw the
devaluation of the rule of law in Poland, the Czech nations, Russia, and East
Germany. They say that you can only rule so long as the people let you. When the
people had finally had enough of dictatorship rule, the Wall came down and
Ulbricht was no longer the party head of East Germany. The flame extinguished!
Can we endure another year of lying and
cheating at the highest levels of our government? Can we endure another year of
placing more credence in the words of a Russian despot or dictator from Turkey
than we do in our own intelligence community, or defying Congress at every
step? We don’t have much choice. Do we have to endure another four years of the
same malevolence after that? We have a choice to make. We have a republic if we
can keep it. We have a Constitution to protect. We have a rule of law to lead
us. If we can’t do what is right to right the nation, the only solace we will
have is that tomorrow the sun will come out.
The sun’ll come out tomorrow,
so ya gotta hang on ‘till tomorrow
come what may.
Tomorrow, tomorrow. I love ya tomorrow!
You’re always a day away![ii]
