Just had to turn off CNN. Can't listen to one more pol bloviate about how Trump shouldn't be impeached because it will make healing harder. Have they not been paying attention? We got here because there have been no consequences for Trump's abuses...or those of predecessors.
Without consequences for Trump and those who supported this sedition and those who enabled his corruption and those who collaborated with a foreign enemy and those who obstructed justice THERE WILL BE NO HEALING.
The impunity of the empowered is what has fueled our current crisis & enabled them to inflame political divisions. Lincoln was wrong to let Confederate traitors off the hook. Ford was wrong to let Nixon off the hook. GHWBush was wrong to let the Iran-Contra crowd off the hook.
Obama was wrong to let torturers and Wall Street thieves off the hook. In so doing they all undermined our system by eroding accountability--the ultimate check against abuse of power.
There will be no healing if another is tempted to follow in Trump's corrupt, seditions, traitorous footsteps because they know they can get away with it.
To repeat: Healing is not about feeling better, it is about getting better.
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This week, I can't help but remember the warnings of the great Village Voice journalist Wayne Barrett, who started warning the world about Trump in the 1970s and who first exposed his sleaze and diseased character. Barrett died the day before Trump was inaugurated.
If the (erroneous) Office of Legal Counsel memo saying president's can't be indicted for crimes while in office had not been written, hundreds of thousands of Americans would still be alive today.
If Rod Rosenstein had not told Mueller to stay out of investigating Trump's finances and to narrowly define his investigation, the coup attempt would never have taken place.
If Mueller had not gone along with Rosenstein and had followed all of the investigations into Trump's ties to the Russians and his finances, we would not have seen months of attempts to attack and weaken our democracy.
140 elected members of Congress who have publicly stated they will seek to overturn the results of an election judged free and fair by every single court or legal authority that has examined it. It is a devastating and profoundly dangerous development.
The GOP is now actively opposed to democracy, our Constitution and our values. Under Donald Trump it has become America's first fascist party. Overstatement. Consider the dictionary definition from Meriam-Webster:
"A political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation & often race above the individual & that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic & social regimentation, & forcible suppression of opposition."
@ianbremmer With respect, it's not that simple. For decades the right have been engineering institutional changes (gerrymandering, packing courts, working to take over legislatures, increasing the corporate money flows through Citizens United etc., suppressing votes, etc.)...
@ianbremmer They have worked hard to enable a minority to gain influence (abetted by flaws in our Constitution). Since the elimination of the fairness doctrine and pulling strings to help Murdoch gain his US licenses during Reagan, they have created an alternative reality media bubble.
@ianbremmer And they have actively promoted policies that increased the power and wealth of their sponsors among the few and promoted division below. Have the needs of regular Americans been ignored? Of course. Look at our social safety nets compared to every other developed country.
Take a moment and try in your mind and in your heart to calculate the enormity of the human suffering created by the failure of our government to rise to the challenge of this COVID crisis, a failure fed by their greed, self-interest and willful ignorance.
Try to imagine the hundreds of thousands dead, the millions among their immediate families and friends, the tens of millions who have lost their jobs or suffered economically, gone hungry, gone to bed wracked with anxiety about what tomorrow will bring.
Imagine if it was you and your family. Perhaps it has been. Then imagine another and another. When does your mind start to boggle. After how many deaths, how much loss, how much fear, how much apprehension and uncertainty?
So, we have a little holiday treat from @DeepStateRadio. Some of the liveliest conversations about politics & the world take place in the kitchen. So we thought we would try an experiment-listening to 2 very smart people talk about our crazy times while actually baking together.
The recipe is simple: Take one brilliant comedian known for letting the world know what she thinks, one former food writer for The NY Times & Newsweek who is also a baker and journalism professor, and let them dissect everything from Trump to the Kardashians.