I have read about and listened to commentary on McConnell’s proposed rules for the Senate impeachment trial beginning tomorrow. It is for me the final straw.
Perhaps I can provide some context with a tweet I posted after reading them. I wrote:
simply put - if you vote to deny admission of the evidence used to produce the articles of impeachment, you violated the oath to do fair and impartial justice- that should bring you up on (a) ethics charges in the Senate; and (b) possible criminal charges for lying to Congress
and as Glenn Kirschner tweeted (and I grabbed from someone I follow:
So I have a number of reactions/conclusions I will share beneath the fold
One of the characteristics of Fascism as developed in Mussolini’s Italy was using the power of the Government to benefit major corporations. We now know that Trump, who claimed he wanted to “drain the swamp” ( a ridiculous statement, because wetlands like swamps serve many useful purpose) wants to gut the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. We have seen that he wants to stop the use of science which often is opposed to what SOME corporations what.
If we look at Putin’s Russia we have seen political opponents charged criminally, as were people who raised issues of corruption and illegality on his part. Now look at attempting to criminally charge Comey and McCabe — that firing them both was insufficient, that they had to be discredited.
Also in Putin’s Russia — and in places like Erdogan’s Turkey, Orban’s Hungary, Dutarte’s Philippines, and to a lesser degree Modi’s India (think of his anti-Muslim approach) and Netanyahu’s Israel (where he is trying to get the law changed to exempt him from criminal charges already brought against him.
Add to this the distortions in the United States Senate that McConnell, himself quite possibly influenced by Putin’s Russia, and you have a clear indication of something beyond a mere flirtation with authoritarianism but something approaching the kinds of distortion seen not only in Mussolini’s Italy, but also more than hints of Hitler’s Germany.
Consider — Trump has mused aloud about staying in office more than 8 years.
Consider also that Trump has also mused about not doing any debates.
Consider that Trump has gotten the Republican party to start cancelling primaries to avoid having his claim of nearly universal Republican support being challenged by the results.
Add to this Trump’s willingness to foment violence — on religious and political grounds. Remember what happened in 1930s Germany.
Now add to this the following, and I will explain why I offer these thoughts. I want you to remember the emergency trip to the hospital. And note that since then Trump has shown indications of physical (balance problems, apparently dragging one leg somewhat) and mental (repeating statements, stumbling over words, needing large letters on notes to remind him what to say). I think that hospital trip was because Trump had a neurological problem, probably a transient ischemic attack, possibly even a full stroke. Note that he could have gotten to the hospital in time to receive the important critical treatment of tPA (tissue plasminogen activator ) which can stop and to a degree reverse the effects of a stroke.
Let me be clear. I had a stroke on December 18. I was given tPA about 80 minutes after the onset of the stroke. It is now more than one month after that stroke (and I had a TIA — a transient ischemic attack, a kind of mini stroke) about 65 hours later). Even with therapy I still have deficiencies, and realistically need at least 9 hours sleep to fully function. And while there may be genetic factors contributing to my stroke, the major contributor has been the high cholesterol diet I have enjoyed for decades. Donald Trump is less than a month younger than me, he is very overweight, and his diet is far less healthy than mine,
So let me put this together. We are dangerously close to slipping into an American version of fascism. The nominal leader of this is clearly paranoid about information which could come out, abetted in covering up by the Majority Leader of the US Senate. Contributing to this is a possible serious health issue which may have diminished his intellectual capacities.
It is a very scary time. I am as scared for my country — albeit in different way — as I was in late October 1962. For those of you whose memories don’t go back that far, that was the Cuban missile crisis, where as someone who lived a short way out of NYC I went to bed each night not knowing if I might be vaporized in a nuclear exchange before I would wake up the next morning.
Except this is happening in slow motion. But it is happening.
Sinclair Lewis wrote a book called It Can’t Happen Here. That title was wrong. It not only can. It is happening right now.
The question before us is what we can and should do. As of now I do not have an answer.
I am open to suggestions.