Yes, Democracy died Tuesday night.
The vote was along party lines.
The Founding Fathers’ formula for keeping American democracy running, strong, and independently, requires a Senate where differences are sorted out civilly, that works by consensus.
That has been repeatedly shattered by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, a fellow who will be remembered far less fondly than Benedict Arnold, when historians review the demise of the republic formed as the United States of America.
Rome took thousands of years to devolve to a hopeless level of dysfunctional corruption. Our experiment with democracy won’t see three centuries. Why?
Precedent.
The Constitution is a broad framework. Bold on concept. Light on policy to execute that concept. It has generally served the founding document of the Republic well, because the men, women, and LGBTQ people, who have served the government of that nation, have understood the importance of their roles, and the fragility of Democracy.
American democracy is only as strong as each generation who defends it.
McConnell is a vile man, but not a stupid one.
He has been around the Senate long enough to understand precedent. If you do something, in an area of Senate purview, that establishes a way of doing things, that becomes the precedent for future circumstances.
All mechanisms for running the senate, from the filibuster, to what to do in the rare case of an impeachment trial, hinge on precedent.
He has to know, then, that any impeachment proceeding is not about the individual president, or member of Congress, or cabinet official.
If you effectively make Donald John Trump immune from prosecution, you make every other future president, Democrat, or Republican, so immune.
McConnell also understands power.
If the Senate, under his leadership, abrogates its constitutionally-mandated power over the Executive Branch, that will be for all time.
Why would he, and his conservative senators, marching in blind lockstep behind him, backstop Donald John Trump?
It’s not about Trump. He’s expendable.
I’m fairly sure, like most Republican politicians, off-the-record, that McConnell personally despises Trump.
Unlike George W. Bush, who also was a simpleton, but was easily controlled by his handler, Dick Cheney, and played the role of President with an attempt at gravitas, Trump is a bull running amok in the constitutional china shop.
Which causes the media, and many Americans to ask:
WHY?
It’s about money, always. More importantly, it’s about tribe.
Tribe, and the sins committed in its name, not Trump, is why Republicans march in zombified lockstep.
It’s something that Russia has always understood, and exploited. As I write, Putin’s pimps, and pawns, are using it to take command of Northern Hemisphere nations soaked in the mythos of White Power.
That control has been a part of Eurocentric cultures since their founding. I wrote about the death throes of this white power for Huffington Post, back in 2016.
I was terribly wrong.
The Russians have grafted on to this cancer on the body politic. They’ve poured gasoline on it.
The reason that Republicans have a hard time disavowing Russian hacking, praise Putin, and protect the Manchurian Moron in the White House?
Conservative white America and Russia have more in common than you’d think.
The Russians, and a handful of old white billionaires, have forged links between their toxic followers. The bridge is white power, and the ultra-nationalism, and fascism, being branded as “populism.”
Some of the most rabid anti-Russian, anti-communists, have joined ranks with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which has become the global standard bearer in faux-Christian xenophobia, homophobia, and the gospel of white power. Russia controls, through its relationships with the Christian Right’s leaders in North America, like Franklin Graham. The Christian right sees Putin’s white purity, homophobic, anti-abortion stances as in-line with their own. Their sense of tribe blends well with the Russian model of white Christian purity.
The Russians have been co-opting our Republican politicians for a long time. Late last year, more obvious evidence, like donations from Russian oligarch Igor Fruman, and a Russian investment fund, to the Senator Rick Scott, and Governor Ron Desantis campaigns, reinforced that the Russians put their money in a wide range of Republican politicians.
It would be overly simplistic to say that Putin has amassed a network whose tentacles reach into Brexit, Trump, etc. purely to stroke his own vainglorious ego.
Power is always about money.
Just as Republicans march in lockstep on social issues, the reason that they are such huge Global Warming climate deniers, as I documented a few years ago, for Huffington Post, is because there are over $132 TRILLION dollars worth of oil reserves held largely by two nations:
Russia, and Saudi Arabia.
Two nations foment the majority of global disruptions, and distractions, in the world’s democracies:
Russia, and Saudi Arabia.
In the Republican Party, the orbital pull of these titan cash cows has been that the Neocons have traditionally lined up with the House of Saud, and the “Tea Party/Freedom Caucus/Trump Train” strain has its roots in the permafrosted soil of Mother Russia.
Putin’s kleptocrats and oligarchs, have been funneling money into American politics for decades. Leading up to their election meddling, it made a hard right turn in 2014-2015.
That’s not a random time. Putin had invaded Crimea. Obama had responded with harsh sanctions on Russian oil. The world’s democracies followed suit.
Threatening the one lifeblood of the Russian economy, Putin declared war on his enemies in the West.
Think the clown show of Republican candidates in 2015-2016. Trump was not the only candidate with Russian money ties.
Think Brexit. The ultra-nationalist movements in Germany, Sweden, etc.
There is no need for bombs, and sabre-rattling, when you can simply exploit cultural weaknesses: Forge relationships between politically active religious, and political groups; buy off politicians. That became far easier, post Citizens United, when most of the massive corporate donations, and slush-fund 501(c)(4) donations, became legal.
This is the WHY of the death of Democracies.
This is why American whites have more in common with Vladimir Putin. He is going to protect them from Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and sinking into “minority white,” life.
This is why the toxic 39% of America marches in lockstep with Putin, and his American politicians.
It is a cancer for which the Democrats have no cure.
Mitch McConnell doesn’t fear establishing a precedent that makes Donald John Trump, effectively, “king.”
Republican lobbyist and zombie grower Grover “Tax Pledge” Norquist talked openly about creating a “rubber stamp presidency.”
The Far Right has been quietly taking over the courts, and gerrymandering its way into control of both the federal and state governments.
This is the new American order. This is the new World order, in the Northern Hemisphere, at least.
These, then, are the titanic stakes of this impeachment trial, to remove Trump: If Trump is not convicted, the democracy we thought that we lived in is dead.
If the Senate will not defend us, we are done.
All hail Putin, the great white hope.
Welcome to the kleptocracy that is Russo-America.