In a Hole? Stop Digging!
Ted Folkert
January 17, 2017
For the news media and for the comedians of the world, Donald Trump is a gift that just keeps on giving. All the news programs, talk shows, comedy routines, and interviews are dominated by discussions of the actions, inactions, and comments of his majesty, the Donald. He has upset the order of public communication. He has insulted many news persons or organizations with rude, childish comments and denigrations. His defensive and defamatory twitter episodes have become predictable. They follow any comment about his majesty which he finds critical or derogatory.
No one can compete with the things trump excels at: untruthfulness, exaggeration, vengefulness, slander, and braggadocio. These may well be prerogatives, maybe the five keys to success, in the business world of the Donald and his co-conspirators. He is the kind of guy who tells a lie and then starts believing it himself. Once he says it, it becomes true because he said it, so everyone is expected to believe it.
He thinks Putin likes him, not because Putin thinks he can use him in his criminality, but because he is brilliant, reasonable and understanding. That’s kind of like thinking that Al Capone likes you, not because you kill people when he tells you to, but because he thinks you are so much fun to be around.
Trump wants to violate a constitutional ban on anyone who holds governmental office from standing to gain financially from involvement with a foreign country. He wants to violate the ban on appointing any relative to a position in his administration. That is called nepotism and has been illegal since the law was enacted in 1973 after JFK appointed his brother Robert to be attorney general. Trump didn’t even know what the word nepotism meant until he found out it describes what he intends to do.
Trump has a staff of lawyers seeking loopholes in the laws that he chooses to break which will allow him to ignore them without being impeached. And I would imagine we will be paying this staff of lawyers in one way or another, by hook or by crook, as they say. He’s a smart guy. We know. He keeps telling us he is.
So, with his right-wing political appointees and his platform of “tax the poor and pay the rich,” the picture seems bleak for the common good. It seems that while we were digging for economic benefits, equality of opportunity and tough talk about immigration, we dug ourselves into a hole.
So, how do we defend ourselves from this eminent threat to our quality of life? How do we get out of this hole?
Two possibilities: Impeachment and removal from office for malfeasance, a real long shot, or – regaining control of the House and Senate.
There seems to be a solid basis evolving here for an immediate movement toward impeachment. The grounds are multifaceted: violation of the anti-nepotism law, violation of the ban on standing to realize personal gain from business ventures with foreign governments, encouragement of a foreign government to hack emails of a US citizen, encouragement of a foreign government to interfere with an election in the US, suggesting assassination of one’s opponent by your supporters upon your defeat, and the list will go on as we progress into his administration. We can count on that. He can’t help himself. He is totally absorbed with his enormous power, which provides incessant nourishment for his incurable egotism.
Of course, the Republican congress is not likely to pursue impeachment, so, assuming irresponsibility on their part, the only alternative to regain control of our government would be at the ballot box in two years. If such an action becomes apparent, the duly elected congressional members may very well reconsider their actions since it could cost them their lucrative positions. The lucrative benefits they realize from the public treasury, which they have so benevolently bestowed upon themselves, would be hard to match in the world you and I live in. I am sure these chosen ones think about that every day when they wake up.
George W. Shrub (where is Molly Ivins when we need her) had a Republican Congress for six years but the planned attack on the livelihood of the working class was not so well defined then, hence no great uprising of the electorate. This time may be different. Bush came from a long line of clever politicians. Trump came from wealth. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, as my mother would have said. When he got in trouble his daddy bailed him out. He is a spoiled brat who is intolerant with not having things his way. And that is what he has planned for the country, his way, the path to greater riches for he and his kind.
We need a plan too. Our plan must be impeachment or, lacking that possibility, changing control of the House and Senate in two years. And perhaps the thought of that will engender some reluctance on Congress to follow their purportedly treacherous leader.
It looks like we have dug ourselves into a hole. Someone smarter than Trump told me one time that “If you are in a hole and you want out, the first thing to do is stop digging.” So, let’s stop digging and start climbing out of this hole in which we now reside.
Think about it!