Trump found guilty of insurrection by majority of Senators
Let the record show – and history books not forget – that on February 13, 2021 57% of U.S. Senators voted to charge Donald Trump, ex-President of the United States with insurrection and enticing his followers to attack the Capital. This is the first time in American History that a sitting President has been complicit in an attack on another branch of the Federal Government.
And, lest we forget, he has yet to concede that he lost the elections. He continues to be a clear and present danger to American democracy, the U.S. Constitution, and basic human decency. He is also arguably a traitor. He is definitively a criminal – as hopefully courts will prove someday soon.
Many of his followers are saying we must move on. Move on? Nope. No justice, no peace.
But, I get it. “Moving on” is the American way – particularly when it is convenient to maintain the status quo, when it is convenient to not upset the consumer economy, or when it is convenient to appease that segment of Americans who are blatantly scared of the inevitability of the demographic future of America – that is, browner and blacker.
Yet we keep paying the price of this ‘moving on’.
- We never resolved the basic tenet of the evil of slavery after the Civil War; and we are still paying dearly for that inaction.
- We opted to whitewash the Spanish flu pandemic, moving on to the roaring 20s and never giving it due importance in history books; and we are now paying the price by totally fumbling our response to Covid.
- We have never faced the embedded abuses of the immigrant labor force, the quasi-slave labor of prisonerS, or the massive and ever-increasing wealth gap; and the day of reckoning of these inequities is now upon us.
“Moving on” from the events that led to January 6, 2021 – and “moving on” from holding President Trump accountable – will simply fester the gross underbelly of racism and the warped interpretation of Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism. The “American First” movement re-ignited by Donald Trump has given the license to White Supremacist, outrages conspiracy theorist, and subtle racists to pursue their destructive ideologies as if they were legitimate American ideals.
It is one thing to acknowledge that the U.S. has always had a critical mass of its population committed to non-democratic ideals. It is one thing to acknowledge that the U.S. has always had a critical mass of its population willing to accept authoritarianism as a means to quiet opposition – even if it is a majority. It is another thing to give these anti-democratic values the space to fester and grow without challenging them in the court of law – and through legislative means.
Tumpism may very well outlive Trump. Actually, Trumpism existed long before Trump. He simply legitimized it and gave it a face – his face. How Trumpism will evolve in the months to come, the damage it will do to the American psyche – and potentially to the safety of the American people – is unknown.
Only time will tell. And: Those of us that care about such things – those of us that believe in the core goodness of “most of us” living in the U.S., and those of us that find it necessary to remain engaged in the civic spaces – will continue working to squelch Trumpism, not only to “move on”.
No justice, no peace.