Mein Trumpf: Time to Impeach!

An Editorial on the Glaringly Obvious

What happened to our America? The nation of immigrants, the city on a hill, the refuge for the “tired, poor, huddled masses”? The golden door is now a wall, and behind that wall stands a burgeoning tyrant. Will one privileged, white, son of immigrants reverse decades of civil and moral progress with a thousand vitriolic tweets? It seems as if things are moving in that direction. As his campaign ramps up, The President’s rallies are beginning to resemble something we left in our past. This is not fiction, this is not an exaggeration, this is what happens when history repeats itself and we are bystanders to a truly hideous transformation. Research has shown a jump in hate crimes and violent acts committed since the 2016 election, and make no mistake in the correlation to the rhetoric spoken from our leader’s mouth and proximity of acts committed.

This is what Donald Trump wanted, and this is what he engineered; the entire world has become audience to his reality show. Except instead of The Apprentice, a more apt title would be a reference to Machiavelli: The Prince. All the while the American people sit by and watch in horrified bemusement as the underlying morals of our society switch poles. Even worse, some are swept up by the nationalist fervor of Trump’s rallies. Arenas of dominantly Caucasian audiences chanting “lock her up”, “send them back” and “build the wall”. My generation wasn’t around last time this happened, but many of our parents’ were. It’s not a coincidence that it is too easy to compare presidential rallies with the sinister specter of Nazi Germany’s rallies. And to deny the fact that they are becoming increasingly more similar is to ignore the truth about the hatred espoused by the current administration.

Outside of the fact that he has managed to get thousands of American citizens to chant things that would have gotten them placed in detention in grade school, he has effectively brought racism, sexism and bigotry back into mainstream consciousness. Not unlike rolling the clock back to pre-fifties society, one fears that we’ll soon be drinking from segregated fountains and having to take different seats in public transportation again. And you want camps? We have camps, something this country hasn’t seen since the 1940’s and World War II. How far will this go? What comes after the wall is finished? Building-sized ovens? More importantly, is anything going to be done? The country’s democratic leadership is apparently facing a paralysis of social morality and leadership. House Leader Nancy Pelosi has done little to rebuke the abhorrent behavior of the President while Al Green, a black representative, can clearly see through the veil of democracy that Trump has scarcely bothered to maintain. Green’s recent proposal for impeachment is his second during the President’s first term in office and hopefully not his last.

Donald Trump has violated his oath of office:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Not only by directly meddling in the Muller investigation, or encouraging foreign intervention in future elections, but by accusing political opponents of treason instead. This is the exact reason that the Legislative Branch exists, to balance the will of an unguarded tyrant. Additionally, the President has attacked some of these representatives wrongly, accusing them of foreign origins when they are clearly not. That has been his rallying cry from the start, by supporting the ‘birther’ myth and persisting with racist rhetoric while failing to condemn actual racism.

Perhaps America deserves to die this way, frightened and amused to death. The victims of their own ignorance. Unknowing of the rights granted them by the documents that founded the country. I prefer to believe that the type of hope and passion that have always pushed us to become what the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States of America made possible still exists. We are a country that was born from slavery to eventually abolish it at great cost. One that exemplified the empowerment of the weak and disenfranchised. One that was created by foreign citizens. That helped fight and win two world wars against forces that would have reigned with darkness. We are better than this, we are better than this immigrant’s son who has proclaimed himself king. If our leaders won’t do it, we must convince them to do so, or do it ourselves.

Impeach.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.