Not the country, not the majesty of the office, not the health of the Chief Executive’s business arrangements, not the Chief Executive’s narcissistic image of himself, not the beauty of his (third) wife, not the supremacy of his political party. None of these. What then?
Something called the Constitution.
Against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
These words are in the oaths solemnly sworn to by all incoming senators, representatives, judges, and other elected officials, including presidents. The words are taken from the Constitution itself.
Nowhere in that document there is any mention of a political party, much less of supporting such a body, but now in 2018, after 242 years of fairly successful government of, by, and for the people we find ourselves unexpectedly engaged in an attempt at new definitions. Instead of defending, supporting, protecting, and preserving the Constitution, we are now asked by the likes of Mr. Donald John Trumpf, Jr. of the moronically oversized signature to support and defend “the Republican Party” or just plain “Me”. “The government” has become “my administration”.
According to his recommendation, our future elected representatives, at whatever level, and our judges, elected or appointed, should be chosen on the basis of personal loyalty —loyalty to their major campaign donors. This approach has already been blessed by an increasing number of the very sitting judges and nominees whose job it will be to protect us from our domestic enemies. The only remaining visible defenders of our founding document are apparently the civil servants who work for such non-political organizations as the FBI, the CIA, the military services, and other unelected branches of the government — those labeled pejoratively by Mr.Trumpf as the “Deep State”.
In his view “deals” should replace treaties. Lies should replace news. “They love me” should replace “e pluribus unum”. The strong-man type of government we once overthrew in 1776 should be brought back, with The Donald now at the helm instead of George III.
So much for 242 years of constructive nation-building.
Unless…
Unless what? Unless the millions of unimpressed voters at the bottom of the heap now decide to sit up and pay attention. Trumpf’s unholy gang can only be dislodged by a full-scale revolt. The courts will be the hardest to fix, but none of the others will be easy. The revolt will have to be led by less-than-perfect white knights, since we don’t seem to have any perfect candidates. It will have to start with state- and even municipal-level beginners — I would guess mostly women — and fueled by doorbell ringing and indignation and street demonstrations and placards on sticks rather than by under-the-table funding. A certain level of amateur raucousness and anger will have to be considered an acceptable part of the battle plan. Maybe even a few cracked heads, as the entrenched forces become more desperate.
There is of course no guarantee that this will work, but can you think of anything better?
As a first step, I suggest contributions to your local insurgents. The current Mafia have amply demonstrated the power of money in politics. In these days of “seniority equals power” and revolving doors lead to seats on corporate boards many politicians are for sale. But together we, collectively, can easily raise enough to outweigh the Koch Brothers and all the conservative undercover K Street PACs combined.
We are at a conservative guess, 116 million strong (There are now 200 million registered voters nationwide, although only 166 million of us — 58% —actually took the trouble to vote in 2016). The Donald got 62,984,825 of those votes. That leaves 137 million people who did not vote for him, despite his problem of estimating crowd sizes, a substantial majority. If every one of those 137 million wrote a check for $7.30 tomorrow that would give us a war-chest of a billion dollars just for starters.
My recommendation would be to send it all to Pocahontas, who seems to me to be the most motivated and the most straight-arrow in sight. Her snail mail address is: Elizabeth for MA, P.O. Box 290568, Boston MA 02129. Using snail mail would have the added blessing of providing the Post Office Department, our only remaining publicly accessible channel for secure communication, which lost 2.7 billion last year, with 6.85 million in new revenue. Not salvation, but every little bit helps.
Or, if you are web addicted : <https//donate.elizabethwarren.com/page/contribute/web> will get you and your credit card to her web page. Let her decide how to pass it around where she figures it will do the most good.
Of course you won’t agree with everything she says, or does, but then with whom do you always agree except yourself?
And what have you got to lose? $7.30 seems a small price to pay for getting rid of these hijackers. How much did you spend on lunch yesterday? So skip that salad or that burger tomorrow and you can feel patriotic and proud of yourself.
Vance Weaver 