Tag: 25th Amendment

The Teachable Moment About Lying

By Michelle Naranjo

Last week, I overheard an 8-year old say to her parent, "Maybe I would vote for Trump because if I robbed a bank, I could probably lie and get away with it." The parent laughed, and exhaustedly sighed through another teachable moment.

We have persevered four years of this presidency, so it seems as if we should all be able to trudge through the final 12 days.

But we can't, and we shouldn't. 

This human-made disaster isn't about the personal indiscretions, the golf, the taxes, the children, or the fascination with dictators. 

It is about the lies. They added up until there was a tipping point that has caused a historic amount of damage. 

Inciting an insurrection with repeated and documented lies should have consequences. 

If the 25th Amendment is not brought forward immediately, then there should absolutely be an impeachment as soon as possible. 

But impeachment is just the start of the means to make the wrongdoer be held accountable. There should also be prosecution to return public trust and send a strong message to the treasonous supporters alike. 

Too many have turned a blind eye too often to Trump's treasonous acts during his presidency. It is almost as if some forgot their inalienable roles as inhabitants and allowed themselves to become viewers to be bought and sold. Too many found the manipulations and bungles...funny. 

The supporters of the inciter should also be held accountable, in whatever shape that might take. Historian Timothy Snyder recently wrote, "Politicians who do not tell the simple truth perpetuate the big lie, further an alternative reality, support conspiracy theories, weaken democracy, and foment violence far worse than that of January 6, 2021."

From the eight senators and 139 representatives who consciously chose to support the lies against democracy to those who claimed that believing was more important than their fellow citizens, violence and destruction is not an acceptable tactic to change the minds of non-believers.

 The chasm in the culture of this country is repairable but is so very fragile right now. 

Democracy is showing us a teachable moment. It is exhausting; it is not amusing. 

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Natasha Romanoff Is My Girlfriend. Everybody Says So.

By Stephen Macaulay

Amendment XXV, Section 4.  “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”

As rioters attacked the Capitol, Donald Trump put up a video on Twitter—a tweet that carries a label “This claim of election fraud is disputed, and this Tweet can’t be replied to, Retweeted, or liked due to a risk of violence” — read that again and let it sink in and realize that this is a message from the President of the United States.

He claimed he’d won the election by a landslide. That the election has been stolen from him. That “There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us—from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election. …”

Oh, and he said that the people that he loved should go home.

In the weeks following the election, neither he nor his supporters have presented any certifiable proof of any fraud. Any landslide. Any malfeasance that would lead to a change of the election results.

Yet he repeats it. Over and over. Nothing tangible. Nothing real.

There is what is generally accepted to be reality. Then there is something that is pure fantasy. Most people can discern the difference.

Not even the most rabid Marvel fanboy believes that he’s ever going to date the Black Widow. But if someone kept repeating that he was going to be dating Natasha Romanoff, would someone take him aside and suggest that that isn’t ever going to happen? That he should move on?

And if that fanboy kept repeating it, perhaps saying things like “They are keeping her from me,” wouldn’t it seem that that person is more than a bit off?

Would you allow that person to have the nuclear codes?

There is reality. Things break. Things can’t readily be put back together.

Have we not gotten to the point where people who are allegedly responsible step up and do their sworn duty to preserve and protect the United States?

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Trump Must Resign

By Bryan Williams

Since the release of the smart phone upon the world in the latter half of the first decade of the 21st Century, our collective societal will to have patience has been nearly eliminated. These Internet connected devices have allowed for instantaneous communication, instantaneous transfer of money across the world, and food delivered to our door within an hour. Our political and governmental machinations have not caught up. They are still painstakingly slow. That it takes two and half months between a presidential election and the inauguration of the next president is enough to make us tear our hair out (and have enough time to order a wig on Amazon to be delivered within two days).

Let me be clear: Any admiration I had for President Trump is now gone. He must go. But how? It is agonizing to think he has (as of my writing this) 291 hours left in his presidency before Joe Biden is sworn in. How do we wait that long?

Many have said Vice President Pence and the Cabinet should invoke the 25th Amendment. Cabinet secretaries are dropping like flies with resignations over Wednesday's chaos, so soon there may not even be enough of a Cabinet left to invoke the 25th. But even if there were, in my opinion, this would be the wrong course of action. The 25th Amendment is to be used when the president is physically or mentally incapacitated. Working in the mental health field as I do, I can tell you it would be a stretch to declare Trump mentally incapacitated. Trump is mentally capable of doing many things. He is of sound mind. The problem is, he just won't do what is right. We should not degrade the 25th Amendment even though it would be tempting to do so, and I believe, could be up to legal challenge in this case.

How about impeachment by Congress? This is most attractive and should be undertaken even if there is not enough time considering how slow this process is. At the very least Congress should censure Trump.

What should happen is for Trump to resign and let Pence be our President for the balance of the remaining 291 hours. But we all know he won't. Trump is going to ride this horse until its time is up on January 20th at 11:59AM EST.

So the rest of us here in America have to be adults and have a little patience - 291 hours isn't so bad, is it?

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Words Do Not Equal Violence

By Andrew Boyd

When my now wife and I were early in our dating relationship, some 25 years ago, she took a position as a “scab” at the Detroit News in the midst of a writers’ strike. I recall listening to a local NPR affiliate interview with the union’s leading spokesperson, who justified physical violence as a response to verbal violence, and I thought “no.”

The next morning, I was dropping my wife off at the curb and as she sought to navigate the picket lines, same said person put a megaphone to her ear and yelled a series of pejoratives. A minute or so later, people were pulling the two of us apart. Wait, did I just expose my hypocrisy? Yes, although one might argue the proximity of the megaphone threatened real physical damage. I’m not perfect, and I failed to live to my own standards, not for the first or last time. 

Silence isn’t violence. Words aren’t violence. Violence is violence, and those who commit it are due their punishment. Left, right, center.

British psychologist Havelock Ellis observed that all civilization has, from time to time, become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution. We’ve been taking a pickax to that crust for the better part of two decades, and there are more fingerprints on that tool than we can reasonably name in this column. 

Politics is blood sport, and it has a way of bringing out the worst in people on the margins socially, emotionally and ideologically. We saw that in full measure this past summer, and again, to a much lesser degree, yesterday. In neither case would I lay the responsibility legally at the feet of anyone whose rhetoric may have played a role. We can’t equate speech with physical violence. It’s not right on principle, and on the basis of that argument, I cannot support the notion of impeachment or invocation of the 25th Amendment.

Here we are talking about the difference between legal and moral obligations, a critical important distinction. Are Trump’s fingerprints on that pickax? Yes. So, too, Hillary with her “deplorables” invective, and Maxine Waters, and media who run cover for BLM and Antifa activist rioters, and popular voices on both sides of the aisle.

I’m not happy with Trump. Indeed, I’m deeply, deeply disappointed. His narcissism would seem to know no bounds. He shirks all responsibility for the power and purpose of his words. Managerially and ideologically, I’ll still take him six days a week and twice on Sunday over the likes of Joe Biden, but it’s fair to wonder about the net gains or losses for the Republican Party over time.  

Trump bears no small moral stain, but none that rises to the level of legal or constitutional action, IMHO. I feel bad for Pence, though. That guy has probably endured assaults to his character that would lay low a lesser man, like me. He didn’t deserve the opprobrium leveled at him by DJT in this refusal to take extra-constitutional action. Perhaps he’ll arise as the new voice of a more principled conservative movement that stands stalwart in the face of the morally bankrupt swamp.   

In the meantime, please, everyone, talk and act with care, and imagine that the person with whom you disagree, even vehemently, may not in fact be your enemy.  

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