When Trump ran for the GOP nomination in 2016, the signs of Russian influence and involvement were everywhere. I try to keep an open mind, look at facts and not jump to conclusions, but it now appears that not only was Putin's government involved in helping Trump get elected to the Presidency, it was also involved in suppressing information about its involvement and some of that suppression occurred within the intelligence branches tasked with the responsibility of preventing it. The FBI agent who was heading up the investigation of the link between Trump and Russia and who declared that there was no evidence of any such link was just arrested for secret connections to Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch who was named in those links.
The Intelligencer: So Much Evidence of Trump's Collusion with Russia
That raises a reasonable question. Shouldn't this arrest and discovery of the agent's connection to Russia's most influential and powerful oligarch raise some red flags and direct attention back to Trump's collusion? Isn't that evidence to add to the pile already gathered as proof of Trump's intentions to overthrow the government of the United States by insurrection? My answer to both of those questions is yes, but that's because I'm a patriotic American who sees that there is real danger for American democracy, and the individual rights that it protects, in the conspiracy theories, lies, election denialism and everything else related to the far right extremism I call Trumpism. It's also yes because this isn't rocket science and it doesn't take a Harvard education to see this and figure it out.
Constitutional Processes Take Time and Patience and Constitutional Government Requires an Educated and Well-informed Electorate
It was incredibly frustrating to watch all of the evidence of Trump's collusion with Russian oligarchs and intelligence essentially get filed away in the archives with absolutely zero results. It should not be possible for a sitting President to interfere with an investigation into his corruption, and in this case, his potential sedition and treason. And I'm using that word, even though I know the exact definition of it might not fit, because he was trying to sell out this country's idealism, values, government and individual freedom for his own profit. No government is perfect, and our founders, building a constitutional democracy at least in part on trust, didn't envision the extremes someone might go to in an attempt at overthrow.
The ballot box is a powerful tool for expressing the will of the people, but in our system, the thresholds for removal of bad, corrupt politicians are deliberately high, the times between election cycles long enough for the power invested in government to be corrupted. It was frustrating to watch as the Attorney General, a man who was obviously convinced of Trump's corruption and more or less confessed that conviction during the days following the Trump Insurrection, lied through his teeth about the evidence in the Mueller Report. They got away with it, at least, until the voters went to the polls in 2020. It wasn't the kind of smackdown that should have happened after a Presidential administration that did everything it could, including appointing judges to the federal bench with loyalty as a quid pro quo, to subvert American democracy.
The ballot box has to be supported by a well-informed electorate. Clearly, this is a serious weakness in the United States in this century, as bad as it has ever been at any point in our history. The 2022 mid-term elections, which also did not produce the kind of patriotic smackdown that should have happened after January 6th, did, at least, send a signal that a majority of Americans are at least partially aware of the threat to this country posed by election deniers, conspiracy theorists and Trumpies of other stripes, including the fabulously wealthy who only care about themselves and their money.
But, it is still an appalling, depressing fact that ignorance is capable of electing members to the House of Representatives, the Senate, the state executive branches and legislatures, and just about everywhere else. People with no conscience, low morals and no real education are somehow able to convince a majority of voters in a district, gerrymandered yes but still, a segment of the population, that they are capable of representing them in government. That's a testimony to just how much of our population is not educated enough to produce an informed and intelligent enough electorate to maintain a democracy. Ignorance and bigotry, immorality and self-interest affect the decisions of many voters and they elect people who reflect their ignorance, not people who are capable of critical thought and community leadership.
In short, they elect people who, like themselves, are intolerant of other people's rights and freedoms, who think their life is worth more than someone else's, especially if there is a difference in thinking or lifestyle, and who have no understanding of the fact that their individual rights depend on everyone else's freedom. Believing in Jewish space lasers, in massive, conspiratorial child trafficking and abuse because of one's political affiliation, or that an election auditing team has a camera that can detect bamboo fibers in ballots imported from China is stupid. And being stupid should disqualify anyone who wants to serve in government. Unfortunately, stupidity is protected free speech.
Yeah, I Get It
The only thing in this country that seems to move slower than election cycles is the wheels of justice. It is absolutely unfathomable to me that Trump got away with collusion with Russian oligarchs and government intelligence. Maybe there are those in Washington who are more outraged about that than their careless shrugs over it would indicate. On the other hand, I'm afraid that the opportunity to recover from the damage that has been done, and put a complete stop to this insanity, is slipping away. Is it? Please show me some evidence that it is not.
I realize that any case brought into the court system has to be iron clad and secure in order not to be a political disaster. I also realize that it is not possible to protect constitutional freedoms by abridging constitutional freedoms. I trust the Biden Administration to do the right thing. I wish a solid majority of voters everywhere would support candidates like Eric Swalwell, Pramila Jayapal, AOC, Ro Khanna, Rafael Warnock, Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar, among others.
I'm a patriot, an American who has a realistic appreciation of our history, sees our country as a work in progress and a real hope for the rest of the world, as long as we are democratic and free. A quick check of loyalty and commitment to democracy can be done by measuring the enthusiasm and level of support of politicians in Congress for aid to Ukraine, which represents one of the most significant potential advancements of democracy in modern history. The voting record on that will tell all, and Trump's bribery and corrupt dealings with the pro-Russian and corrupt former president of that country tells us everything we need to know.
I no longer take for granted, or assume, that because we've always had this, it will somehow manage to survive. We have to fight for it by doing all that we can. The extremist's lies and conspiracy theories are laughably ridiculous, but that's what makes them dangerous. They're not just bad jokes, they are ideas that some people, who don't know better, think are true. Our best weapon is to vote, and next to that, we need to speak up and speak out, challenging every lie and every theory with hard, cold facts.
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