Have We Had Enough of This? Then What Will We Do About It?

Let's start this discussion with a question about our current political situation.  Have we had enough of Trump's abuse and misuse of the power of the Presidency, profiteering off the power of the office, using its power to take revenge on his enemies and making an alliance with a group intent on turning the country into a theocratic autocracy in which he benefits as dictator?  

Beecause that's what's happening in the United States right now.  

Let me ask another question.  This is a constitutional democracy, where popular sovereignty is the primary principle of government, the consent of the governed, the "will of the people."  Is what Trump has to offer what the people want?  And how did we get to that point, if the answer to that question is yes?  

But The Answer to That Question is "NO!" 

This is not what the people of this country want.  Oh, there may be a minority of those who have been brainwashed to think that the kind of populist rhetoric Trump spouts is true, but they are a very small minority.  They have the right to isolate themselves in their own world, but not to impose this view on anyone else.  

Part of the problem is that the percentage of adults who are eligible to make their voice heard in government are too apathetic to do so.  There are too many Americans eligible to vote who are far too dismissive, because they are largely ignorant and misinformed, and perhaps too lazy to figure things out on their own.  Elections have consequences, and the apathetic attitude many Americans display toward getting involved by casting a ballot is one of the reasons we are at this point in our history.  

Ignorance is a huge enemy of democracy.  People get so caught up in their own interests that they have paid little attention to how their government works.  They don't know anything about it, so they don't participate in the process, or they are easily led by the loudest and most shrill voices into believing lies.  A strong public education system has proven to be the key to sustaining democracy, not only in the United States but in other parts of the world.  The quality of our education system, from years of being starved for support and funding because it doesn't make profit, is now showing itself in the dissolution of American Constitutional Democracy.  

There are a lot of people too biased to read the words in that paragraph, and be honest about it, and they will quit reading here.  They are part of the problem, not the solution to it. 

Does The Collective Will Exist to Put a Stop to This Madness? 

We will find out.  We've let a racist demagogue, with the blueprint for a bigoted religious takeover of the government from a wealthy, active, high placed organization, the Heritage Foundation, run amok without putting any constitutional restraints on him.  The courts are nullifying his executive orders, and ruling against some of his interpretations, or lack thereof, of the Constitution.  But as far as stopping anything Trump is doing, well, what should have been happening by now, with a President this incompetent, demented and bent on personal revenge, is not happening.  

It's not like it wasn't anticipated.  We had him in office before, and how, in the name of all that is patriotic and American we did not convince a majority of the electorate to permanently send him packing is beyond me.  We know how he's been enabled.  It's the Supreme Court.  Infected by a very bad dose of partisan politics, the court's ruling on Citizens United opened the door allowing billionaires to buy the government by influencing elections with money and undermining our free press.  That's in the Project 2025 plan, by the way, getting control of the courts to prevent rulings that go against their will.  

Then, the court handed him a blank check, making the President immune from criminal prosecution while he is in office, conditioned on whether the crime he may have committed was within the scope of his duty.  They'd never let something like that get in their way of ruling in his favor.  

Democrats could have stopped this, but maybe the collective will didn't exist, or there wasn't enough foresight to see where a second Trump Presidency would lead and how to prevent that from happening. It would have required breaking the filibuster in order to amend the judiciary act in a way that would allow President Biden the ability to fill five additional seats on the court in order to neutralize the conservative majority that was, in part, stolen from them.  So this would just be stealing back. 

But the old school senate leadership wouldn't do it.  Biden, who should have been just a little bolder and more visionary that he turned out to be as President, let it go.  A packed, more liberal court could have overturned Citizens United, restored parts of the voting rights act that the court nullified, saved Roe, overturned that ridiculous immunity ruling, and any of the liberal justices could have expidited the proceedings in Trump's insurrection and document theft trials, giving Jack Smith a clear path to prosecution and conviction, and Trump a path to prison.  

But it was not to be.  I said, and it can be checked in the record here, when Trump was first accused of these crimes upon leaving the White House that the guts did not exist anywhere to actually prosecute him, and I was right.  Even when others were celebrating the indictments, over 90 of them at one point, I didn't let myself believe he would ever see the inside of a court room for anything that mattered much.  That sort of thing does not happen to people like Donald Trump in this country.  We resist it as if it is second nature.  

He Needs to be Removed From Office

Frankly, I don't think this country will benefit much from the remnants of a Trump administration.  But it will be a lot better off than it us with him still in power.  And it will take the collective will of the nation to get him out, because the Constitutional provisions for doing so look impossible at the moment.  Reality can change things, and sometimes it has to come crashing down for people to think realistically.  

But here's the bottom line.  If we have had enough of this, and it appears that every day that passes adds thousands more to that list of people who have, reality will make the system work, and we will find a legitimate, legal way to get this demagogue out of the White House.