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Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Down the Memory Hole

ImpeachmentAs I listen to the arguments against impeaching George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the whole lot of the contemptible bastards who have done so much damage over the past 6 years, I can’t help but consider what was said when they were considering impeaching Bill Clinton. Back then it was “no one is above the law”,  “we have to do it for the children”, and “we must restore dignity to the office of the presidency”. And that was all over a sexual impropriety.

And what do they say now, given a rogue president who lied us into a war that has claimed the lives of over 3,000 of our soldiers and who knows how many Iraqis? A president who has declared war on the middle class and done everything he can to empty the national treasury into the pockets of the uber-wealthy. A president who not only tolerates incompetence, but rewards it with the “Medal of Freedom”. A president who stands idly by while a great city in the United States is reduced to rubble.

What they say is “America couldn’t stand the stress of an impeachment proceeding” and besides which, there’s no way that it could happen, given the makeup of the Senate. And I have to shake my head in wonder — just how else do they think this man will be stopped? And if he isn’t stopped, how much more will we be able to stand of what he may do? Can we live with a nuclear strike on Iran? Can we withstand the escalating attacks on our freedoms? And since when did just because we might not be able to pull it off become a reason for not attempting to do the right thing?

The founding fathers put impeachment in the constitution for this very reason. They understood quite well that a president is just another human, and being human is subject to human weakness. They knew that sooner or later we would get a president who either explicitly or implicitly was a threat to the constitutional republic that they had founded. And that, when that happened, the only recourse would be to remove that person, to limit the damage that can be done to our nation by that person.

Now I ask you: in all honesty, have we ever had a time when impeachment of  a sitting president is more warranted and more necessary than it is today? And are we going to continue to bury our heads in the sand while this man brings our nation crashing down around us, depleting the treasury, damaging our reputation abroad, throwing our young soldiers’ lives away in a baseless war, and all the time spying on us as though we were the enemy and taking away our freedoms? We might not be able to bring an impeachment to a successful conclusion, but we owe it to the principles that or nation was founded upon and to the good opinion of future generations to at least try.

Tom Paine
Tom Paine
Systems Administrator for ASP for hospitals/med surg facilities. Politics mostly socialist/populist. Anti-corporate, pro working class. Student of history who fervently believes that "those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it".
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