What attentive readers know that the complicit corporatist media morons continually lie about is that we’re already in a “Constitutional Crisis” and have been for years.
In their deliberately limited characterization it consists merely of open and active Impeachment, which of course we should have, but the real crisis is the Institutional abandonment by both parties of Congressional power in favor of “it’s not my fault I’m passive and paralyzed, vote for me anyway because I’m the ‘lesser’ evil.”
Oh, but I’m still evil.
This has been going on for decades but became profoundly apparent after the attack on the World Trade Center which I’ll remind you didn’t kill quite so many people as Hurricane Maria did in Puerto Rico (part of the United States folks, just like Texas) through sheer government neglect.
But they weren’t bond traders and first responders who lived in Westchester, North New Jersey, the Connecticut Gold Coast, and Long Island that died suddenly and unexpectedly. No, they were ordinary shop keepers, farmers, and workers who died long lingering deaths because they had darker complexions and spoke Spanish. Call it racism? I live in Connecticut and I know it when I see it.
The United States dropped any pretense of civilization when the Congressional response was to hand the White House unfettered authority to wage aggressive war against countries that were not hostile (at least not especially or existentially so) and close their eyes while we brutally tortured and murdered their civilian populations.
Yeah, that was US, not the Nazis. Stars and Stripes not Swastikas.
THAT is the “Constitutional Crisis” that confronts the nation.
Robert Reich is not much better but he shows some glimmers of the truth.
The Constitutional Crisis is Now
Robert Reich
Sunday, June 10, 2018
I keep hearing that if Trump fires Mueller we’ll face a constitutional crisis.
Or if Mueller subpoenas Trump to testify and Trump defies the subpoena, it’s a constitutional crisis.
Or if Mueller comes up with substantial evidence that Trump is guilty of colluding with Russia or of obstructing justice but the House doesn’t move to impeach him, we’ll have a constitutional crisis.
I have news for you. We’re already in a constitutional crisis. For a year and a half the president of the United States has been carrying out a systemic attack on the institutions of our democracy.
A constitutional crisis does not occur suddenly like a coup that causes a government to collapse. It occurs gradually, as a system of government is slowly weakened.
The current crisis has been unfolding since the waning days of the 2016 campaign when Trump refused to say whether he’d be bound by the election results if Hillary won.
It continued through March 4, 2017 when Trump claimed, without evidence, that Obama had wiretapped his phones in the Trump Tower during the campaign.
It deepened in May 2017 when, by his own admission, Trump was thinking of “this Russia thing” when he decided to fire FBI Director James Comey, who had been leading the bureau’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, andthen admitted to Russian officials that firing Comey had relieved “great pressure” on him “because of Russia,” according to a document summarizing the meeting.
…
The crux of America’s current constitutional crisis is this: Our system of government was designed to constrain power, but Trump doesn’t want to be constrained.Our system was conceived as a means of promoting the public interest, but Trump wants to promote only his own interest.
Our system was organized to bind presidents to the Constitution, but Trump doesn’t want to be bound by anything.
The crisis will therefore worsen as long as Trump can get away with it. An unconstrained megalomaniac becomes only more maniacal. He will fill whatever political void exists with his unbridled ego.
The only legal way to constrain Trump is to vote for a Congress, this November, that will stand up to him. And then, in November 2020, vote him and his regime out of office.
If he refuses to accept the results of that election, as he threatened to do if he lost the 2016 election, he will have to be forcefully removed from office.
Friends, we are no longer trying to avert a constitutional crisis. We are living one. The question is how to stop it from destroying what’s left of our democracy.