Yet Another Refugee from Livejournal

Now he's gone and done it.  Donald Trump has declared that a decades-old situation at the US - Mexican border has suddenly become a "national emergency."  He thinks that, having done so, he can now spend money on a "big, beautiful wall": money that Congress has, just now, refused to appropriate.

I don't think so, and I'm not alone.  The media have published various pieces on ways that he could be prevented from doing this.  One of those is Answers to 4 Key Questions About Trump’s Declaration of an Emergency, by Nicholas Fandos, published yesterday in The New York Times.

From the second paragraph of that story: "Lawmakers seeking to block the president have two paths — one in Congress, the other in the courts."  It becomes clear, a little further down, that the path "in Congress" that he has in mind is this: "Under the National Emergencies Act, the House and the Senate can take up what is called a joint resolution of termination to end the emergency status ...."

Well, yeah, they can do that.  What surprisingly few people have mentioned, so far, is that there's something else, something more decisive, that they can do.  That something is called impeachment.

I have posted a comment on that Times story.  The full text of my comment reads as follows:

From the story: "Lawmakers seeking to block the president have two paths ...."

That is not correct.  There is a third option, and it is the one that I recommend.

The House of Representatives can vote to impeach the president, and the Senate can remove him from office.

This so-called "state of emergency" is utterly unlike any declared before.  Let's call it what it is: an attempt to overthrow the Constitution.

As such, it is fully sufficient, even without the other high crimes and misdemeanors of which we know or suspect, to justify removing him from office.

And there is no need for committee hearings.  The House, at least, could have its floor vote today.

President Trump has proven me wrong about something.  I never thought I'd see the day when he did something that was memorable for its originality.

But he has!  He has created a highly innovative, and quite effective, method of terrorism.

Think about it.  The people of this country have been attacked with bombs, with guns, and with crashing airplanes.  But it took the genius of Donald Trump to realize that you could bring the United States of America to its knees by committing political suicide.

Just a few things to clarify, in relation to the last post (the one with the subject line, "Pity our underprivileged president ...").

Do I really think we should pity him, or consider him "underprivileged"?  Absolutely.  If you could choose, wouldn't you prefer being mentally privileged, rather than financially so?

What do I mean by "we should fire [him]"?  I mean that the House of Representatives should impeach him, and the Senate should remove him from office.

I've written, in this journal, on the subject of impeachment before.  I made myself sound dubious on the subject.  But I never really said we shouldn't impeach him; only that the time didn't seem right to put energy into promoting the idea.

I think that has changed.  Don't you?

Specifically, I am now prepared to say that it's time to begin impeachment proceedings.

Why?  Well, I won't pretend that a Democratic majority in the House is totally irrelevant to my coming to this conclusion.  But it's not really the reason for it.

Then what is?  I won't attempt a comprehensive, general answer to this (not here and now, at least).  For one thing, new facts have come to light.  Also, other contributors to the public debate have, in the interim, come to the same change in, or clarification of, their positions; I generally agree with their reasoning.

There's really only one [more?] substantive point that I want to make, here, and even that one will be somewhat abbreviated.  I just want to take a shot at answering this question: how can I say that it's time to get to work on firing the poor bastard, when in just the last post, I said that we need to emphasize Donald Trump's incompetence more, and his evil nature less?

Now, why is that even a question?  Because the Constitution has that infamous phrase: a president (or other official) may be impeached for (and, apparently, only for) "high crimes and misdemeanors."

There is nothing like consensus on what, exactly, that phrase means.  Indeed, there may simply be no answer as to exactly what it means.  There does, in my reading, seem to be something close to a consensus on one thing that it doesn't mean: the most respected scholars on the subject seem to agree that an "impeachable offense" is not, always and necessarily, a crime in the penal-code sense.

And yet, and yet.  Those words, "high crimes and misdemeanors," continue to bedevil us.  So, for that matter, does the phrase "impeachable offense" (emphasis added).  These usages nudge us into thinking that valid grounds for impeachment must be something like being guilty of a crime.  In particular, they make us reluctant to think that it would be proper to "fire" someone, under this process, "merely" for incompetence.

And shouldn't we be reluctant to do that?  At this point, the best I can do is to answer the question with a question: how reluctant should we be?  I agree with the intuition that we don't want the House and Senate to feel that they can remove the president whenever they feel like it.  But that doesn't give us a set of criteria, an algorithm that will tell us, or them, when it is Constitutionally proper to take this step.

Maybe it's just not possible to frame a usable set of criteria for this.  Maybe such decisions can only reasonably be made in examining the facts of a concrete case.  Maybe we need to say, today, about "impeachable offense," what I believe a Supreme Court justice did say, years ago, about pornography: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it."

Essentially, I do believe that.  At least the part about its being impossible to frame an explicit, algorithm-like set of criteria for what constitutes an impeachable offense.  But I also think that there is more that can usefully be said about what would constitute a fair-minded approach to such a decision, in the matter of Donald Trump.

There is more to be said, but I am not prepared to say it now.

I wrote a letter today to Richard Burr, one of the U.S. Senators for the state in which I live. (Or, to be more exact, I left a message on his Web site.)

My subject line was "Please vote no on Kavanaugh." And here is the body text:

Full disclosure: I am a Democrat, and I have multiple reasons for not supporting the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice. But today I learned of a new reason, which can be stated in the title of a New York Times story: "Trump Taunts Christine Blasey Ford at Rally".

You might say, "Huh? Surely even a Democrat can see that a comment by the president changes nothing .. that is, nothing relevant to whether Kavanaugh is qualified for the job." True enough, it doesn't.

But someone has to let Trump know that he can't get away with making such disgusting remarks. Since he clearly has no shame, the only way to get that message to him is to show him that his words have consequences.

And it is in your self-interest to rebuke him in that way. Not despite the fact that you are a Republican, but because you are. Republican politicians who let the president say such things, without consequences, are tying themselves to him in a way that will not be good for you. You are tying yourselves, not just to his political views (to the limited extent that he has any coherent political views), but to his character.

If you don't think that that will be detrimental to your own political prospects, sooner or later, then all I can say is: Good luck with that.

The last three entries in this journal, like this one, all had subject lines beginning with "Impeachment: Why Not?"  None of them, however, was about reasons not to impeach President Trump.  Instead, they were about reasons why one might not choose to spend time, in the current situation, promoting the impeachment of President Trump.  See the difference?

The same is true of this one, except for one thing.  This isn't about why "one" might not "choose to spend time ... promoting the impeachment of President Trump."  This is more specific: not why "one" might not, but why I, personally, might not choose to keep on spending time on this.  (In fact, the chances are that, in the near future, I won't.)  There's more than one such personal reason, but, to a first approximation, they all boil down to one thing.

Reason Four: I Don't Want To

Okay, why don't I want to?

For one thing, I've developed a real craving to spend some time on things that have nothing to do with politics.  Computer programming, for instance.  It would be such a relief to take a break from worrying about mushy things like how to persuade someone of something.  With programming, it's much more straightforward: you write the program, you run it, and it either works or it doesn't.

And besides that, even when it is about politics -- even when it is about dealing with the nightmare that is the Trump presidency -- I'm not that sure that working for impeachment is the only way to go.  I can't shake the feeling that maybe what I, personally, really need to do is to move to Canada.  I'm not 100% sure about that, but I've reached the point where I am sure that I need to devote some serious time and energy to exploring that possibility more deeply.

At this point, my divided self manifests again.  To say such things, even in my head, provokes an angry response from another part of my mind.  It's a little like the argument I had with the lady in the peanut gallery, back in the entry headed "Impeachment: Are We There Yet?"  But this time, I will make it more obvious that I am arguing with myself, by presenting it as a dialogue between two "sides": the prosecution and the defense.

Prosecution: I am shocked -- shocked! -- that you would even consider such a selfish response.  You want to go off and write computer programs?  Isn't that a lot like fiddling while Rome burns?

And as for moving to Canada, that may be even worse.  You'd really save your own sorry butt, without a thought for the poor souls left behind?  I thought you were better than that.

Defense: That seems a little harsh.  With regard to the computer programming and other such alternate activities: when you have a big long-term project, sometimes you just need to take a break and do something else for a while.  It will probably benefit the project, in the long run, because you will come back to it fresher.

But more fundamentally, I'm not sure that this impeachment process is meant to be my project ... any more, at least.  Maybe I've already done the part of it that I'm even minimally qualified to do.

I can convince myself that there are good grounds for impeachment, in principle, based on what we already know, and on my own understanding of the Constitution.  But I already noted, back under "Impeachment: Why Not? (Reason 2)," that I am likely not the best person to convince others of this, if only because I am not a lawyer.

Besides, the question before us is not merely whether impeachment is justified, "in principle."  It's whether we should be throwing our efforts into making impeachment (and removal from office) actually happen.  And even if you assume that we could succeed in that -- maybe after the midterm elections? -- are we sure that it would be the best thing for the country?  (Assuming, again, that the grounds for impeachment are "just" the things we already know: that Trump hasn't, in the interim, made a blatant grab for dictatorial power.  If he does, that will change things.)

Because speaking for myself, I am not convinced, at least not yet (that removing Trump from office, before the end of his first term, and absent the "smoking gun," would be the best thing for the country).  I am not, however, aiming to start a discussion of whether it would be.  My point is simply that I don't feel like I'm the best qualified person to render an opinion on this.

In fact, I am sure that I am not qualified -- let alone the "best" qualified -- to render such an opinion.  Not at the moment, at least.  I am sure of this because I find that I don't even have an opinion on it ... not one that I'd feel comfortable sharing.

Perhaps I could develop one, in time.  But that's just "perhaps."  And, even if you assume that I could, I have no idea how long that would take.  I am almost sure that the only way I could do it, with real confidence in the result, would be ... wait for it ... first to clear my mind by taking a break from struggling with these issues, and, yes, to spend some time writing computer programs or something.

Prosecution: Unbelievable.  You are such a wimp (even if I, being you, say so myself).  Do you think that this is some sort of game?  The fate of the world may, quite literally, be at stake.

And you seem to be assuming that you can just take a pass, and someone else will take care of it.  But maybe you are the only one who can!  Maybe you are the one person who can think this through deeply enough, and find the right words to explain your conclusion, so that any rational person can read, and learn the truth.

Mind you, I can't prove that you are "the one."  But with so much at stake, since you can't prove that you're not the one person who can do it, aren't you obligated to try, whether you "want to" or not?

Defense: Got you, you self-righteous son of a bitch!  You fell right into my trap.

Prosecution: Huh?  What trap?

Defense: Let's grant you, "for the sake of the argument" (as we philosophers like to say), that you could get me, with continued liberal application of the whip, to write something that was ... acceptable.  Something that got the job done: that showed us all the safest way to get out of the Trump mess.

Except that in the real world, we'd never be really sure how much the outcome had been influenced by this thing I wrote.  Nor would we really know whether someone else could have written it, and maybe would have, if I had not.

But never mind that.  Here's something you can take to the bank.  If I actually did write something that was even potentially that important, then, before I finished it, I'd have at least half convinced myself that I actually was the only person who could have written it.  I know this for a fact, because it's happening to me right now.  And you know it too, because I'm you.

Prosecution: Yadda yadda.  What's all this about a trap?

Defense: You're going to have to put some big boy pants on, and be patient.  I'm getting there.

Now where was I?  Oh, yes.  I was saying that I would at least half convince myself that I really was the only person who could have written it.  And that would start me down a very dangerous path.

Prosecution: What are you talking about?

Defense: Once you start believing grandiose things like that about yourself, you can't stop.  It becomes an addiction: you keep on convincing yourself of more of them.  I -- we -- would be in serious danger of turning into another Donald Trump.

Prosecution: What ... oh.  I think I see where you're going with this.

Defense: Good; that means you're not as stupid as you look.  You remember, it was part of his standard stump speech.  He'd do his bad imitation of a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher, except he wasn't talking about the hereafter, he was talking about how awful everything supposedly was right now.  And then he'd finish that riff with these five words: "Only I can fix it."

Prosecution: [nods]

Defense: Which would have been fine, I guess; it was great theater ... for a certain sort of audience.  But then he had to go and win the damn thing.  So then everybody was watching him, to see if he could deliver.  And you know how that turned out.

So think about it.  Do you really want us to end up like he did?  The laughingstock of the planet?

Prosecution: [remains silent]

Defense: I didn't think so.