Lately, on the campaign trail, the disgraced former
president has been claiming that when he is elected, he will pardon those
convicted for their activities on January 6th. He called these
people hostages. Now VP wannabe and congressional representative Elise Stefanik
has been echoing this claim, using the word hostages again. We need to remind
them both that most of the offenders who have been arrested and charged, either
pleaded guilty to misdemeanors or felonies or were found guilty by a jury of
their peers for offenses against the government on that day.
Retired General Russell Honorè disregarded these claims̀
in an interview in the Washington Post stating “You want to see what a hostage
looks like,…. look at what’s going on in Gaza. These people are in jail because
they have been convicted…by a court. Those who use the word ‘hostage’
should never be in office again.”
He is, as the reporter describes, not a casual observer of
the events of that day and is not one likely to excuse the insurrectionists or
buy into the reframing many Republicans are trying to do. Speaker Nancy Pelosi
tasked him, after the insurrection, to perform a Capitol Security Review, so he
is intimately familiar with the criminal activities of that day, the injuries
suffered by the Capitol police and others, and the role of the former president
at that time. In the interview,
this soldier who spent over 37 years in the military noted he is worried about
the state of our democracy.
“I got a lot to say
about this. This is my bottom line. If we lose our democracy, we’ll never get
it back. There are people that have become enamored with the authoritarian
process. … They’re depending on the repetitive misinformation, these storylines
that they’ve been wronged, and it’s all based on a lie that the last election
was not a fair election.”
When asked how the insurrection had shaken American
democracy, he replied:
“I think it went beyond being
shaken. I think it was cracked, and it shows the vulnerability of a democracy
that is dependent on trust, is dependent on the truth, dependent on the law,
that people follow the law. And when you have people that deliberately don’t
follow the law, that deliberately don’t tell the truth, and then repeat that in
their positions of responsibility, it shows a weakness of a democracy.
Most of the people in our
government argue in the truth, argue in the law, argue in the courts, and
respect the work of the press. But that is very fragile in a democracy when you
get somebody with a few collaborators who can [mess] up a democracy up overnight.
You saw that happen on 1-6.”
When asked what should be done to strengthen US democracy,
he said:
“We have to take on a full-out
information campaign to counter the misinformation that’s out there … We have
to convince young people that they have to get out and vote because many of
them are losing their faith in democracy … We’ve got to attack that with full
engagement from everybody, to get people to go vote because the alternative is
we could end up with another Trump or Trump-like MAGA president again. And I
think that would be the end of our democracy.”
The General certainly laid out the issues
that are before us today. The media, the public, and the government have to
stop these lies and have to counter the propaganda being spread around by the
forces that would unite to take down our democracy as we know it.
The New
York Times editorialized on January 7th about the DJT presidency:
“By now,
most American voters should have no illusions about who Mr. Trump is. During
his many years as a real estate developer and a television personality, then as
president and as a dominant figure in the Republican Party, Mr. Trump
demonstrated a character and temperament that render him utterly unfit for high
office.
As president, he wielded power carelessly and often cruelly and
put his ego and his personal needs above the interests of his country. Now, as
he campaigns again, his worst impulses remain as strong as ever — encouraging
violence and lawlessness, exploiting fear and hate for political gain,
undermining the rule of law and the Constitution, applauding dictators — and
are escalating as he tries to regain power. He plots retribution,
intent on eluding the institutional, legal, and bureaucratic restraints that
put limits on him in his first term.
Our purpose at the start of the new year, therefore, is to sound
a warning.
Mr. Trump does not offer voters anything resembling a normal
option of Republican or Democrat, conservative, or liberal, big government or
small. He confronts America with a far more fateful choice: between the
continuance of the United States as a nation dedicated to “the blessings of
liberty to ourselves and our posterity” and a man who has proudly shown open
disdain for the law and the protections and ideals of the Constitution.”
After much more discussion
about the actual problems with this presidency and a look at the revenge he is
promising, should he be re-elected, the Times comes to this conclusion:
“Mr. Trump has made clear his conviction that only “losers”
accept legal, institutional, or even constitutional constraints. He has
promised vengeance against his political opponents, whom he has called “vermin” and threatened with execution. This is particularly disturbing at a time of
heightened concern about political violence, with threats increasing against elected officials of both parties.
He has repeatedly demonstrated a deep disdain for the First
Amendment and the basic principles of democracy, chief among them the right to
freely express peaceful dissent from those in power without fear of
retaliation, and he has made no secret of his readiness to expand the powers of
the presidency, including the deployment of the military and the Justice
Department, to have his way.
Democracy in the United States is
stronger with a formidable conservative political movement to keep diversity of
thought alive on important questions, such as the nation’s approaches to
immigration, education, national security, and fiscal responsibility. There
should be room for real disagreement on any of these topics and many more — and
there is a long tradition of it across the American experiment. But that is not
what the former president is seeking.
Re-electing Mr. Trump would present
serious dangers to our Republic and to the world. This is a time not to sit out
but instead to re-engage. We appeal to Americans to set aside their political
differences, grievances, and party affiliations and to contemplate — as
families, as parishes, as councils and clubs, and as individuals — the real
magnitude of the choice they will make in November.”
I
support this conclusion and urge every thinking voter to consider not only the
damage the former president has done but also the considerable damage he might
yet do, should he be elected again.
The
Atlantic
Monthly has printed a special edition (Jan-Feb) addressing these topics:
“The next Trump
presidency will be worse.
A special issue of The Atlantic, launching
today, warns of the grave and extreme consequences if former President Trump
were to win in 2024––building an overwhelming case, across two dozen essays by
Atlantic writers, that both Trump and Trumpism pose an existential threat to
America and to the ideas that animate it. With each writer focusing on their
subject area of expertise, the issue argues that assuming a second term would
mirror the first is a mistake: The threats to democracy will be greater, as
will the danger of authoritarianism and corruption. A second Trump presidency,
the opening essay states, would mark the turn onto a dark path, one of those
rips between “before” and “after” that a society can never reverse.
The
Atlantic has made covering persistent threats to democracy
its top editorial priority. Editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg explains this focus in an editor’s note to lead the issue: “Our concern with Trump is not that
he is a Republican, or that he embraces—when convenient—certain conservative
ideas. We believe that a democracy needs, among other things, a strong liberal
party and a strong conservative party in order to flourish. Our concern is that
the Republican Party has mortgaged itself to an anti-democratic demagogue, one
who is completely devoid of decency.” Goldberg recounts a meeting at the White
House with Jared Kushner, who said of his father-in-law: “No one can go as low
as the president. You shouldn’t even try.”
In the lead essay, “The Revenge Presidency,” David Frum writes that a restored Trump would lead the United
States into a landscape of unthinkable scenarios. “In his first term, Trump’s
corruption and brutality were mitigated by his ignorance and laziness. In a
second, Trump would arrive with a much better understanding of the system’s
vulnerabilities, more willing enablers in tow, and a much more focused agenda
of retaliation against his adversaries and impunity for himself. When people
wonder what another Trump term might hold, their minds underestimate the chaos
that would lie ahead.”
I urge all readers here to find
the time to read these essays. They explore the various
ways this potential president
could damage our democracy and governance as we now
know it. Topics covered in the
24 articles in this issue include everything from foreign
policy to immigration,
abortion, disinformation campaigns, civil rights, democracy, and
freedom, among others. When
alarms are being sounded all around us by thinkers,
historians, doers, and others,
we would be best served if we not only listened, but
acted. I believe it is not
enough to just make a plan to vote, but each of us should
counter the lies we hear, speak
out against those who would re-characterize
January 6th. We
should also speak up for those who are civil servants and work at the
election boards or serve on school
boards and might be under attack. Threats to
Judges and those who work in
the judicial system are increasing (and encouraged by
the former president who speaks
darkly of bedlam and worse) and are trying to the
police or FBI agents who have
to investigate threats, whether they are real or fake.
We need to demand order in our
communities and speak out against those who would
disrupt.
Before I close today, I need to
mention that it is the anniversary of Dr. King’s birth and
we commemorate this day in his
memory. I think his message of brotherhood and
peace needs to be remembered
and honored now because our world is sadly lacking in
both.
‘Til next week-Peace!
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