What Now?

                Last week the House of Representatives voted along party lines to formalize the next phase of the impeachment proceedings against Trump.  The number that should concern all of us is that there were no Republicans that voted for the inquiry.  That means that not a single member of the Republican Party thought bribery and extortion of a foreign government was even worth investigating.  When they had control of the House, they initiated 13 different proceeding on Benghazi, which was an unfortunate but not an unconstitutional event.  Now they seem to buy the line from the White House that Trump is not only immune to prosecution but to even being investigated.  It isn’t really surprising that the vote turned out the way it did, but that doesn’t make it any less concerning.  What it means is that the system of government that we were all taught to revere is dead.

                We have now reached the point where one of the two major parties in our country is willing to abdicate their responsibility for constitutional oversight to a craven liar.  They no longer make any pretense of believing in the most rudimentary functions of a democracy.  They were already a minority party ruling as the majority, but now it’s obvious that they intend to tear down whatever barriers were left to their rule.  They have corrupted the Justice Department, stacked the courts with the most egregiously unqualified slate of judges ever, and filled key government offices with incompetent sycophants at every turn.  They have breached our alliances around the world and undone decades of minimal improvement in the environment.  They separated and locked up over 5,500 children at the border in a move that had to make sadistic xenophobes around the globe envious.  The damage to our government and our image is only getting worse.

                The other major party is acting as if an election can stop or reverse this damage.  I don’t see how.  The next election will be marked by cyberattacks that will make the Russian interference in 2016 look like an outdated game of pong.  Voter systems will be hacked, and mistrust for the results will rampant on both sides.  The Democratic candidate, whoever it is, will win the popular vote, probably by more than the three million votes Hillary won by.  It won’t matter.  Trump and the Republicans will claim the results are invalid, and he will refuse to leave office.  The Supreme Court will support that, unless Roberts has a crisis of conscience at the last minute.  Democracy in America is no longer an electoral matter.  In fact, America is no longer a democracy.

                If Republicans play by the ‘rules,’ they lose.  They have no intention of losing.  This result was inevitable.  The protocols of our democracy were always papered over a litany of divisions that go all the way back to the earliest colonists.  For almost 250 years we perpetuated the narrative that we would rise above those divisions, but in the end we never really could.  We have spun a story about inclusion and expansion of the franchise, but in reality our story has always been about exclusion.  We were never able to confront and fix our problems because we could never really face them.  We put more faith in an unequal and unfair economic system than we did in political honesty.  This has been brewing for a long time, but the vote on the House floor makes it clearer than ever than American democracy is close to the end.

                I think it’s time to pick through the wreckage for whatever can be salvaged and move on.  The right-wing supporters of Trump like to talk about a civil war if he is removed.  They should be more worried about one if he’s not.  Democracy isn’t based on institutions; it’s based on the relationships and shared narratives of the people.  We will not move forward on policy alone.  The only way forward is a new story about who we are and how we’re connected.  Fixing the government doesn’t start in Washington; it starts in the neighborhood.  A diverse democracy demands a level on involvement and ethical behavior Americans have been unwilling and unable to give.  If we want to continue as a democracy, we’re going to have to face that responsibility.