THE SECOND IMPEACHMENT OF DONALD J. TRUMP

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

The deadly storming of the Capitol grounds and buildings in Washington DC, on January 6, by white, terrorist supporters of President Trump, while Congress was in session, was the worst day in the history of the greatest democracy in the world. Ongoing FBI investigations reveal that the insurrection has been months in the planning. In fact, there is convincing evidence that most of the terrorists were acting on the direct instructions, they were heeding a call to patriotism, by the Commander-in-Chief.

The FBI also predicts that extremists “have been emboldened to carry out more attacks” after the siege on the Capitol. One message has been heard loud and clear during the Trump presidency: White Supremacists today constitute the most significant threat of domestic terror in the United States.

With the Vice President refusing to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove a dangerous president, the House impeached Trump for the second time with the largest bipartisan majority in history, on Wednesday January 13, on the single Article of “Incitement of Insurrection” for his role in the assault on the Capitol last week.

The Article of Impeachment will be presented to the Senate for trial after Trump’s term has ended. A conviction by the Senate when Trump will no longer be president is unlikely, as the evidence stands today. However, by the time the Senate trial gets under way, the FBI may uncover conclusive evidence about Trump’s complicity in the insurrection; also Trump may face criminal charges in federal courts on incitement to an insurrection. These investigations and new evidence may change the course of the Senate’s impeachment trial.

A conviction will bar Trump from holding office ever again, and will also deprive him of all post-presidential perks, a $200,000 per year pension, a $1 million per year travel allowance and personal security for life. All on the taxpayer’s dime.

Trump’s impeachment defence team argues that his incendiary pre-insurrection speeches are protected by the First Amendment (freedom of speech); while the impeachment process is itself unconstitutional, as it involves an attempt to get rid of a president who no longer holds that office. Both arguments are, according to common law and constitutional precedent, full of holes.

The primary motive of this terrorist act was not only to violently undermine democracy by overturning a fair and secure election; it was not only to establish an authoritarian dictatorship; it was not to stave off the imminent threat of socialism, an ideology feared by some Americans with no understanding that most of them are enjoying its benefits in their everyday lives; it was also not only a futile attempt of a criminal president to remain in an office which provides him with immunity from prosecutions of a plethora of sordid crimes committed during his term of office and before.

The primary motive of this violent insurrection was another desperate effort to stem the inevitable decline of white supremacy the United States has enjoyed since the Europeans invaded the New World 400 years ago. An insurrection with the probable operational motivation and coordination by the sitting president of the United States and his white supremacist cult.

After the violence, President-elect Biden made a statement: “Let me be very clear. The scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not reflect a true America, do not represent who we are”.

The New York Times responded to the President-elect’s speech of unity and reconciliation:

“Are you sure about that, Joe? This is exactly who we are. An armed standoff, white male entitlement, conspiracy theories. Sounds very American to me. We should not be surprised because we have always been like this…. Racial violence is in our national DNA.

“America is a stolen land built by stolen people.”

A land born of genocide, made prosperous by the free labor of slavery, thriving as the richest and most powerful nation in the world on the back of awesome, self-serving military might. A country with a record of genocide of millions of native Americans, 200+ years of slavery, softened in brutality by a further 200 years of Jim Crow laws – an “equal but separate” doctrine of apartheid that trampled on the rights of black people until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – right up to the blatant, quasi-legal racial discrimination and violence rampant today.

“All men are created equal” said the 1776 Declaration of Independence, and “We the People of the United States” of the 1789 Constitution referred only to the white men of the United States. Black slaves were not considered to be human by the framers of these revered Documents. They did not form a part of the “perfect union”. They existed only to faithfully fulfill those “certain inalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” demanded by the white man, but never to enjoy them.

And when the insurrectionists were screaming “We want our country back” during the assault on the Capitol, the country they wanted back was the white paradise of the good old Confederate days. Slavery, Jim Crow, the Klan, Proud Boys and all.

Each successive generation of Americans has tried to mitigate the barbarous practices of white supremacy. They no longer live in a society where human beings are hunted and killed for sport, where human beings are boiled in oil for slacking or striving for freedom, where a black male was lynched for looking, with imagined lust, at a white woman.

Unfortunately, Americans still live in a society in which racial discrimination exists in every aspect of human life; where illegal, racist acts of violence and murder are committed, not only by law enforcement, with a depressingly regular frequency.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, followed by the Equal Rights movement spearheaded by Martin Luther King Jnr., saw the United States moving towards a more equitable and racially just social environment. Of course there were incidents of racial tension, violence and discrimination from 1964 to the present day. But they seemed to be decreasing in ferocity and regularity, until the 2016 election of Donald Trump lit a slow burning fuse that exploded on January 6, 2020 and will keep on exploding as long as Trump and his white supremacist cult are allowed to hold sway. And as long as Trump continues to diminish democracy by propagating the Big Lie that the 2020 election, the cornerstone of government of the people, by the people, for the people, has been subverted.

The election of African American Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008, was heralded, with unfortunately false optimism, as the end to racial discrimination in the United States. President Obama’s blackness was paraded and highlighted as evidence of the end of racial discrimination; his brilliant academic record, his exemplary community service, his voting record in the Senate and his unparalleled oratory took second place to his skin color as the primary reason for his election. Americans used the blackness of President Obama to announce to the world that they are, at last, who they said they were, that the American Dream was still very much alive. And inclusive.

Inheriting an economy approaching a depression, President Obama ended two terms of extraordinarily successful administration in 2016 with 72 months of continuous economic growth and a booming economy, capped by the enactment of his signature Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which gave health insurance to over 40 million additional Americans. All this, without fanfare, without a trace of scandal, political or personal. A president and an administration still admired throughout the world.

But Obama’s presidency did not win the approval of a large section of the American people. Inherent racism, exacerbated by resentment at the successful, scandal-free administration of a black president, had been seething under the surface of White America, ripe to be ruthlessly exploited by the manic racism of Donald Trump in 2016.

Trump used his consummate talent for lying to deceive his people that he had inherited a disastrous economy from the previous administration. He propagated and repeated his first Big Lie, that he alone created the booming economy, when he was merely hanging on Obama’s coattails. His deregulation of environmental safeguards made his corporate friends rich, while polluting the air we breathe, the water we drink and the land we love and strive to protect. His tax policies enriched his billionaire friends while the middle and poorer classes struggled for existence, many remaining mired in poverty and debt. In the richest country of the world.

There is little doubt that Trump would have coasted to a second term in 2020 if a pandemic of disastrous proportions did not expose his colossal ignorance and homicidal incompetence. Sadly, it took the preventable deaths of 350,000+ Covid victims, followed by an economic collapse, to underscore the enormity of Trump’s self-serving dereliction of duty, which caused a landslide majority of 81 million Americans to vote him out in the most secure election in the nation’s history.

Unfortunately, Trump’s abysmal record has not changed the opinion of 74 million Americans who worship Trump, and voted for him two months ago, in spite of four years of a criminal presidency which has brought America down to its political, economic and virus-ridden knees. And made the most powerful nation the laughing stock of the world.

The recent violence wrought by domestic white terrorists on the Capitol was treated with velvet gloves covering a gentle law enforcement fist. Consideration not shown to Black Lives Matter and other minority protests, which are invariably punished to the fullest, most brutal extent of the law.

White supremacy is pervasive, with complicity in all sections of American society. In fact, three Republican Congressmen, seven law enforcement officers and even one Olympic multiple Gold Medal winner are currently facing charges for their role in the January 6 insurrection.

The FBI reports that Trump supporters are planning insurrections in every one of the 50 states from January 16, culminating in a Million Militia March in Washington DC on Inauguration Day. Their investigations indicate that these nationwide insurrections are carefully planned events, with complicity of the presidency, Congress, rogue members of law enforcement and the myriad white supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations that have crawled out of the woodwork during the Trump administration.

20,000 members of the National Guard have been assigned to secure President Biden’s inauguration, more soldiers than deployed in the war zones of the Middle East. 20,000 troops to protect Americans from Americans, and to ensure the continuation of one of America’s great traditions, the peaceful transfer of power.

The defeat of Donald Trump is like chopping off one head of the multi-headed monster, Hydra that is today’s Republican Party; each time one head is chopped, two more emerge, each more virulent and deadlier than the last.