THOUGHTS REGARDING TODAY

On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln asked the essential question about this constitutional democratic republic:

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

That is the essential question: How long can a self-governing republic endure before it is torn apart by internal dissension?

Every other Republic in history before the United States was founded has self-destructed.

We have in our own lifetimes seen other republics fall to anti-democratic authoritarian movements and their leaders, popularly supported by at least a significant minority of that nation’s citizens.

This is an extraordinary day. There has never been one like it in our lifetimes in terms of importance to the country. Today it was reaffirmed that no one is above the rule of law, and that includes a president who committed the crime of attempting to destroy the government he had been elected to lead and had sworn to protect.

No other country has successfully prosecuted a criminal of the dimensions of Donald Trump; there has not existed the national will, the political cohesion, the strength of the rule of law to accomplish such an act.

Such events led to the most terrible war in the history of humans on this planet; it took nearly the entire population of the planet to change that result and hold one of these Great Criminals and the movement he led to account for their crimes against humanity.

If we accomplish this, we will truly be the Exceptional Country. The one and only country to demonstrate that the strength of our national character and the power of our commitment to the rule of law is sufficient to deal with this crisis.

The indictment reads: “The attack on our nation’s Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. As described in the indictment, it was fueled by lies – lies by the defendant targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”

The Trump campaign responded thus to the indictment: “This is nothing more than the latest corrupt chapter in the continued pathetic attempt by the Biden Crime Family and their weaponized Department of Justice to interfere with the 2024 Presidential Election, in which President Trump is the undisputed frontrunner, and leading by substantial margins.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, 2024 GOP contender responded: “As President, I will end the weaponization of government, replace the FBI Director, and ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans. While I’ve seen reports, I have not read the indictment. I do, though, believe we need to enact reforms so that Americans have the right to remove cases from Washington, DC to their home districts. Washington, DC is a ‘swamp’ and it is unfair to have to stand trial before a jury that is reflective of the swamp mentality. One of the reasons our country is in decline is the politicization of the rule of law. No more excuses – I will end the weaponization of the federal government.”

This is a sad day, a day when we have to ask ourselves how a man so manifestly and obviously unfit to hold any elected office was elected to the highest office we have. How has our country failed to educate a significant minority of the citizens to hold the democratic constitutional republic as the sacred trust that it is?

This is also a great day because this Great Criminal has been held to account for his crimes.

Fortunately, this Great Criminal by his 2016 victory awakened the rest of us from our slumber, from our thoughtless assumption that “it can’t happen here.” It most obviously happen here and came within 44,000 votes in 2020 of becoming the permanent end of this experiment in self rule.

If we do not do everything possible to prevent its return, 2024 will definitely mark that end.

Donald Trump was an armed robber. He attempted, by violence, to rob us of our right to choose our leaders in free and fair elections (or elections as close to that ideal as we can achieve).

It is clear that there is a political party that favors an assault on democracy. That party, so long as it is led by the current authoritarians, cannot ever be allowed to take any degree of national power until that condition has ended.

In 1787, upon completion of the work of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked what had been created.

He answered, “A Republic - if you can keep it.”

The responsibility of keeping it is in the hands of all of us, where it has always resided.

We can no longer assume anything about its continued existence.

As with everything else, it’s up to us.

Today is a sad day that this happened. It is a great day that we have awakened to the threat and shown ourselves capable of keeping this republic.

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