In the twilight of the nomination season, words are flying. So are recriminations, protestations, condescensions, entreaties, —and more. I do not intend here to trivialize the validity of most said. But I would like to urge dear readers and dearer political activists to look beyond them for just a few minutes.
Look beyond to the larger picture. Look to where we now sit in the governance, the representation, and most importantly, the reality of this country. We are manacled to a violent occupation across the world. We have tens of millions of citizens without health care. We have lost too many civil rights to count, crowned by the loss of habeas corpus. We have become the purveyors of torture around the world. Our name, our credibility, and our honor have been slimed. I could go on and on. But you all know the dark place to which we have come.
I believed, despite ominous evidence to the contrary, that we could get ourselves and our country back. But it wasn't by restoring a democrat to the White House. It wasn't through an amorphous belief in 'change' that reinvigorated the democratic process. It wasn't even by improbably persuading the fourth estate to once again do its job. We could have once again realized the good invested in 200 plus years of our country by doing one thing. Just one.
Following the rules.
We didn't.
And now we're enmeshed in all those words, like unity and party and healing and winning and support and on and on and on. Well, I don't accept the premise. I don't accept the arguments for and against unity or the necessity to heal or the requirement to support the party. All those are mini-issues burgeoning with the importance laid on them by people who believe they can break, ignore, or trample every rule to get the prize. They're the distractions. If we accept them, we sign on to a new way of doing business, governed entirely by the whim of the politicians who choose the issues about which we are to get all hot and bothered.
Please don't let them distract you. Don't sign on to their bill of goods. Because it's not about parties and persuasion, or demographics and delivering the vote on election day. It's about playing fair, doing right, living with integrity, building good lives for our children...
It's about following the rules.
Here are a few. And some of the antithetical new twists visited upon us.
There are three branches of our government, all equal. However debatable that reality may be, there is surely an arguable parity between them, with no one branch more equal than the rest.
For instance, the checks and balances built into the system should not allow hundreds of foreign individuals to be held without charges, without attorneys, without end.
The head of the executive branch is simply that. The head of the executive branch. He or she is not the leader of the other branches.
For instance, the executive branch cannot refuse to testify before the legislative branch.
The head of the executive branch is not the head of the party to which he or she belongs, to the extent that all members of that party must rubber-stamp his or her actions.
For instance, the legislative bodies are not to mindlessly vote in lock-step with the president simply because he or she has an R or a D after his or her name.
The president is the commander-in-chief of the military. He or she is not the commander-in-chief of the country or anything else.
For instance, when a president calls himself, 'the commander guy', he's full of it.
The Congress declares war. Only the Congress has the power to engage our country, and therefore our children, in mortal combat.
For instance, if the Congress foolishly and illegally hands that power over to another branch, it is incumbent upon them to retrieve that power by refusing to fund an illegal action. Immediately. And that decision should have nothing to do with worries over electability in future races.
The Senate confirms justices to the Supreme Court.
For instance, the president does not 'get' his or her appointee to the third branch of government because he or she wants that person. The nominee is vetted by 100 representatives elected to do just that. And the vetting is to include more than party affiliation and wedge issues.
The elected representatives of states decide whether revotes or recounts are necessary.
For instance, deferring entirely to the whims of the last two campaigns standing is certain to disenfranchise large chunks of voters.
When a president commits high crimes and misdemeanors, the House of Representatives must vote to impeach.
For instance, when a CIA agent is outed by the executive administration, and perhaps the executive himself, impeachment proceedings are not optional.
Dear reader, if someone commits a crime, say stealing a TV, for instance, and someone else accepts and uses the TV, knowing it is stolen, doesn't that make the second someone complicit in the crime? If we accept the premise—the rearrangement of our government, the omnipresence of our parties in governance, the corruption of our judicial system by that partisan omnipresence—then are we not thoroughly complicit in the future that now stares us belligerently in the face?
Let's go back and read the rules. Then let's live by them, until such time as we'd like to change them. Ignoring them leads to a lot of very unhappy people and a government we do not want.
