At Gettysburg, standing on hallowed ground, a graveyard for an idea of privilege and enslavement, Abraham Lincoln tried his best to honor the sacrifice of those who were willing to give their lives for a different vision – one of all created equal. He called for a new birth of freedom and warned us that sacrifice is necessary lest a government of the people, by the people, for the people, perish from the earth.
That nation is perishing under the hand of America’s first king. Donald J. Trump addressed us last week, mentioned two “great” presidents, himself and George Washington, and floated the idea that perhaps he was the greatest, and he obliterated another one of Lincoln’s greatest achievements – malice toward none and charity for all, as he fantasized about our manifest destiny, which might just include Greenland, the Panama Canal and Canada as a 51st state.
The week before that he held court in our Oval Office with the richest man in the world and outlined how their newly created government/non-government agency would dismantle programs created to help the least of our brethren. It was the ultimate con – two billionaires, one a 34-count felon with a fraudulent charity and fraudulent university, rooting out fraud. A draft-dodger, who had already disparaged one American combat hero and POW, John McCain, and who called for the execution of another war hero, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, was orchestrating an all-out-assault on the programs established after WWII for Veterans and their families as part of a New Deal for a better life.
And the world order, established by that sacrifice, an alliance of democratic nations against dictatorship, and the establishment of the United Nations so that there could be an agreement on international law to avoid future conflict, was abandoned by an assault from our own White House on another war hero, Vladimir Zelensky, an ally at war with an enemy state.
Three federal investigations proved that Vladimir Putin never stopped his extensive cyber warfare on the United States and as punishment Congress had voted 517-5 to impose economic sanctions. But twice now, Donald Trump has called for Russian reinstatement into the G-8 while Putin’s assault on America continues. Worse yet, Trump took the time to tell us that Putin has suffered, along with Donald, with the “Russia, Russia, Russia phony investigation.” The only problem is that Trump is lying – all three investigations proved extensive Russian warfare against America. The unanswered question is the extent of Trump’s complicity with Russia, because the Senate report alone is hundreds of pages of coordination with Russian agents with intent to deceive, and his obstruction of justice is enormous, despite two impeachment acquittals.
The president of the United States is defending a man who is responsible for tens of thousands of Syrian deaths and making five million Syrians homeless, as well as hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian deaths and almost four million Ukrainians homeless. Yet Donald Trump calls Putin a genius for his invasion and just halted arms shipments to our ally, as well as the intelligence needed to defend the innocent.
READ: Trump Is the Kinglike President Many Feared When Arguing Over the US Constitution in 1789
The only question is why? Why did Trump go to Helsinki and tell the biggest lie I’ve ever heard over a 30-year military career. Trump told the world that he didn’t see why confirmed American intelligence of Russian election interference was valid. But Trump’s DOJ had indicted 25 Russians, including 12 Russian Army intelligence officers for that very crime.
He told even a more dangerous lie, and has never stopped, that he won a presidential election that he lost; and now he is trying to dismantle the fictional “Deep State” (our vital national security institutions) which possess all the evidence of his crimes – crimes which prove pathological abuse of power that render him mentally and morally unfit for command.
Lincoln warned us that a house divided cannot stand, and as former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis warned us, Donald Trump has no interest in national or international unity, or even the appearance of unity. His commitment to the destruction of the building blocks of democracy have brought us to the brink of internal combustion. His pardoning of those convicted of seditious conspiracy against the United States disqualifies him from federal office as outlined in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. If Congress fails to impeach him a third time for his violation of the Constitution, and his aiding an abetting Putin, they will have violated their oath of office to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic; and this Republic could indeed perish from the earth.
