Courtesy of https://www.loc.gov/
Shakespeare loved his fools. He would put them on stage during the darkest moments of a play. King Lear, raging against his fate amid a storm, had his fool. Today, we are blessed with clowns who make us giggle despite the political cesspool we are living in. Thank you, Andy Borowitz, for providing a perspective on Trump’s plans to send the military into Chicago to quell a fake crime wave.
The underlying truth isn’t funny, I know, which makes each guffaw as painful to me as if I sported surgical belly staples. Trump’s antics aren’t strategic. They are evidence of growing dementia.
Laughter may boost our resilience in a crisis, but it can’t resolve the threat. How does the country remove a demented leader? Trump has survived two previous impeachments for high crimes and misdemeanors. If no remedy exists for his criminality, what are the safeguards against his mental decline? The 25th Amendment provides little guidance.
Section 4 of the Amendment states that if a president’s capabilities are in question, the Vice President, and a majority of the principals of the executive department can send a letter to Congress declaring the President unfit. It also provides for removal by another body designated by Congress.
For a Vice President and the Cabinet to declare a President unfit is risky because it gives the appearance of a coup—a plot that, in Trump’s case, might be underway. Furthermore, an accused President has powerful tools to defend himself. First, he can dismiss disloyal Cabinet members. Second, he can send a letter to Congress stating that no incapacity exists. Having called himself a very stable genius, it’s unlikely that Trump would hesitate to put his opinion in writing.
Jamie Raskin (D-Md), a constitutional lawyer, has focused on the remaining part of Section 4: removal by such other body as Congress may designate. He has a bill before the legislature that would clarify the details of the removal process, but for now, it remains stuck in the bowels of government.
Currently, the public has few options to protect itself from abuses by a President who has seized control over all three branches of government. As I outlined in a previous blog, as a recourse, people may choose to humble themselves before the dear leader. They can apply for dual citizenship, foreseeing a possible need to leave the country. Or they can join a resistance movement.
To its credit, the lower courts have been fierce in defending the rule of law, but the conservative majority of the High Court seems unappreciative. Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, his second, have reprimanded federal jurists as if they were unruly children. When this court issues a decision, it sets a precedent and commands respect in the lower courts. Currently, it’s hard to see how this conflict will be resolved.
With the constitutional checks and balances of power falling into disarray, Trump wields his pen like a sword, a weapon used to exact revenge or profit. No slight is too small to be punished. No profit is too insignificant for his high office. No ambition is to be deterred by a torrent of blood.
The extent of these extremes reveals an increasingly unhinged mind. Those who fail to see the distortion might themselves be demented. In a world that has gone mad, maintaining sanity is challenging. Still, each of us has a compass, an innate understanding of a central truth. We are nothing without each other. Therefore, it is clear, anyone who seeks to divide us intends to harm us. This is the only wisdom to be gained from a very stable genius.
BOYCOTT TESLA
