When the president of the United States said in his press conference couple of days ago that you can’t impeach someone who is doing a good job, as you can see from the attached YouTube video, I bowed my head in shame and wept for America.
Why did I weep?
First of all, there is this thing called the law, Mr. President. If you break it, irrespective of the end that came out of your unlawful activity, you will still have to be held accountable for breaking the law. Our president, who is supposed to be an embodiment of the law, just said to the world, that if a robber should rob a bank, regardless of the fact that he/she broke the law by robbing a bank and enriching him/herself at the expense of the public, so far as he/she donates part of his/her loot to charity, that he/she should be let go. Just like that.
How did we get here, America?
Never in the history of these united states have I seen a public servant, much more the president of the United States, publicly, at every given opportunity, undermine the rule of law and obstruct justice. Do you need a laundry list? Of course, you do not.
I digressed. Let us refocus.
Sometimes politicians accuse their colleagues of oversimplifying matters they themselves thought were complex. But the fact of the matter remains that many problems facing our country today are matters that have simple solution. What is/are lacking is the political will to do, but more importantly, the courage to do what is right and easy to do. If our politicians should consider themselves public servants who serve for the ‘general’ public good and worry less about their job security, things will be different today. And do not call me naïve. Because we have a history of statesmen and stateswomen in this country, both living and dead, who have in the time past paid political price for the ‘general’ public good.
Having said that, if I were the president, how do I go about reopening the government in such a way that America will come out a winner, not the democrats, not the republicans, and definitely, not any extreme group.
Border security is very important to this country. We cannot live in a borderless society. And we cannot have people flooding into our country illegally. Furthermore, we cannot continue to allow the flood of drugs unchecked into our country. But that is a story for another day because if there are no demands from us, no market for their products, there will be no incentive for drug peddlers to be flooding us with drugs. And to be candid, these two-bit criminals are not sophisticated enough to be braving our security personnel and technology at our borders. There are people in high places who enable the ease with which these drug peddlers beat our system. The wall is no solution to any of these. They tunneled themselves from Mexico into a vacant KFC Restaurant in San Luis, Arizona. Think about that for a minute. The wall as is currently proposed the president and his supporters, to every sane person, is just a symbol of us versus the other. Complete politics and no substance.
But something has to be done about security at our borders and if I were the president, I will compromise and take what is offered by democrats and run with it. And keep fighting for what I want. But to keep banging my fist on the table and not yielding any ground, at the detriment of struggling families; that, is not leadership. And for those citizens that keep prodding this president to not compromise, first they should remember that he promised them a wall that Mexico will pay for. I hope they are not coincidentally all suffering from amnesia. Secondly, we have a system of government where the Congress have the power of the purse, a system where Congress is equal partners to the executive branch on matters of government, a system that in entrenched to discourage authoritarianism. Urging President Trump to shut down the government until he gets his wall is tantamount to encouraging him to continue his authoritarian tendencies. Suggesting to him that the legislative branch of government is there to do his bidding, as the republican-controlled Congress did, and not his equal partners in government, is setting this country on a dangerous path of lawlessness. Which Mr. Trump for the past two years has been happily and brazenly treading for lack of consequences. And that is a dangerous precedent, among many, that republicans are setting for this country. They abolished all senate rules to make way for him to confirm judges that doesn’t embody America’s values. The republican-controlled house, as exemplified by Representative Devin Nunes of California, was a mouthpiece for the Trump administration rather than carry out their legislative oversight of the executive duties.
Somehow as our national debt is blowing through the roof, taxpayers money used to subsidize farmers who are suffering from the Trump trade war, and we glorify Russia every day from the White House, I wonder where the tea party are; where those fiscal conservatives are who hated handouts so much they’d rather spend $5000.00 of taxpayers money investigating a struggling mother who got a $100.00 worth of food stamp, and where the heck Reagan republicans are who see Russia for what they are?
Someday we will have a president from the democratic party. Someday we will have a president who is not Caucasian. Will the Bible belt throw away their Bible and embrace the person in similar manner as they have embraced President Trump if he or she chooses to conduct the business of the nation in the way and manner in which Mr. Trump is doing? Will the GOP seek to rewrite the senate rule to put the new president in check as they just did with the incoming democratic governor in Wisconsin? Will the tea party rediscover its voice again and become fiscally conservative? Will the right wing talk show hosts rediscover the letters of the Constitution?
The Ezeocha Post 