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Guest column: The Rigged Systems of America
Bernie Evans.jpg
Bernie Evans

Jeez, I think I’ve finally heard it all. Talk about a day, no, a week, to live in infamy.

The week of December 17, 2019 will surely go down in history as one of the most profoundly consequential of all time. As it relates to political hypocrisy, at least.

This of course is the week President Donald Trump was impeached. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (RKY) says it was “the fastest, most unfair impeachment process” he’s “ever seen”. As if he’s seen more than two. So, the investigations weren’t long enough? Not enough fact witnesses? No documents reviewed?

Hmmm.

I wonder if that has something to do with Trump sending out a letter to all of his administration officials stating, “You work for me, do not cooperate with any investigation or subpoena”?

Senator McConnell insists that the impeachment of this president is a partisan crusade, “partisan rage” that sets a “toxic new precedent”. This from the man who has shattered most every legislative norm and issue of constitutional order that has come before him.

I guess it wasn’t partisan when President Bill Clinton was investigated for years on end until Special Prosecutor Ken Starr finally came up with something. As it happened, that “something” had zip to do with the original Whitewater fiasco; nope, that led to a dead-end. Poor pathetic Bubba was impeached for so-called “perjury”.

Yep, he lied about that little thing every man lies about, what he does with his…er, adulterous affairs.

Me thinks “toxic partisan rage” is better defined in witnessing the 2010 rise of the anti-Obama Tea Party, what with the Capital Hill protests showing teabaggers spitting on at least one long-time Black Congressman hailed for his civil rights work. Not to mention the following six years of Tea Party/GOP obstruction when our legislators literally sat on their hands and did squat while still collecting 179 grand per annum.

Yes, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said impeachment must be “bipartisan” and the “evidence overwhelming and obvious” to all eyes. But let’s take five and be real; she was giving Republican lawmakers way more credit than they deserve. McConnell and my home-state boy Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) have already said they have no intention of honoring their pledge swearing “before God and the Constitution” to “deliver impartial justice”.

Rank, meet ranker still. Hypocrisy, indeed.

And speaking of toxic partisan crusades, perhaps McConnell should look in the mirror. He has played no small part in the Right’s never-ending crusade to rig a Supreme Court to always and forever adjudicate all-things economic and financial to the advantage of…well, the advantaged.

By blocking the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, McConnell follows another era’s historic precedence of unethical whites stealing-off with the labor of any African descendant who presents himself/herself (that whole chattel slavery thingy). This time, of course, it was the President of the United States, one Mr. Barack Obama.

McConnell had to hold that seat open for a full year!

It didn’t matter that President Obama was being bipartisan in choosing a registered Republican who many liberals were against; Mitch cared not. He wanted another Catholic crusader in the vein of loony-toons Clarence Thomas.

No really, Mr. Thomas recently delivered the dedication address at the dedication ceremony for far-right Hillsdale College’s newly constructed Christ Chapel. He says “Our country was founded on the view that a correct understanding of God and the human person is critical”. He further quotes founding father John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other”.

(Can you imagine the uproar if an agnostic/atheist Supreme Court justice suggested America is only for secular unbelievers?) Justice Thomas leaves out the fact that it was this very argument that Adam’s proffered when running for a second term as president but lost when a wiser founding father, Thomas Jefferson, answered with “There is no religious test for office or citizenship”.

I know I’ve wandered into knee-deep gnarly weeds here, but the point I am making is about intellectual honesty, constitutional order, and the hypocrisies thereof; even from folks we presume are better. No way, Justice Clarence Thomas doesn’t understand the holes in his and Adam’s theory; we’re talking Constitutional Law 101.

Clearly, he overly enjoys the thunderous applause emanating with shouts of “Hosanna! Hallelujah!” from his Christ Chapel captive audience. Some folks just cannot bear that America is a pluralistic society with space for everyone. Can’t beat them? Rig it.

As for overly enjoying the applause, same goes for Senators McConnell and Graham (who took positions 180 degrees counter when prosecuting the Clinton impeachment): awash in the praise of their Audience of One, McConnell and Graham spew their hypocrisy to rig the senate impeachment trial of Trump in vain.

If Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has anything to do with it, that is.

Not that I expect spin-master DJ Trump to be removed from office; electoral hindsight is 2020. Happy New Year!

Bernie Evans is a writer whose opinions have appeared in local publications, TIME and The Nation.

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