Republicans do not play by the rules of the game.
We have a nation, albeit a mighty country, now in decline, because one political party has taken the position that the principles on which the republic was formed are no longer sustainable in maintaining white supremacy as a bedrock. Therefore it cannot and will not adhere to the established rules that have guided the Republic for almost two and one-half centuries.
My friend made an excellent point today. “How can members of the Republican caucus advance the argument that the second impeachment of Donald Trump was unconstitutional, when the body itself answered that question in the affirmative, it is constitutional to try Donald Trump after he is out of office.
In practical terms, Donald Trump was impeached while he was in office. It was then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who refused to call the Senate back into session to hold the trial.
It is the height of hypocrisy and lies that members of the Republican caucus would then turn around and make the fraudulent argument that Trump was out of office, and therefore he is outside the senate’s scope. The vote on the constitutionality of whether the trial could proceed is now precedent for the ages.
Republicans cannot have their cake and eat it too.
Rules by which the country operates cannot only apply to Democrats while Republicans do as they please. Those kinds of games cannot be allowed to continue.
Mitch Mcconnell and his caucus pulled off the same fraudulent stunt when they refused to give advice and consent to seat Judge Merrick Garland using rules they dredged up, then turned right around and discarded them, then fill two supreme court seats as a result of that act of deception.
https://mikebeckles.com/a‑race-war-evident-long-before-the-capitol-siege/
As soon as they had a Republican in the white house, those same rules were thrown out, and a Republican hack was seated in one-quarter of the eight months, which was the length of time between when Obama nominated Merrick Garland and the elections of 2016.
It is time for the Democratic Party to start playing hardball.
If the Democratic Party refuses to stand up for the majority of the American people against this insurgency of deceit and deception by a white minority, it will find itself facing the prospect of an insurgent party emerging on its left flank.
A serious look at the Republican Senators who voted to let Donald Trump off the hook a second time, reveals that because of the two US senators per state rule, the majority of the American people are being governed and ruled by the white minority in flyover country.
Let there be no mistake about what’s at stake here; the dark disinformation and lies that have clouded America in the five years since Donald Trump fully emerged on the political scene were designed specifically to wage war on truth to strengthen America’s racist past.
From the moment that Donald Trump and his wife started the birther campaign against Candidate Obama in 2008, along with the other bottom-feeding crustaceans in the Republican party, to the video presentations by his lawyers in his second impeachment trial, the visual messaging and verbal tropes were decidedly anti-black and pro-white supremacy.
One notable thing that became evident long before Donald Trump was elected President was the emergence of new people into the political process.
The mainstream media reported this phenomenon; pundits could not decide what it would mean for the 2016 presidential cycle.
As the process dragged on, it became clearer that those people were flocking to Donald Trump’s campaign rallies; in many instances, while Hillary Clinton was absent from the campaign trail, Trump was everywhere he could land his jet with the word Trump emblazoned across it, there he would have large raucous, racist rallies, where he would juice them up with incendiary rhetoric then encourage them to beat up people that did not look like them, or opposes their point of view.
Those people were white, older, largely working-class, bearing a whole litany of grievances. They talked about education and science as if they were things to be shunned. They talked about racist accountability as people speaking their minds.
Trump’s outwardly vulgar racism did not cause them to recoil; it galvanized them into a cult, that even the unintelligent Trump knew he could manipulate in whatever way he chooses.
Trump then bragged that he could shoot someone on [fifth avenue] and not lose a single vote. That arrogance would cause Donald Trump to commit yet untold crimes against the country and untold individuals. It would lead him to the dubious distinction of being the only president to be impeached twice. (never mind in a single term).
The voter base Trump quickly put together with his inflammatory racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant rhetoric was older; many admitted to reporters that they had not voted in years before Trump’s emergence.
Trump’s message of making America great again was not new; it was one that Republican presidential candidates as far back as Richard Nixon had used in their campaigns. But coming from Donald Trump it took on new meaning, Donald Trump did and said everything to cause them to believe he was the first white president, the most openly racist person to ever seek the presidency.
That was no easy task, most of the men who had previously been president, Democrats, and Republicans alike, literally became President because they were vile racists.
Outside of that, Trump’s rhetoric was waging trade wars on China, banning Muslims, law, and order, and other caustic issues were, in fact, the coded language of white supremacy.
Polling those people resulted in results that were far from what was really happening at the time. Clinton led in the polls, but Trump supporters lied, and their lies skewed polling results. Despite the evidence of Trump’s misogyny, they turned their heads away and laughed it off as, quote; “a nothing burger.”
Right-wing Christian Conservative preachers who previously stood in pompous unrighteous judgment over everything President Obama stood for, were all of a sudden servile supplicants to a philandering racist pussy-grabber who had unprotected sex with a prostitute while his wife was home with the young child she had just given birth to.
Suddenly, the racist apostates, Hagee, Graham, Robertson, and the other right-wing heretics, were all in with the New York con-man who was going to save America.
But it was the yard signs which gave it away for me. Driving from New York through the backroads of route 81 down to South Carolina. All through (Hicksville) Trump yard signs littered literally every yard.
Yard signs are probably the least scientific of measurements to get a feel for the people’s pulse, but are probably the most effective at capturing public sentiment. People do not have signs they disagree with on their property; it simply doesn’t happen.
The final vote in the second senate trial of Donald Trump, 57 – 43, was not enough to convict and prevent him from holding public office ever again; it fell 10 short of the two-thirds needed.
The 43 Republican senators who voted not to convict Trump are part of the leadership representing 38% of America. The 57 who voted to convict him represents 61% of the country experts tell us. The Majority who wanted Donald Trump to be held accountable lost to the white minority who live in small rural states. That white minority has a disproportionate representation in the United States senate.
As a freelance writer, I have pointed to this disparity of representation in America due to two US senators’ system per state. That disparate system allows the views and demands of 38% of the population to take precedent over the overwhelming majority of voters.
Winning presidential elections are a heavy lift for Democrats; the party won the popular vote in every Presidential election since 2000. Speaking of the 2000 elections, Democrats won the popular vote but lost the electoral college vote to George Bush, (with the help of a Republican supreme court).
Hillary Clinton garnered more than five million more votes than Trump, still, she lost the presidency due to a system designed to drown out the voices of the masses to the benefit of the few.
It required that Biden get more than 7‑million more votes than Donald Trump received in 2016 to garner the same amount of electoral college votes Trump did.
Those disproportionalities tilt the playing field heavily in favor of Republicans. Despite those legs up, Republicans continue to attack the democratic process with wave after wave of voter suppression tactics aimed specifically at wiping out the black vote.
Donald Trump and his sycophants like to brag that 70-million people voted for him, they say no other sitting Republican president could get that many votes, as if 80 plus million people did not vote to repudiate him.
Nothing turned out Trump voters more than the issue of removing confederate statues from public spaces, holding racists accountable, ending police killings of racial minorities.
Those are the things that galvanized them, not Trump, Donald Trump only offered a bully pulpit for those ideas.
Every Republican member of the United States House and Senate knew exactly what Donald Trump was trying to do from he started labeling the Press, ‘enemy of the state’. They knew what he was up to before he was elected when asked if he would concede if he lost the 2016 elections, and he replied he would have to see.
They knew what he was up to after he was elected and was running for reelection and was asked the same question, and he responded that if he did not win, it meant that the elections were rigged.
They knew what he was doing when he started bad mouthing the elections before they began.
When he started attacking early voting, when he attacked mail-in voting. When he attacked the “ballots,” When he placed Dejoy over the postal service and started dismantling the infrastructure to slow down mail delivery, they all knew what he was doing when he built a mountain of lies to deflect from his hatred, racism, and crimes.
They were aware of what he was doing when he decapitated the Defense department. They knew what he was doing when he placed hacks in power positions even after he had lost the 2020 elections. They knew what he was doing when he called election officials and demanded that they find him votes to overturn the certified results. They were aware of his plans when he created doubt about the vote count in largely black cities and counties. They were complicit when he left Mar‑a Lago before Christmas to return to the White House. They knew what was up when he packed the courts from early in his presidency. They were aware of his plans when William Barr left the DOJ. They knew damn well what his plans were when he pardoned Michael Flynn and other criminals and had Flynn advising him to declare martial law to steal the elections.
They saw him juice up the lunatic mob with lies and misinformation. They saw him direct the mob at the congress with the expressed intent of decapitating the Legislative branch and his own vice president.
More than all, they heard Mike Pompeo repeatedly told journalists that Trump would be inaugurated for a second term, even after the elections were decided. What did Mike Pompeo know, and when did he know it?
Every one of them knew that Trump intended to overthrow the American government system to make himself king. Not a single one of them lifted a finger to stop it.
They did not do anything to stop him because it served the ends of white supremacy, a cause to which all of the Republicans are inextricably linked.
.
.
.
Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, a black achiever honoree, and publisher of the blog mikebeckles.com.