As I drove down the road today listening to the debates of whether to impeach or not I found myself heartbroken. Heartbroken once again during a presidency that has done not-yet-known damage to our country and its democracy. I’ve lost count the number of days during his four year term that I’ve had this feeling. Once again, today I was not just heartbroken by the actions of this president but by all of those who continue to enable his attacks on America.
Repeatedly today, we heard Republican members of the House equate the attack on the U.S. Capital to the protests of the summer of 2020. Let me begin by saying I did not and do not approve of violence to advance someone’s message, and feel it prevents conversations from being possible. However, I will not give equal weight to the damage of businesses in response to an entire race of people being murdered by law enforcement and an attack on the U.S. Capital under the incitement of the sitting President. Damage to an insured business is horrible. But, it is not the same as an insurrection that had the goal of destroying our democracy.
The only insurance our democracy has is that our elected officials will hold each other to account in the times that we the people cannot. The will of the people speaks during voting, but it also must speak through these officials during the terms that they are sent to serve. If these people will not carry out their duties of holding each other accountable, our representative democracy has failed.
The other argument against impeachment that we repeatedly heard today was- he will be out of office in 7 days, so what’s the point in proceeding with this now. Holding off impeachment on the basis of his already losing the election will affirm the belief of the insurrectionists that they can disregard the will of the people for the will of themselves. It sets us up for every losing politician to carry out the same attack upon their loses. The scary part of this is that I believe this is the exact reason some are opposing this impeachment. They want to know that even if they send their supporters to overturn their loses they will face no consequences since the consequence of loss will ultimately be enough. If loss was consequence enough, he would not have sent his riotous mob to prevent it.
Another argument we heard was how this was pre-planned so therefore it could not have been incited by the President. This argument completely ignores the fact that the incitement was being built for the entirety of his presidency. Just in the last year alone he tested his power multiple times, by seeing how quickly his base would respond. He called for the liberation of Michigan and waited to see what would happen. He told his supporters to go to the polls and oversee the election in hopes that they would scare Biden voters from casting their votes. These terrorists may have planned and organized this attack but they waited for the order of their master, and he gave it.
I don’t have much confidence in Republican senators upholding their oaths and defending our democracy. I worry that the division furthered by this impeachment may not be reconcilable. I worry that more violence will be incited from the continued claims of election fraud. I worry that unity will be hindered by the inability to have constructive conversations, but also know that those conversations were blocked by white supremacist terrorists (and then defended by the officials they voted into place).
Today was not a day that I cheered for. Today is a day that scares me to death and breaks my heart.
Changed So Much! 