Two roads diverged …
Tue, 04/23/2019 - 1:30pm
Dear Editor:
So, ninety per cent of the Mueller Report has been released, weeks after Trump’s AG summarized it for us (“No collusion, no obstruction”) and massaged it in a disgraceful press conference. We also now have Trump’s written answers (“I do not recall”) to the Special Counsel’s questions relating to the Russian sabotage of the 2016 election and Trump’s attempts to cover up his complicity in that act of warfare against the United States.
The self-proclaimed Healthiest Candidate with the Best Memory and Greatest President since Abraham Lincoln turns out to be a doddering amnesiac whose pathological aversion to truth and the rule of law have brought him to the brink of impeachment and who was saved from indictment — this time — by subordinates who refused to carry out his orders.
Young Americans who follow the news may reach their own conclusions, as their moral compasses and views on the future of American democracy are formed: Given sufficient wealth and audacity to spurn legal limits and social norms, a racist, draft-dodging, serial adulterer and white-collar criminal can, with the help of a hostile foreign power, divide our country and degrade public behavior and discourse to subvert our government and to advance his personal and family interests … or … The Constitutional guard rails may bend under extraordinary pressure, but they are stronger than even the most malign demagogue and the corrupt cadres who do his bidding.
Since the Republican-controlled Senate precludes any Congressional check on Executive power, it seems as though only the 2020 election will settle the excruciating dilemma we now face. Let’s hope that our young citizens do not succumb to the cynicism and despair that the last twenty-seven months have evoked.
Bill Hammond
Trevett
