Charles P. Pierce: Americans Have the Power to Push Back

[babylonsister]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a53546/trump-white-house-corruption/

Americans Have the Power to Push Back

The Trump administration's corruption is not some insurmountable enemy.
By Charles P. Pierce
Mar 2, 2017

(Optional Musical Accompaniment To This Post)

Although I had followed the Watergate crisis with minute attention, it had grown vague and formless in my mind, like a nightmare recollected in sunshine. It was not until I began working my way through back copies of The New York Times that I was able to remember clearly why I used to read my morning paper with forebodings for the country's future.

—Walter Karp, The Hour of the Founders,1984.

It's not like we haven't been through something like this before: A dubious presidency, shot through with actual corruption corruptly concealed, begins to unravel because, sooner or later, the old republic begins to kick back, hard, with whatever happens to be handy. Ambition counters ambition, was the way Mr. Madison put it, and while he thought of this tug-of-war as taking place in the polite precincts of a legislative chamber, he also knew that ambition could counter ambition in a number of ways.

snip//

But ultimately, the judgment lies with the country, which is how it should be, because the entire Constitution is arranged so that the ultimate vehicle through which the old republic can defend itself is its people. We can go along and pretend that this administration isn't the carnival of grift and incompetence that it plainly is. We can accept the platitudes and the anesthetic banality of the people who will tell us that this is politics as usual, and that both sides do it, and that righteous democratic anger is somehow impolite and inappropriate to the august task of determining on exactly what percentage of the American government the Russians currently hold paper.

Or, we can decide not to do that. We can push back with the rusty tools that are never far from our hands. Ultimately, that's what happened in 1974. After two years, the accumulated crimes and lies and contempt for democratic norms hauled the country out of its customary torpor and the old republic stirred to life again. That's the choice before us.

The ease with which the powerful can arrange "deniability," to use the Watergate catchword, was one reason the criminal standard was so dangerous to liberty. Instead of having to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, a President, under that standard, would only have to take care to insulate himself from the criminal activities of his agents. Moreover, the standard could not reach the most dangerous offenses. There is no crime in the statute books called "attempted tyranny."

—Karp, 1974.

Yes, there is. But only we can bring the charges.

[BeckyDem]

1. As always, powerful Pierce.

Nice touch with the music selection.