The Road To Nowhere At The Barrel of a Gun

 I honestly don't know how this blog is going to turn out. Normally I plot these things in my head, and then I write them. Being able to do that as always been an ability of mine. Yet as I sit here, typing this post, I'm at a loss, a complete loss. When I heard of the shooting at Oxford High School in Oxford, Michigan, it brought me back to Columbine.

I was 23 when Columbine happened, so I was only a few years removed from being a high school student myself.  And let us being completely blunt, high school is torture. The cliques, the pressure to conform or be cast out, as the band Rush so precisely put it in their song Subdivisions. High School like a precursor to social media. Where everyone checks their value based on comments and likes. One gages themselves in high school pretty much the same way. I have a few regrets from my high school days, but I try not to dwell on them too much. I cannot think of any bullying that I went through in high school that would have led me to take up arms and slay my classmates. 

When Columbine occurred, all I could think about is those who lost their lives and the various milestones they'd never get a chance to enjoy. Walking across the stage at graduation. Finding love, getting married, getting a job and having a career. Perhaps even having a family of their own. All of that taken away in the blink of an eye, at the hands of a kid with a gun. And I sit here wondering what the survivors of Columbine are thinking right now. Are their deceased classmates on their mind?

I want to be clear about one thing up front. I don't care what motivated the shooter, I don't even want to give him the curtesy of seeing name in the paper, mentioning it here in the blogs, or even on twitter.  My only concern is for the families that just one week removed from a holiday in which we give thanks now have to plan funerals for their children. Oh. and by the way, the Christmas shopping season has begun. There's that as well. 

Tate Myre, age 16. Hanna St. Julian, age 14. Madisyn Baldwin, age 17. All of them children who died in a horrific fashion. Madisyn should be focusing on college, or whatever her post-graduation plans happen to be. Hanna was just a Freshman, still trying to navigate what high school was all about. Tate might have been focused on finally learning how to drive a car. Who knows what contribution to society they might have made. Alas, we'll never know, as they were cut down before they could even get started. 

It's one thing when there is a workplace shooting. No life lost should easily be discarded, but the rational is at least those were adults. When it comes to school, and its children that die, it stings a little more. And it's always just confused me that a political party that will fight to make abortion illegal, citing the fetus is life, are the same ones that opt to do nothing in the wake of a school place shooting. The tired old rally cry that dust off and bring out is that any talk of gun control is politicizing the event and that the focus should be on helping the families. heal. If I had a child that died in a school shooting, I would want change, not the same goddamn rhetoric that gets spewed each time this happens. How come so much time and effect are put into protecting a fetus, but so little once they are born? They never want to blame the gun, but they want to find blame anywhere else. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. It's empty talk like that which becomes offensive during times like these. 

That brings me to another classic rock song. Saturday Night Special by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Lynyrd Skynyrd essentially created Southern Rock, and one of the bands regrets it has is allowing the label to associate them the Confederate Flag, which is partly the reason they did the song "Workin' for MCA" where they took their own label to task. The band, despite appearances, was good with gun control. In fact, the song, Saturday Night Special, which does get played at NRA rallies, asks "Why don't we dump all the guns to the bottom of the sea, before some fool shoots you or me."

Now, I'm not advocating that we get rid of all guns. The U.S. Constitution makes gun ownership a right and that cannot be taken away by the stroke of the president's pen. However, we do need to take a look at the situation and address ourselves to solving the problem. In the 1920's the N.R.A, citing the increase of Tommy Guns by the Mafia, which began to rise in America as an unintended consequence of the Volstead Act, was one of the first to call for a gun registry in America. A far cry from today's N.R.A., which to me in my opinion,  has become nothing more than a glorified sales person for the gun manufactures, now stands steadfast against any such regulation. 

It is well beyond the time that we awaken ourselves to the issue at hand. Something needs to be done to address this issue. As it stands, three people have lost their lives over a weapon that was given as a present without a second thought to its use. Three lives that were just beginning to find their footing in this world. Three kids are dead. 

I guess it's time to wrap this blog up. As I said at the start, I had no idea of how this was going to turn out as there are still a wide range of emotions going through me right now. One of which is accepting the grim fact for all of the talk and bluster that shall emerge from this, we'll be back in this spot sooner or later, lamenting the lives lost, wishing for change. Rinse and repeat. If only we could get off this wheel and make some actual change. Change that has come decades too late for the Columbine victims. Years too late for Jamie Guttenberg and the victims of Parkland. And too late still for Tate Myre, Hanna St. Julian, and Madisyn Baldwin. I just hope it doesn't end up too late for anyone else, especially a teen or young child. 

America: A Land of contradictions

 Sometimes it's the simplest things that will trigger a thought. Yesterday I was watching TV and an ad came on for bottled water. It really struck me as odd. Our founders put to paper that Americans should have access to life, liberty, and happiness. And here we are charging people for something it is essential to life, water. We have crippled our system so much that we now sell bottled water. Now, I could point out that this is capitalism run amuck, but that would be too great and clear of an observation.  When in fact, that seems to be more or less, what America is founded on.

There is a call to help the homeless, but when there is no profit to be made from it, they are left to their own devices, to survive on their own. However, in the few special occasions that they find shelter, if a developer comes in with a fistful of greenbacks, those homeless people are tossed back out onto the streets, while what they once called home is remodeled into an upscale suite of apartments. 

Everyone wants to protect the children. You have scores of people protesting outside of abortion clinics. Yet when it comes time and those children need services such as WIC or food stamps, the very crowd that once vowed to protect them when they were a fetus turns against them with great fury, and calls them moochers, sponges off of society. And if they live in a poor neighborhood awash in crime, little is done to invest in that neighborhood. That is unless, you call private prisons an investment. And that's nothing more to profit by keeping people, mostly African-American and Latino-American, in prison be decreeing harsh sentences and coming up with ways to ensure they end up incarcerated. And you thought slavery was something only in history books.

Health care. If you want to be healthy and live a long life, you must pay for the privilege. 

We have for profit prison systems. Water, a natural resource, is now bottled because our country is held back by a political party that doesn't see investing in clean, safe water as a priority.  It is if an unforeseen side effect of unchecked capitalism is the profiting off of suffering. Anytime you try to point out these flaws, you're branded a socialist or worse. That serves to only keep us stuck going in circles.

Let's be blunt, there is no perfect system, no matter how much someone tries to frame it. We must awaken ourselves to the reality that unchecked capitalism as grown into a raging beast that is out of control. We need laws to keep businesses in check, offering real punishment when they price gouge. Laws that make them think twice about layoffs and uprooting operations so they could avoid such pesky things as paying people a livable wage. Laws that for once and all say that keeping people in prison should not be a for profit business.  There is a lot that we must open our eyes to in this country, because these are times of peril. And under we can correct the course we're on, we're just doomed to repeat the same mistakes. 

Rankin Fitch and Donald Trump

 In reading a recent op-ed by Frida Ghitis from CNN.com I'm struck by a thought. Her Op-ed is about the tide turning against Donald Trump. She says "Trump will end up crushed by either his bullying ways or by his loyal followers, with little support from the rest of the GOP." which leads me to the end of the film Runaway Jury.

For those wondering, Runaway Jury centers around two people Nicholas Easter and a mysterious woman named Marlee. Both clearly have skeletons in the closet as they try and sway a jury to find a gun company guilty after their product is used in a workplace massacre. On the opposing side is Rankin Fitch, a cold calculating man used to getting his own way. Fitch is wealthy, and he has no qualms about bullying others into doing his bidding. Or attempting to make them feel inferior, as he tries to do with Wendell Rohr, the attorney for the widow of one of the victims. I will try my best not to spoil it for those that haven't seen the film, but there is a scene at the end where Easter and Marlee confront Fitch in a cafe. Though Fitch is seemingly defeated, he tries to turn the tables, saying that Nick and Marlee in effect didn't accomplish anything and the money they received from Fitch in hopes of swaying the journey will become an addiction. That they wouldn't be able to stop and in the end, they'd actually have nothing. He screams the word nothing at Marlee and Nick as they leave, and the other patrons look on. Suddenly, it dawns on Fitch that he was the one with nothing. His self-assured nature that he could make anyone tremble, anyone bend to his will was gone. And it was he who was left with nothing.

Which brings me to Donald Trump, the disgraced former president of the United States. Trump looked at the oval office as his way to assert the ultimate power. In fact, he might have looked upon it as his way to dominate the world. It was achieving this office that he learned that his powers were limited by the framers of the country, men who knew enough that the power had to be curbed, curbed to prevent men like Trump who sought to pervert the office into their own source of limitless power over helpless masses. When he found that he could no longer makes others do his bidding, for they were bounded by the U.S. Constitution from carrying out his illegal edicts, he lashed out. The boiling point being January 6th, when reeling from a loss he could not accept, he opted to try and make people bend to his will. Bend to his will in a power grab not seen in this country by a person in his position since Aaron Burr. Trump unleashed a fury that cost lives and shattered the sanctity of the U.S. Capitol. And while Trump has some fringe media outlets that favor him, the public tide may be turning against him. 

Which brings me back to the image of Rankin Fitch in that cafe. Sitting alone, his minions nowhere to be found. That could very well be Trump's destiny. A man who thumbed his nose at the law and hobnobbed with the likes of John Gotti (which by the way, was the genesis for Trump's war against the FBI) now finds his power fading, his cloak of invincibility shrinking. He lashes out, claiming he's the victim of some deep state conspiracy. And the dwindling number of believers he can rally to his side view themselves as his soldiers. However, it's just nothing than the last grasp of a man refusing to accept defeat.

When the true history is written, and the epitaph struck, Donald Trump's ranking on who was the worst president won't matter. It may not even matter that much that he tried to stage a coup in order to maintain power, doing so in the fashion that Castro might be proud of. In the end Donald Trump could serve as a cautionary tale for those willing to listen. That the goal of achieving the ultimate power comes at a price. Especially for those with evil desires, a contempt for freedom of speech and they who seek to make themselves into a messiah. 

What we can learn from Willard Herschberger

 

It is really hard to fathom the hatred that is being spewed from the likes of Charlie Kirk and his ilk. All of their venom directed at Simone Biles because she actually values her mental health is such a sickening display. Then again of course, these are the same folks that stood and applauded when Donald Trump mocked P.O.W.’s. Kirk has led his followers to call Biles unamerican, simply because she bowed out of the Olympics to focus on her mental health.

And this brings me to Willard Herschberger. Herschberger was a catcher for the Cincinnati Reds before World War II. He was born in California and was a high school baseball teammate of Richard Nixon, who’d go on to infamy as president of the United States. In high school Willard was a star player not only in baseball, but in football as well. It wasn’t long before the scouts showed up, and Willard found himself playing in the minors for the most popular baseball team at the time, the New York Yankees.

However, good times were marred with a tragedy. Upset over family finances, Willard’s father took his own life via a handgun. Willard navigated his way through this and despite early struggles, began to show some promise as a minor league player. The Yankees however, had a future hall of famer player named Bill Dickey blocking Willard’s path to the majors. The Reds called the Yankees, since they were looking to have a capable back-up to Ernie Lombardi, who was one of the top stars of the era. Not only did Willard perform well, he almost took the starting job away form Lombardi. And Willard would even get a chance to take a shot at the New York Yankees, the team that had traded him away. The Reds faced off against the Yankees in the World Series. Willard drove in the game tying run in game four, but the Reds lost the World Series to the Yankees.

In 1940, Willard was secure in his position behind Lombardi. However, events would take a tragic turn in July of 1940. The Reds dropped a double header to the Boston Bees (now known as the Atlanta Braves) with Willard going 0-6 in game two. Willard blamed himself for the loss, confiding to teammate Billy Werber that had Lombardi caught that game, the Reds wouldn’t have lost. Willard blamed himself for calling a terrible game for the pitchers. He even made reference to taking his own life, just as his father had done years before. Reds manager Bill McKechine talked to Willard and soon it seemed that Willard had calmed down. McKechine then made a tragic error, he assumed Willard would be fine.

The next day Willard missed batting practice. A Reds official contacted the hotel Willard was staying at, and was informed by Willard that he wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be able to play. It was agreed upon that Willard would at least be at the game in street clothes and would cheer on the team.

The first game of the double header with the Bees had come and gone, no sign of Willard. So the Reds called a childhood friend of Willard’s that lived nearby and had him go to the hotel and check on him. When he arrived, Dan Cohen, the man whose duty was to retrieve Willard, was welcomed by a locked door. He then went to the front desk, and explained he was sent there by the Cincinnati reds to check on one of their players. The manager, with Cohen, was able to gain access to the hotel room, where they found Willard dead in the bathroom. He had slashed his own throat. After the Reds finished the second game, Bill McKechine gathered the team together, and informed them of Willard’s suicide.

Willard Herschberger lived in a time where no one gave any thought to mental health. You just picked yourself up, dusted yourself off, and went about your day. The traditional role for a man was that you never gave into emotions. You had to be tough at all times.

Willard is a cautionary tale. Donnie Moore is a cautionary tale. Donnie Moore never got over giving up the game winning home run that cost the Angels the shot at the World Series. Three years later, he was dead, took his own life after a failed murder/suicide attempt.

Freddie Prinze seemed to have it all back in the 1970’s. He ended up taking his own life.

And this is why finally we take mental health seriously. There is a lot of pressure in our daily lives. The amount of pressure on a professional and Olympic athlete, especially in the time of social media, has become tremendous. We need to support Simone Biles, not scold her. We need to let her know we’re there for her, not there to mock her. Clearly, Charlie Kirk and his ilk have a base to play to. A base of rabid patriots who consider the slightest gesture as a challenge to the flag. To them, Kirk has them believing that Biles is a traitor on par with Benedict Arnold or Aldrich Ames. And that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Simone Biles is a brave woman. Many struggle to admit to themselves in private what she admitted to the world. Hopefully this starts a positive trend. A human life is more important than a sporting event, even such as grand as the Olympics. And it’s about time we remember that.

Winning The Argument For Police Reform

 

The following blog was inspired on May 24^th thanks to a discussion I became part of on a thread on Facebook. A woman had posted her distress over someone stealing her car. She mentioned she was going to call the police, despite not being overly trusting of them. Cue one person that had to chime in with “See, you don’t like cops, but who do you call when you need help? The cops.”

I decided to engage in the conversation, and brought many of the points I’ll be talking about in this blog. The woman responding was entrenched in her original argument, her responses became circular and thankfully, the moderator ended up closing off comments. However, thanks to this woman I was finally able to craft the perfect way to defuse those who claim you can’t seek police reform and still ask for their help when needed. So, if you feel that serious police reform is needed, and you post about an incident where you needed police assistance, and someone pulls that line on you, there’s several ways you can defeat their argument. And here it is.

It’s not police as a whole that you distrust, it is the bad apples that manage to paint police as a whole in a bad light. It really is high time that we find a way to remove these folks from service before the overall image of police is damaged to a point no one trust them as a whole.

Another issue that needs to be addressed is the loopholes that allow an officer with a history of use of excessive force and other rules violations to essentially gypsy from department to department. There was, for example, a case that made national news in Ohio a few years ago where a man was shot in the back by an officer who’d transferred from another department in another state. This officer had a long record of use of force violations and questionable shooting incidents. He’d also been fired from a third department for those exact reasons.

You could also mention your fears about the equipment that departments have been able to acquire. For example: There’s no reason that a city with a rather small population should have a fleet of military SUV’s that the department will most likely never use, and will sit in a garage collecting dust. While these vehicles may make for some cool and intimidating photo shoots, they have no practical use for this department. Not to mention it was your tax dollars that most likely paid for this vehicle. And when they mention some unique setting in which the vehicle will be needed, simply reply that the odds of such an event actually occurring are rather remote, so remote that it still does not justify the purchase of said vehicle.

Over the last several years, it feels that departments have placed diplomacy aside and instead feel the need to intimidate instead. Yes, granted, there are cases where crowds are unruly and drastic matters need to be put in place. However, showing up at protest you know the odds are that it won’t become violent, and your department opts to show up dressed in tactical gear, you’ve already turned up the heat and by the actions of the department, inflamed tensions. It is almost like the department has shown up looking for a fight.

No one wants to engage an angry person. People tend to take insults to heart. However, police in these cases must set personal feelings aside and simply allow someone to vent. And for those that think this is a wild and impractical idea, allow me to use an incident that happened in Toronto, Canada back in 2015 as an example.

A man, angry at life in general, pulled a knife on a cop, and threatened him. The officer sat on a nearby desk and engaged the man in conversation. No one ended up getting shot, no one was tased and most importantly, no one died. The officer, without any use of force, was able to actually get the man calmed to the point where the man gave the cop the knife and surrender to police.  I have to admit, I was amazed at the poise of the officer to never once lose his cool and how he was able to defuse the situation. Feel free to use that as example if you ever engage someone really entrenched in their if you don’t support cops, don’t call them if you need them argument.

As you can see with the example, force doesn’t always need to be the first option. And that is part of the problem people seem to have. A frustration over the fact that we’ve seen countless Body Wore Camera footage where a police officer engages a person and the officer is already at an eleven as far as their emotions go. No calming voice, just get on the ground or I’ll shoot you. And that in many cases, is only going to make a bad situation worse. Why is it police in other countries can defuse a situation with words and we can’t? Is it our training methods? Is it our desire to prove were the alpha dog in the situation? Could it be that were already so stressed as a culture, we don’t know how to react without overreacting?

And it doesn’t have to be in an internet thread that you use the above talking points. You could use them with a friend or family member that sees your calls for police reform as an attack on police themselves. It should not have the death of George Floyd to spark change. Change should have not just started with Eric Canter. It should have started when Bull Connor turned firehoses on children as young as six years old who used their voice to protest. To think that serious reform is not needed is simply not accepting that facts before you. Seeking police reform, and rooting out police officers that are more Hollywood cliches than actual cops should not be a controversial topic. When you present the argument that it is in the best interest of police to root out these cops, and to no longer purchase surplus military equipment as a tool to instill fear in the citizens, you’ll seen the relationship between the community police improve to heights you could not imagine right now. And how knows, once someone sets emotion aside in favor of intellect, they’ll see the issue as well. And an adversary will become an ally.  

Dr. Seuss and The Origins of Cancel Culture

 Scrolling through social media and seeing conservatives outraged at “Cancel Culture” amuses me in a way mere words cannot do justice. They act as if this was something created by liberals and social justice warriors. They say they are trying to control what people watch on T.V. and what type of books they can read, and so forth. And of course, these people, the likes of Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens get applauded by their legions of fans, many of whom are clueless to the fact. Clueless to the fact that the seeds for what conservatives claim to despise were planted year ago. To be frank, crying about cancel culture is just conservatives yelling at the tree they planted.

Now, I should say the books written by Dr. Seuss that are being discontinued are books that I’d never heard of, not a single one of them. And some of the images in the book are wildly inappropriate, but they fit the times in which they were written because that was the mindset of society. I’ve had to research the books and looking at them through the prism of modern times, I get why people are offended. As someone of Sicilian and Italian heritage, I get why people are upset. Me, I just roll at laugh at the stereotypes I see. I don’t let it bother me at all. I get that many times, the stereotypes exist because they fit the narrative of the story or the joke.

Let’s address cancel culture. It’s a rather new buzzword that is completely meaningless. Yeah, it gets clicks on the internet and gives news networks something to fill T.V. time with. It is, however, something that has its roots with conservatives and it’s something much more sinister than what exist today.

Lenny Bruce is one of the greatest comedians of all-time. Bar none, just bar none. He’s the guy that started it all, the counter-culture humor that gave us George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Sam Kinison, among many others. Bruce was arrested for saying the word ‘cocksucker’ on stage. Conservatives, especially the Christian conservatives, set their sights on him. They didn’t like that he poked fun of religion. And when Bruce faded away, they set their sights on Carlin and Pryor. And each time, they used children as pawns, saying that they unbridled comedy of these men would destroy impersonable children. It would lead to the breakdown of polite society. Simply because they found it offense, they felt it gave them license to set the tone for everyone else. And it wasn’t just comedians these conservatives tried to cancel.

M*A*S*H and All In The Family were like no sit-coms before them. Yeah, sit-com provided great entertainment and provided and escape, but in no way shape of form going to address social issues. Star Trek used thinly storylines to address issues like racial tensions and other social issues. M*A*S*H may have been set in Korea, but its attempts to show the true horrors of war were clearly aimed at Vietnam. And All In The Family addressed racism, and other social issues. And because conservatives did not like these shows, these shows became the targets of write-in campaigns, if not to get the shows canceled, but perhaps to get the shows utterly revamped to fit their taste.

If you need a modern example, The Simpsons has been the bane for conservatives since the 1980’s. Same goes for South Park. Conservatives have been trying to cancel comedians and shows for decades. However, they want everyone to forget their history. They seek to re-cast themselves as the protectors of the first amendment, when they are the same ones that literally put Larry Flynt on trial over a parody interview of Jerry Falwell.

One thing that the likes of Candace Owens, Tomi Lahren, and Ben Shapiro don’t want their follows to do is to research. If they did their own research, they’d see that the very people they follow and though were champions of freedom of speech are themselves products of those that created what would become cancel culture in the first place. Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, of the conservative news outlets as well will declare this an assault on the first amendment, yet they are the ones that champion and take pride in the fact that Colin Kaepernick has been blackballed from the NFL. And all Kaepernick do was take a knee during a song to shine a light on police brutality. Funny how they fail to mention Kaepernick, they man they tried to cancel. I guess its okay for them to cancel someone. And that’s just it, when you boil it down to the essentials. Conservatives started something years ago, and when the tables get turned, they don’t like it. So next time a conservative gets angry and cries cancel culture, just mention Colin Kaepernick, and see what type of response you get.  I’m sure they will come up excuses and do a lot of verbal tap dancing to avoid admitting they are guilty of doing that which they decry.    

Cancel culture is just a buzz word, created by social media as a way to separate what is going on now, from what they did for decades. And it’s time that their ruse becomes expose

To save themselves, the GOP must vote to convict Trump

 

I’ve got an idea that will save the GOP. Now hear me out, because this will benefit the country in the long run. The Republicans would be best served voting for impeachment. Now, I get that there are members of the GOP who aren’t taking the impeachment trial seriously. I get that conservative media would like us to ignore the history behind the ability to impeach an elected official after they’ve left office. I understand that. And I fully understand that their first instinct is to put party over the best interest of the country. However, now is the time to abandon that dangerous mindset.

To fully understand what I’m talking about, we’re going to have to travel back in time. We’re going to travel back to 1974. It was the year the Cleveland Indians staged Ten Cent Beer night, one of the most disastrous promotions of all-time. It was the year the fighter jet, the F-16 was born. Patty Hearst is kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a group she later joins with. Hank Aaron breaks Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record, and author Stephen King publishes the novel Carrie. And in August of 1974, a first happened in American politics. A president resigned the office.

Richard Nixon, exposed in plotting the Watergate break-in, was facing impeachment. Well, to be honest, the impeachment was set in motion when Nixon decided to fire several staff members and others resigned in what was to be known as the Saturday Night Massacre. Not wishing to become the first president since Andrew Johnson to be impeached, and knowing a conviction would end his prized political career, Nixon quit. He resigned, he left office. This occurred on August 9^th, 1974. With his Vice President Spiro Agnew having already resigned in disgrace, Gerald Ford, who became Vice President after serving as House Minority Leader, would become president, thus becoming the first president to serve despite never have been elected directly by the people.

It could be argued that Nixon, a shrewd political mind, might have opted to resign as part of his grand scheme to save his political career. After all, he was defeated in his efforts to become president by John Kennedy, and wouldn’t so easily surrender an office he’d always had his sights set on. However, on that August night, that’s where the country was, history made with the first president to resign from office. One month leader, Gerald Ford made a critical error. It was ill-conceived from the start to be frank. What was known as Proclamation 4311, on September 8^th, 1974, President Gerald Ford issued a full pardon to Richard Nixon. Needless to say, the press had a field day, calling the pardon Ford’s crooked deal. Many felt the friendship between Ford and Nixon played a role in the pardon. Many felt that Ford had cheated the American people out of the trial they so richly and rightfully deserved to see play out. Richard Nixon escaped being impeach simply by quitting. Gerald Ford, in his prime-time address to the nation, said the pardon was issued in part, to help America move on from Watergate and to put it in the past. That mindset might sound familiar, because it’s the same argument that is being used in the Trump impeachment. Ford often cited the Supreme Court case, Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79 (1915) which essentially stated that should a person accept a pardon, it meant they were acknowledging guilt. So, per the logic applied by Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon accepted guilt for the Watergate scandal by accepting the pardon. I find multiple flaws in the logic used by the court to reach that decision, but that’s neither here nor there.

The fallout from the pardon was easy to predict. It angered the nation, it failed to heal any wounds. Any notion that it would heal anything was quickly disproven. And it would end up paving the way from Jimmy Carter to become president. The nation as a whole was so angered by the pardon, the GOP ended up being rejected by them.

And that brings us to 2021. Donald Trump has taken over the role made famous by Nixon. And the evidence shown in the first two days of the trial have been damning. Trump supporters using the American flag as a weapon. Trump supporters yelling “Fuck you pigs!” to the police and making chants about not only killing the cops, but chants about hanging then Vice President Mike Pence and shooting Nancy Pelosi. And the video evidence has been chilling, however not as chilling as another factor. Setting aside that the people that stormed the Capitol in the attempt to overturn a fair election process, those very people have made public statements, both then and now, that they fully believe they were acting on an edict set forth by President Donald J. Trump. Please take time to re-read that sentence because it’s important. The very people who took part in a criminal act said themselves they were under the notion that they were carrying out the desires of Trump himself. And they are saying this in their court pleadings. And that could very well be more damning than any video shown.

The only difference is that there was no cult like admiration of Nixon like there is of Trump. I’ve often joked that Donald Trump is the modern era Golden Calf. Many modern Republicans call him the true leader of their party. They view him as a new messiah. It’s quickly going from being a political party to becoming a cult.

As I harken back to Nixon and Watergate, now is the time for the GOP to not allow history to repeat. They must cast aside their loyalty to Trump and any fears of what his followers will do. They must put country over party and vote to impeach Trump. History demands that they do. And just as President Biden should steer clear of the errors of Gerald Ford, the GOP should heed the call of history, and vote to impeach Trump. Because if they don’t, they very well could fall by the wayside, just as the Whigs did in the 1800’s. To help heal the country, to save their party, the GOP must vote to impeach Trump. If not, we’re going to relive the post-Watergate era all over again. And the GOP could very well find themselves replaced by the Green Party in the political landscape of America.