~a column by Colleen O’Brien
June 27 is the date set for what I expect the history books to label “The Stupid Debate of 2024.” Or, with more accuracy, “Virtue v. Vice.”
“He Who Pretended to Know How to Be a United States President and Thinks He Can Pull It Off Again So He Won’t Have to Go to Prison” will open his side of the debate with his limited vocabulary: “hoaxes, witch hunts, scams, fake news, lying reporters, rigged DOJ, criminal incumbent and family” as well as “blood baths” if he’s not elected this time. At one of his latest rallies, he was at it – his lying game – full force, talking about the 20,000 attendees (Las Vegas, June 9) held at a venue that could accommodate a maximum of 3,000 people.
And who cares?
We all need to. Please, you people putting on the debate, you who are asking the questions, ask him why he lies about the weather and the number of people at a rally? They’re both obvious to anyone even casually paying attention. Why he has not been scorned, laughed at and routinely ignored is mind-numbing.
Could you just ask him real questions, like –
–“Why do you lie?” or flat out: “How may lies have you told in public since 2015? Or yesterday?”
-“Do you believe yourself clever because you call everyone who doesn’t agree with you by a derogatory name?”
-“Give me one or two reasons why you consider yourself a ‘stable genius’?
-“Do you plan to stalk creepily behind President Biden onstage tonight, shuffling like a wolverine (AKA glutton or skunk bear according to the Free Encyclopedia) as you did at your debate with Hillary Clinton?”
-“Tell us the percentage of tax cuts you got passed for the wealthy in 2017 compared to what we the rest of us got.”
-“What’s with dissing the American military forces who died in WWII?”
-“When you say to your rally-goers, ‘I don’t care about you. I just want your vote.’ (Las Vegas, June 9 rally), and then laugh to your crowd that the Press will write about a ‘terrible thing I said,’ can you questioners ask if he really admires himself for being the massive manipulator of all time and “How do you feel about that moniker?”
I can hear him now raving about his J-6ers, as he calls his storm troopers who broke into and ravaged the Capitol building, spreading feces on paintings, breaking into Senators’ offices, chanting creepily, “Na-a-ancy, where are you-ou-ou?” and “Pence, we’re going to hang you.”
“J-Sixers” sounds like a junior high sports team from Jacaranda Blvd in some little American town. He also calls his rioters “hostages” of the U.S. government. People who are convicted of crimes are not hostages, they are criminals.
The world watched in real time – and afterward in dozens of videos – the 2,000 to 2,500 right-wing attackers scaling walls like medieval enemies, breaking windows and hurtling flags on long poles like javelins. In the 1950s, javelins came to be considered lethal and therefore illegal in high school and college sports. In the 2020s, the meanest of them became javelin mercenaries aiming at other humans through the windows of the U.S Capitol, where 1, 879 Capitol Police were bulwarking their province to the best of the ability of their low numbers. (140 were injured, five died; “A war zone,” one officer said, “slipping in other people’s blood.”)
I look forward to the once-president (I still cannot believe he was our president) explaining in lying lingo why he didn’t call them off. Please ask the question.
Ask him another question or two: “How exactly is it that you support the police? And the rule of law?”
These seem worthy inquiries for an inquisitive audience who has to figure out how to vote for our next president. However twistedly he will not answer them, we need the questions.
We are privileged to have written into our Constitution a Free Press, and we like it to work for us, the citizenry, who have chosen other jobs and don’t have time to butt in and follow power into its deviously greedy ways. The Press is in existence in the U.S. not to make money (although all businesses go into business to make a living; the Press works to eat, too, so it needs to make enough money to at least pay its reporters); and it’s the only “business” in our declaration of rights to be mentioned and protected, for it isthe Press’s buttinski job to protect us and our Constitution, our Declaration of Independence and our “of, by and for the people” country.
The well-read and thoughtful 18th century colonial writers of these documents set down ideas of French Enlightenment Judge Charles Montesquieu; he was a political philosopher and historian writing about the separation of powers in a government. This was unpopular with the despots of the time – the kings and rulers of Europe, the religious, etc. – who liked having all the power.
Among other forms of rulership investigated (American native governments, for example), our forefathers read in Montesquieu the various ways this new country could direct itself: a republic, based on virtue (a noble goal); a monarchy, based on honor (a pride); and a tyranny, basedon fear a (tyrant works from tyranny – cruel and self-serving). The wisest men of our brief history decided they liked the idea of the first one – a republic.
I can’t wait for the once-president (I still have a difficult time believing it) to explain why he didn’t stop the wild riot of maddened men and women descending on our Capitol. You will ask this question, won’t you, CNN and ABC?
Ask him again: “How exactly is it that you support the police and the rule of law?”
Or “What were you thinking as you watched the assault on TV a mile away?”
As our erudite forefathers of three centuries ago studied what they should and could do with their new country once they’d gotten rid of King George III, they concentrated on Montesquieu’s vision of the simple possibility of a separation of governmental powers into political authority: a legislature (writing law}); an executive (one person with a vice-executive in case of death or mental vacuum of the first executive); a judicial branch (testing newly minted laws to assure they were actually honest and of goodwill for the people); These three entities would be the safest and most effective in promoting liberty as they watched and balanced each other.
This foolproof idea was finagled to hell in the cringeworthy 45th administration.
We’ve been trying to watch and balance and advance for the 235 years since the Constitution was written and published, 1788-89. Too often, we’ve failed, gone off the rails of our uncannily ideal Constitution. But the striving, the drive toward decency, respect and liberty for all humans is at the core of our lives, of our history, of a human movement on this pale blue dot of a planet toward love and compassion for everybody and everything.
We are far from achieving those last two attributes, but we continue working toward them within a form of government in which a majority of us simply want liberty of body and soul, respect for ourselves and others, no wars, no raping of the world, no unfairness because of our color or our gender, of our belief in a god or no god.
To elect someone like Trumplethinskin again will erase – bury forever – what humans have accomplished for decency from a period in time that for a million reasons of sanity began to encourage people to think that we humans wouldn’t be awful forever; that we could begin to believe and know in our hearts and souls that all people are worthy, not just the self-made rulers, writers of bibles and torahs and qurans, untold centuries of bullies, also known as “people whose hearts are boulders and heads are straw,”*
*The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd, p. 122
