I wanted to post a song tonight, but it’s not a night for singing. I watched the President of the United States be impeached today for the second time, and I wished it meant something. Yes, it will historically, but I no longer know in what kind of history this fact will be embedded.
I rejoiced at Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s win, I rejoiced the night the lights went on in Georgia, I rejoiced when AG Barr resigned, and was happy at the thought of seeing the backs of Miller, Mnuchin, Conway, Pence…too many to name, really. My kids have called me “pathologically optimistic”, and I guess I really am…or have been, but this past week has about done me in.
Suddenly, conspiracy theory is real; reliable sources are talking about the infiltration of the military and police by white nationalists, about chatter involving the storming of state capitals and the taking and killing of hostages. Officials who speak out about all this are receiving death threats. And, the President of the United States was impeached…again… and it will mean just as little as it did the first time. The Senate won’t convict him, and he’ll live off the perks of our taxes. A source at the FBI let out the information that some Republican lawmakers had been taking visitors on tours of the Capitol the day before the January 6thinsurrection. Were there insiders, lawmakers, involved with the coup attempt? Who are they? Who are our military, our police, our National Guard? Is there anyone that we can trust?
I’m reminded of a moment in the film, “Ship of Fools”, which takes place on a boat going from the U.S. to Germany in the late 1930’s. At an elegant ship’s dinner, the passengers are talking about the rise of Hitler in Germany, and one Jewish man (I believe played by Peter Lorre) laughingly says, “What are they going to do? Kill us all?”
These are tonight’s musings of a heartbroken optimist who hopes that she’s wrong.