Even as I wrote this now, I did not make it to the end of\nthe sentence without a stumble. Unlike my teenage days, however, I now can\nsimply back up and overwrite mistakes or even just rely on Microsoft Word\u2019s\nspell-correct functions to fix things for me. How the world has changed. In\nthose days, I had to laboriously apply White-Ou<\/a>t\nto the page. (Millennials can be excused for looking up that brand name.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the woke 2020s, of course, it is perfectly appropriate to\nchange the wording of that exercise to \u201call good men and women\u201d or even \u201call\ngood people.\u201d And indeed, many of the people I will call on in this essay are\nwomen in positions of power in the United States Congress, most notably the\nU.S. Senate. Of the 53 Republican Senators, nine are\nwomen<\/a>. That is more than enough to tip any vote in that body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I mention this typing exercise because it always made me\nwonder, \u201cwhen is now?\u201d What is the crisis that would trigger this aid from all\ngood people, and what would that aid be? In recent weeks, it has become very\nclear to me that now is now<\/em>, and the aid is that of people with enough\ncourage and conscience to develop a clear-eyed vision of the challenge posed by\nthe current President of the United States. The Senate trial of the impeachment\ncharges brought against him started\nthis afternoon<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As sometimes happens, one can see some of the ground\nshifting beneath the feet of those who assumed they could respond from a\nposition of power without response to the evidence or the larger issues\nsurrounding the case. It has happened before, and the shifting of the ground\nwas the fundamental reason in 1974 for the resignation of\nPresident Richard Nixon<\/a> before his case ever came to trial. It is taking\nlonger in this case simply because President Trump has thrown\nup one obstacle after another<\/a> to prevent any witnesses from the Executive Branch,\nand any documents, from reaching public view. Arguing that the House should\nspend endless months challenging assertions of executive\nprivilege<\/a> in order to bring its case, the President and all his henchmen\nseem determined to run out the clock before the 2020 election. Wisely, Speaker Nancy Pelosi<\/a> did not fall for this\ntravesty and insisted on moving forward before Trump\u2019s campaign could summon interference\nin another election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The game now, in the Senate, is to claim that the House cannot\nbring witnesses that it failed to summon during its impeachment investigation, even\nthough most could not be subpoenaed in a timely fashion because of White House\nobstruction. Despite that, a parade of good men and women, mostly civil\nservants and career diplomats, made\ntheir way to the House of Representatives<\/a> to testify both for closed-door\ndepositions and open hearings because now was their time to come to the aid of\ntheir country. For that, most\nwere reviled publicly<\/a> by the President himself. We have never seen such a shameful display of\nexecutive arrogance before in American history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The House impeachment managers, led by Rep. Adam Schiff<\/a>, chair of the House Intelligence Committee<\/a>, in the\nlast two hours as I write this, did a masterful job, in my opinion, of\nhighlighting the hypocrisy of Trump\u2019s allies claiming that the House should\nhave heard from witnesses whom Trump himself barred from testifying. As the public\nbegins to focus more closely on this point, the ground may shift some more\u2014if not\nin changing votes in the Senate on the rules of the trial, then quite possibly in\nNovember when voters decide how much hypocrisy and unfairness they can stomach before\nthey rebel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look, I am not a lawyer, so I am not attempting to present\nlegal and constitutional arguments here, but as a very well-informed citizen, I\nam more than entitled to introduce some moral and intellectual perspective. The\nRepublican approach in both houses of Congress has struck me as a competition\nto produce the best imitation of Sgt. Schultz<\/a> from the silly\n1960s television show, Hogan\u2019s\nHeroes<\/a>, <\/em>which featured some ingenious Allied prisoners of war in a\nGerman stalag during World War II. Schultz was known for turning a blind eye\nwhen Col. Hogan<\/a> engaged\nin some forbidden antics, always using the stock line, \u201cI see nothing<\/em>,\u201d enunciated\nwith a heavy German accent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it may also be a grand imitation of the three wise monkeys\nof Japanese legend, See\nNo Evil, Hear No Evil, and Speak No Evil<\/a>, each of whom participated in a charade\nto avoid seeing the obvious. After all, if President Trump insists his phone call\nwith Ukrainian\nPresident Zelenskiy<\/a> was \u201cperfect,\u201d then there must be no reason to examine\nthe evidence, right? So, let\u2019s hear the arguments first in the Senate trial,\nand decide later whether we wish to view documents or hear from witnesses. If\nit weren\u2019t such tragic farce, it might make for good material for a Saturday\nNight Live<\/a> <\/em>skit. But sometimes, the truth is so baldly scary that any\npotential humor associated with it fades into the shadows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I say that because the evidence is mounting that Trump simply does not understand<\/a>, or does not wish to understand, that presidential power is not and never has been unlimited under Article II of the U.S. Constitution. No previous president has assumed that he was entitled simply to do whatever he wanted. Respect for the U.S. Constitution, to which each swore an oath to \u201cprotect and defend,\u201d and a sense of patriotic honor about protecting democracy itself, restrained their worst impulses. Until now.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n It so happened that, over the recent holidays, I discovered\nand read a short biography of Dietrich\nBonhoeffer<\/a> (Radical\nIntegrity: The Story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer<\/a><\/em>), the German Lutheran pastor\nwho in the 1930s and 1940s undertook to oppose the rise of Adolf Hitler<\/a>. Ultimately,\nhe was involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler in the waning days of the war. With\njust a month left before Germany surrendered in May 1945, the Nazi authorities,\nwith an eye to avenging any opposition to Hitler, executed him at Flossenburg\nprison. To this day, he is regarded as a religious and patriotic martyr for\nstanding up to tyranny under the Nazi regime. He knew the consequences he faced,\nand he was not deterred. I have long known about Bonhoeffer but had not read\nhis story in depth. The short, popularized version by Michael Van Dyke resulted\nin my tracking down (through colleague Allison Hardin as I was recovering from\nsurgery) the full 1,000-page biography from 1970 by close Bonhoeffer associate\nand seminarian Eberhard\nBethge<\/a> (Dietrich\nBonhoeffer: A Biography<\/a><\/em>). I aim to read it in full in the coming\nmonths. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I mention it because, in staring down the intimidation practiced\nby Donald Trump, the relentless shredding of opponents\u2019 reputations, the ignorance\nof history accompanied by thirst for power that characterizes his presidency,\nand the inability to acknowledge, let alone apologize for, error under any\ncircumstances, no one is asking anyone in Congress to put his or her life on the\nline in the way that Bonhoeffer and similar principled critics of tyranny were\nwilling to do. They may fear losing a Republican primary as a result of Trump\nginning up his base, but there is life after politics, and certainly life after\na single defeat by the followers of a president who is likely to be a spent\nforce in American politics within five years. The question is one of having\nsufficient courage and integrity to challenge this march toward authoritarianism\nwhile it still matters. Political self-preservation in the short term is a very\nmyopic goal. Abraham Lincoln\nlost re-election<\/a> to the U.S. House because of his opposition to the Mexican-American War<\/a>,\nonly to resurface a dozen years later as one of the greatest presidents in\nAmerican history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But alas, it appears that when the time comes for someone to\nwrite the story of the 53 Republican Senators in the 116th<\/sup>\nCongress<\/a>, they may need to reverse the title of President John F.\nKennedy\u2019s famous book<\/a> and call theirs Profiles in Cowardice<\/em>. But we shall\nsee. There is always the opportunity for a miracle of conscience. Some good\npeople may yet come to the aid of their country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jim Schwab<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the mid-1960s, before the advent of the personal computer, when a manual typewriter was the state of the art in original document production, I took a high school typing course in which I learned the QWERTY keyboard and how to manipulate my fingers to put words on paper more rapidly. There were some curious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[76,13,997,178,63,604,36,563],"tags":[1470,1468,1017,62,1461,1465,1460,1469,202,1094,1467,1464,1463,345,1466,1395],"class_list":["post-1398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-book-reviews","category-christianity","category-government","category-history","category-national-security","category-political-philosophy","category-politics","tag-authoritarianism","tag-bethge","tag-bonhoeffer","tag-congress","tag-constitution","tag-house-intelligence","tag-impeachment","tag-intimidation","tag-lincoln","tag-nixon","tag-pelosi","tag-schiff","tag-three-wise-monkeys","tag-trump","tag-u-s-senate","tag-zelenskiy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1400,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1398\/revisions\/1400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/staging\/1734\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/DSC00158-e1579649711613-681x1024.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
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