A nation in distress

A nation in distress

We are standing, once again, on the threshold of history.

Significant history.

Something that has only happened twice before: A vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach a president. It happened to Andrew Johnson in 1868 and to Bill Clinton in 1998. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 when it became clear that the House was going to send charges to the Senate for a trial he knew he could not win.

There’s no pleasure in any of this no matter how much you dislike this president, only a gloom that will hang over the nation for quite some time.

The nation recovered pretty quickly from the Clinton impeachment because, well, this was a guy who cheated on his wife. It was pretty easy to see why he would lie to avoid the wrath of a woman scorned.

He broke the law, violated his oath of office, abused the office of the president, and in many ways revealed just how detestable he is as a human being.

But he did not jeopardize the security of the United States, and he showed that even though he was capable of breaking the law, he held a certain respect for it and the system by being much more cooperative with investigators.

Yes, he lied, but if we were simply going to impeach somebody for their lies, well, this whole thing with the current president would have been slam-dunk over about six weeks after his inauguration.

I was in the game back during the Nixon era, working in the news business at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. We had deep discussions about what our colleagues in Washington, D.C. were doing. We learned a lot from their reporting about how to dig for context, how to become tenacious, and how to create our own “luck” when chasing a story.

We marveled at what Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward were doing with their coverage of the Watergate break-in. We studied the investigations conducted by The New York Times as they covered Daniel Ellsberg and what became known simply as “The Pentagon Papers.” We were proud of our profession, our fellow newsies, and the incredible responsibility we had for delivering the truth to our readers.

Truth is double-edged, you know, and it is not always the domain of the liberal wing, as we learned through the years. But we knew that no matter how deeply it was hidden, no matter how many lies were told, the truth was always out there. We just had to turn over enough rocks to find it.

In fact, there was so much truth uncovered that many of those from my generation became so disillusioned, so disenfranchised, and so distraught that we gave it all up.

We really didn’t give a damn about Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, or Dubya. Dr. Timothy Leary’s advice to turn on, tune in, and drop out seemed a convenient and comfortable way out.

I know that in my case it wasn’t until Barack Obama that I cared enough to extend respect to the person holding an office I believed had been tarnished by too many for too long by a succession of morally bankrupt, reprehensible sharks.

We had eight years of relative calm, except for the white nationalists and bigots who took offense to a black man in the White House. His politics were centrist, and his lifestyle was so clean that he would become a symbol for family values without banging the hypocritical drum of the religious right. He offered compassion, leadership, and hope.

Now, however, we’re back in that place of disillusionment, disenfranchisement, and being distraught so much so that I don’t care about sending the president to jail. I don’t care about any judicial punishments. I just want him out of office and out of our lives for good, and I hope they boot his cronies with him. Borrowing a line from Ronald Reagan, he claimed that his goal was to drain the swamp. The swamp, however, is now more polluted and more dangerous than ever.

I heard somebody mention recently that they hate the president.

But to truly hate somebody, you also must have had a love for somebody. Otherwise, those emotions are impossible to rise, and I certainly never held a place in my heart for this president.

So I don’t hate him, I just want him to go away.

I want them all, as a matter of fact, to go away.

I mean, all of the talk through the run-up to an impeachment vote has been about the politics of the House vote with the story anchored on how voting their consciences could get some of our elected leaders thrown out of office.

That’s cowardly, of course, immoral and not within the intent and spirit of a Constitution that was drafted with clear rules and procedures about ensuring the continuation of our republic.

Of course, the toadies who run our government are more concerned with preservation of their jobs than preservation of the nation, even as it teeters on collapse.

As a result, we are a nation in distress, a chaotic tangle of anger, hatred, and lies.

Regardless of how this impeachment thing goes, that will not change.

In fact, we are at a place where no matter what happens, passions will be inflamed, and not in a healthy way.

It’s a bleak self-portrait, a harbinger of more sorrow, pain, and disappointment.

Removing the president is a necessary step, but that doesn’t mean a rosy future. The events leading to Nixon’s resignation and the arduous impeachment and Senate trial of Clinton took their toll on the United States. There is no celebration or joy in the impeachment of a president.

Things will worsen before they get better, and recovery will take a long, long time.

It will be decades before we return to whatever normal was. The question is, however, if we will recognize it should we come near normal again.

Courage.

The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.

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