Why it’s dangerous

Many of the questions being asked during the impeachment questioning phase were from senators apparently looking for political cover, fearing the wrath of the vindictive man sitting in the Oval Office, or their own conservative constituents back home. Moral courage was conspicuously absent but for the few senators who evidently still have a conscience. Lawyers do what lawyers do when adeptly dodging the truth or making specious arguments.

After being bored to tears watching the back and forth, Alan Dershowitz walked to the podium to answer a question about the dangers of impeaching the president. Dershowitz, who revels in the notoriety of high-profile cases defending the indefensible — O.J. Simpson and Jeffrey Epstein come to mind—spent a good deal of his five minutes explaining how divided and how dangerous partisanship has become during his lifetime, and how dangerous it would be to impeach the president, who you might remember said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose supporters. Dershowitz proceeded to eloquently opine about this being the most dangerous time in American history, and for that reason we should not impeach the president.

Think about that. My head is still spinning! If this is the most dangerous time in history for the country, who made it so? I think we can blame Newt Gingrich and the Tea Party for its no-compromise origins, but it’s our president who has been the one acting from the first day in office to further divide this country into two camps. I’ve not seen one scintilla of evidence to the contrary. So I guess the unsaid argument Dershowitz was making is that if we were to actually impeach the president we would have a civil war, with the streets filling up with his supporters armed with their military-style rifles. I have every confidence it would be our commander-in-chief leading the rabble.

DANIEL SHERMAN

Bella Vista