No man, or president, is above the law
Theodore Roosevelt once said, “No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it.” This constitutional maxim apparently has one glaring modern exception: Donald Trump. With all the evidence that makes him the most unfit president in our history, he had the gall to announce his candidacy for president for the upcoming 2024 election.
Evidence, you ask? Outside of two unprecedented impeachments, where do I begin? The constant lying? The extreme narcissism? Preferring dictators to our democratic allies? Denying the proven results of the 2020 election? The Jan. 6 attack on our Capitol? And these just scratch the surface.
The most telling aspect of his announcement lies in his motivation: He is seeking to avoid and circumvent the legal troubles he is facing. Trump will choose to call the new Justice Department investigation “a witch hunt” and “politically motivated.” But the Jan. 6 coup testimony came not from Trump’s enemies but from Republicans and former White House staffers.
It is odd and scary that Trump’s political playbook could have come straight from George Orwell’s novel, “1984,” which highlights the consequences if democracy is replaced by totalitarianism. Considering the attendance controversy at the 2017 inaugural, one of his advisers, Kellyanne Conway, introduced the term “alternative facts” as it related to the disparity between the actual crowd size and Trump’s fiction. “Alternative facts” is represented by the “1984” vocabulary of “untruth” and “doublespeak.” Orwell’s quote, “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations,” equals “fake news” and Fox
News.
The plain fact is that Donald Trump should not be allowed to run for office. His lack of decorum and divisive actions have left our country unsettled and dangerously at odds with each other. In 2008, I was thrilled with Barack Obama’s election not so much because he was a Democrat but more because his selection as president made my belief in the American Dream even stronger. Idealistic, yes, but it made me even prouder to be an American.
Little did I realize that one of the results of his ascension to the presidency would be the rise of racism that I mistakenly considered to be at its lowest ebb in our history. Trump’s regime brought that hateful trait well above ground and has served to divide our country into almost warring factions. Finding themes (antiimmigration, ANTI-LGBTQ, anti-blm, etc.) that inspire his base has done our nation a disservice and cannot be repeated. Make no mistake, banning Trump’s political participation will not kill Trumpism (see Boebert, Taylor-greene etc.) but it will blunt its influence.
In ending, I remain a proud American. I would actually applaud the Republicans’ proposed investigation into Hunter Biden if it shows that Biden broke the law, though I expect that this inquiry is politically motivated and will show little or no wrongdoing. In my opinion, it will further antagonize those with a difference of opinion rather than setting a stage where opposite views can be presented without fear of violence and repercussion. We must resolve to lift the fog which clouds our civic discourse. It is time we defend and preserve our democracy by following one of its most important tenets: No man is above the law!