Our concern for the successful endurance of our constitutionally designed, tri-partite polity has continued to increase as we follow events reported on the news media. The damage to the office of the Presidency can be effectively, elucidated by the mere mention of that profanation, “Trump.” Our traditionally august and revered Supreme Court has been recently tainted by disappointing revelations that its precedential decisions are at times, motivated, not by jurisprudential wisdom, but by the crass monetary influence of billionaire donors. The salient theme of this essay, however, is our particular concern with the third branch of government, Congress. The latter, determinative body seems to evince the inappropriate and undemocratic (Republican) practice of unprincipled, tactically extortive, demands for unconditional acquiescence to its partisan demands as mandatory to bills being considered, which are deemed by the other party (the Democrats) to be nationally essential.
Recent news reports reveal the urgent need for additional financial and logistical support for Ukraine in its staunch defense against the Russian (Putin) aggression, and for the State of Israel, in its opposition and response to the recent barbaric Hamas incursion. As is evident, in both cases, national integrity and countless human lives hang in the precarious balance. Additionally, the sense of the American citizenry recognizes the existential urgency implicit in the meeting of such needs. Yet, notwithstanding such vital concerns and the expressed will of the deeply concerned, nation, the news media has indicated that right-wing, MAGA, legislators, heartlessly, condition such life-and-death support upon the Democrats’ concession to their draconian and inhumane immigration policy.
Another illustrative and truly obscene example of this irresponsible, callous practice of extortion is the obdurate roadblock established to the implementation of necessary military promotions, vital to the defense of our country, by the densely ignorant, smiling, (“What me Worry?” look-alike) Tommy Tupperville, obstinately based upon his religious objection to the humanistic policy of military reimbursement of travel expenses incurred to obtain an abortion.
It is, in our view, virtually, a tautological or definitional responsibility of an elected legislator to perform the duties of his office, dutifully consistent with the platform and policies pledged by him to his voter constituency, respecting which, presumably, he was elected. Yet it notably appears that for many, the coveted tenure of his legislative position is the salient motivation. Trade-offs, extortive demands, and self-interest appear to represent the working toolbox of many MAGA legislators. For them, the moral and responsible recognition of their national and constituent responsibility has declined to the level of pure self-concern, analogous to the stereotypical candidate for office of an undergraduate fraternity.
In the context of such irresponsible and self-serving tactical practice of extortive ultimatums, one might reasonably inquire, what is the conceivable similarity between the diverse, and complex life and death issues, existing, respectively, between the need for assistance by the besieged and beleaguered Nations of Israel and Ukraine with the complex humanitarian and logistical immigration issues relevant to America’s southern border? The respective merits of these life-and-death issues would appear to be of less significance than adherence to the insular pathology of the cultish MAGA groupthink.
The offending political party would prefer to, euphemistically, denominate such improper extortive practices as “negotiation.” Such pretense is a self-serving, perverse disguise for the employment of this immoral and unconstitutional tactic. “Negotiation” properly references the efforts by disparate parties to reach an accommodation on a relevant and common subject. The tactics euphemistically, referred to as negotiation by the MAGA-influenced legislators are analogous to calling an armed robber’s demand for money from his victim, an earnest request for funding.
On a general scale, traditional American citizens are in the throes of a precarious tri-partite, assault, in fact, on the entirety of their unique, historic Republican Democracy. The Trump threat of autocracy regarding the Executive Branch, the revealed corruption of several Justices of the Supreme Court, and the irresponsible, extortive tactics of MAGA-oriented legislators, all of which, would appear to presage, or at minimum threaten the advent of a dire outcome.
Notwithstanding our expressed apprehensions, our feelings of optimism yet endure, based on our eternal confidence in the responsibly considered vote of the nation’s many informed citizens and their support and unshakeable optimism which have historically proven to be the curators of our aspirational free and enlightened, way of life.
-p.
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