A monumental waste of time

I refer to the latest Trump impeachment.

Of course, he's guilty---of sedition, incitement to riot, and treason. But no one thinks, or ever thought, that enough Republican senators would grow a conscience to vote for conviction. The RepubliQ Party is still firmly in the thrall of Trump.

Rather, this is about putting those same Republican senators in the spotlight and making them squirm. When they vote to acquit, they will be handing an axe to their upcoming Democrat opponents and inviting them to hit them with it. But I think that effort is misguided. We already know that Republicans will vote for any horrible piece of filth regardless of his crimes or his evil nature. This impeachment circus isn't going to change that.

So they're spending a lot of time (and taxpayer money) reciting Trump's crimes while the Republicans sit back with bland expressions and their arms folded, their minds already made up that their orange god can do no wrong and they'll vote to acquit (some using the debunked argument that we can't impeach him now, as a sop to their consciences). I know that the Democrats have said that given the serious nature of Trump's crimes, they had to make this quixotic effort. But why? It's like holding a criminal trial wherein the judge walks up to the jury box, claps the foreman on the back, hands half of the jury envelopes containing checks, and gives them several bottles of whiskey. Is there any point to even having the trial?

Kevin Lewis inquires:

"Is there any point to even having the trial?"

Why, yes, . . . of course there is a point.  That Kevin Lewis, a prime target of the show performers, sees through the farce suggests the Democrat Party isn't very good at it, . . . yet.

Of course the "trial" has nothing to do with crime or justice; it is an exercise in political theater. 

Definition: "show trial" : a judicial trial held in public with the intention of influencing or satisfying public opinion, rather than of ensuring justice.

From wikipedia:

* * * * * *quote * * * * * *

Show trials were common during Joseph Stalin's political repressions, such as the Moscow Trials of the Great Purge period (1937–38).

The Soviet authorities staged the actual trials meticulously. If defendants refused to "cooperate"—i.e., to admit guilt for their alleged and mostly fabricated crimes—they did not go on public trial, but suffered execution nonetheless. This happened, for example during the prosecution of the so-called Labour Peasant Party [ru], a party invented in the late 1920s by the OGPU, which, in particular, assigned the notable economist Alexander Chayanov (1888-1937, arrested in 1930) to it.

Some public evidence of actual events during the Moscow Trials came to the West through the Dewey Commission (1937). After the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991), more information became available. This discredited the New York Times reporter Walter Duranty, who claimed at the time that these trials were actually fair.

* * * * endquote * * * * *

Its not about getting a guilty verdict and its not political theatre.    Americans saw what happend - the insurrection, the murders, the confederate flags, and the speech that led up to it.   Americans have made up their mind.    We dont need to make Ted Cruz and the Proud Boys TV Network acknowledge it.     

What we do need to do is have a permanent record of the event and the disposition of every Senator currently sitting in office.     They can shrug off Capitol Police offers being bashed in the head with the AMerican Flag by people wielding the Confederate Flag.    Let AMerica see how our Senate has been infilrated by extemist, anti-Democratic traitors who give their blessing to  a man who tried to kill America.   

Thats vital  information for voters to have before going into a voting booth.    

Don Diego pretends to not understand that a trial of an actual criminal who is indisputably guilty is anything but a show trial. He parrots the false Republican narrative that the impeachment trial is "political theater" (DonDiego should learn to think for himself!).

What makes it pointless is that enough of the jury (Republicans) is crooked (has been bought off) to make a guilty verdict impossible. The accused orange thing should just be subjected to criminal prosecution, like any other criminal.

DonDiego acts in odious fashion by comparing the current impeachment trial to Stalin's show trials. Even DonDiego, blinded by Trump-love, can see the distinction: namely, that in the impeachment trial, the accused is indeed guilty of high crimes, including treason.

Well, of course, it's the Republican party that's on trial, not Trump as such. But if we show America that these Republiscum senators are nothing more than Trump lackeys, Trumpers rather than senators, Trumpers rather than Americans, will we uncover anything we didn't know already? These people have already forfeited their morals, their principles, and their duties to serve the Orange Asshole. Only a few--half a dozen or so, not enough to convict--are having second thoughts.

So I can't see a single evil idiot Trumper seeing all this and changing its mind. They will march into the voting booth in 2022, heads held high, and vote for whomever the RepubliQ party tells them to--even if the candidate is evil, a wackadoodle, or an evil wackadoodle.

Time has a way of killing partisan views of history.     Case in point.....half the country believed the Iraq War was a just cause and Sadam Hussein was somehow involved with 911.    That was the partisan bullshit being fed to conservatives for years.      Nobody believes that bullshit anymore.       

10 years from now you wont find many conservatives confessing to owning a MAGA baseball cap or defending the bullshit fairy tale of the stolen election.    But there may still be some Senators serving who voted to let the attempted coup go unpunished.    That is their legacy and it should be worn like a scalet letter.

An explanation of what legally constitutes "Treason":  Treason Clause

[The reference includes lots of discussion about legal interpretations and historic precedents.

Like, f'rinstance:

"To further guard against the prospect that the government could use false or passion-driven accusations of treason to undermine political opponents, the Treason Clause provides that the offense may only be proven by “open confession in court,” or on “the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act.”] 

The authors of the Constitution defined the term "treason" specifically so as to restrain those who would bandy the charge against innocent political opponents.  Nonetheless, irrational political opponents still occasionally employ the term frivolously. 

For the record, poor old DonDiego does not own a MAGA cap

"For the record, poor old DonDiego does not own a MAGA cap"

See?  Time has a way of settling things.   It just takes some people longer than others.

Well, then, DonDiego should be comforted by the fact that the Constitutional criterion of two witnesses to the same overt act has been exceeded by several thousand.

DonDiego surely does not believe that the accusations of treason levied against Trump are "irrational" or "frivolous." They are completely rational and in deadly earnest.

DonDiego's continual defense of a traitor makes me question his loyalty to the United States. Ultimately, though, it comes down to his conscience. If he truly believes that Trump is innocent of wrongdoing...well, then, there is absolutely no hope for him, from a moral, ethical, or patriotic point of view.

And that is, to quote a recent failed President, "sad!"

"...my son, be warned: there is no end of opinions ready to be expressed....Studying them [opinions] can go on forever and become very exhausting...For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil."  Eccl. 12:12-14.  LB.

Candy