This historic moment

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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/26/1790313/-This-historic-moment#read-more

This historic moment
Laurence Lewis
Community
Sunday August 26, 2018 · 4:00 PM EDT


The importance of the events of this past Tuesday cannot be overstated. Future historians may look back on it as the day the American republic proved it can survive. It's tempting to be sardonic, to say that Tuesday was the day Trump finally became ex-president, but that's not actually the case. It was, however, the day that but for GOP talking points, all excuses for ending the investigations of Trump’s crime syndicate finally ended. Trump's former campaign manager is a convicted felon. Trump's former personal attorney and fixer is an admitted felon, and just the fact that the man sitting in the Oval Office had a personal fixer defines the abnormality of these times. None of this is normal. None of this is okay. But it is possible that despite its many flaws, many of which Trump has inadvertently exposed, the American system of government and justice can work. And it is possible that if it can work to end this unprecedented crisis, it might also be made to work elsewhere. Perhaps it can even be made to work everywhere.

This moment in history can be an awakening, not only of the need to democratize the United States, but of the equally critical need to make it live up to its most idealistic mythologies. For everyone. For life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For everyone. The compromises and failures we have come to expect and to take for granted no longer are tenable. The incremental progress for which we justifiably have taken pride no longer can be taken for granted as capable of outpacing the increasingly desperate threat from the forces of regression. Progress must be permanent. Regression must be made extinct. But those will not happen if we do not get through the current crisis, and the current crisis is not over. And it will not end quickly or easily, even as there is a quickening pace of revelations and legal ramifications. Desperation unfettered by morality, conscience, or basic human decency is particularly dangerous.

We don't know how this ends. Even as we finally got a hint of a reason to believe that the system might actually work, and that the American republic might actually prove self-sustaining even in the face of its gravest threat since the Civil War, we don’t yet know how this ends. For about a week Trump had been signaling that he was close to shutting down the investigations, and there should be little doubt that if no guilty verdicts had been handed down in Paul Manafort's trial he would have found his excuse. And the Republicans would have continued to do nothing to stop him. That’s how close we were. But a conscientious jury that included at least one strong Trump supporter did its job, weighed the evidence, and took a stand for justice. Not for partisan politics, and not to make a political statement, but for justice. It was a great moment in American history. But it was not the end of the crisis.

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There is only one way forward, now, and that is for the Democrats to recapture at least one house of Congress. And the Republicans know this. They know they are complicit in the grave damage that has been done to this nation. They know that they have no excuses. They know that they are exposed. The idea of full investigations terrifies them as much as it terrifies Trump. And they will use every means they can to prevent democracy from working, and they don't care whether those means are legal or just. They know where legitimate investigations will lead. And they know that in a functioning republic, the cultural, social, political and economic privileges on which their identities are constructed are demographically doomed. They know that their entire ideology is demographically doomed. Desperation unfettered by morality, conscience, or basic human decency is particularly dangerous.

There is only one way out of this. The current iteration of the Republican Party is a clear and present danger to the existence of this democratically elected republic, and its grip on power must be irrevocably shattered. Everyone who can must vote, and everyone who votes must do so intelligently. In the near term, getting some of what we want is a hell of a lot better than getting none, possibly ever again. More than ever in living memory voting is not about want, it is about need, and what we need is for the republic to survive. We can talk about the difference between republic and democracy. We can demand progressive policies that already are supported by the majority of voters. We can force the enactment of more of our ideals. But more than anything, this election year is about ending this unprecedented crisis.

This election is about saving lives, it is about health care, and climate change, and a healthy environment, and violence both here and abroad, and economic and legal justice, but even more it is about saving the very ideas of democracy and republic. To whatever degree you can, get involved. But at the very least, vote. For Democrats. There is no alternative. There is no other viable path forward. This is a turning point in history, and there will be no turning back. There are no excuses.