THE HISTORY OF OUR REPUBLIC: EARLY BEGINNINGS, 1776- TO NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES
Time for a bit of history, some context in which to put the events of the last 39 days, the last four years and 25 days, the last 245 years....
These photos were taken at my home town, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, from and around the Inclined Plane in Westmont, on July 5, 2007. The day after Indpendence Day, in that year celebrating 231 years since the Declaration of Independence, the document created in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania adopted July 4, 1776, in Independence Hall, which established the official estrangement of the 13 British colonies from the mother country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence
Five years of warfare later, after the surrender of Lord Cornwallis' army at Yorktown, Virginia, the survival of this country's rebellion was assured- for the moment. For six years, the nascent loose confederation of sovereign states bumbled along under a document called "The Articles of Confederation." The first president was John Hanson (yup- not George Washington).
https://www.thoughtco.com/john-hanson-biography-4178170
After six very unsatisfactory years under the Articles of Confederation, eleven years after the Declaration of Independence, on September 17, 1787, the document which established the United States of America, the Constitution of the United States, "We the People..." was signed. The group which we now label "The Founding Fathers" had gathered at the same Independence Hall in Philadelphia where the Declaration had been adopted 11 years earlier. They were there- Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and dozens more, from every state, ostensibly to "fix" the Articles of Confederation.
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/founding-fathers
Quickly ascertaining that was not possible, and meeting in secret, keeping their intentions and activities secret from the public (electronic media did not exist and publicity/power seeking politicians who put their self interest above that of the common good were more rare in those days- no Lindsey Grahams or Ted Cruz's), they discarded the old, and in meetings through the hot summer of 1787, crafted a new document. It contained inherent flaws, some of which were repaired over the decades and even centuries to come- the most obvious- and odious- being Article 1, Section 9:
"The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person."
That fancy language meant that until 1808- twenty years later- States "now existing" (not any new ones admitted to the Union) could still import slaves from Africa, but that they could be taxed at a rate of $10 per slave.
So at that point, and for another 77 years for black males (until the 13th Amendment was ratified in 1865), and another 133 years for all females (when the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920), that "All men are created equal" phrase from the Declaration was merely aspirational.
The document- the Constitution- was unique and amazing, and today we revere it as if it had been the Ten Commandments brought down from Mount Sinai by Moses. But we tend to forget that the people who comprised this country, like the Israelites in the desert, were not a homogenous, exalted, educated, altruistic, group capable of immediately understanding and appreciating what they had been given.
The new Americans had built their own version of "the Golden Calf."
Some convincing was in order. Hence, the "anonymous" authors (primarly James Madison, with considerable help from James Madison, and less so from John Jay) of "The Federalist Papers" used the only medium for mass communiction available at the time- written pamphlets- to argue for the ratification of this document which was intended to create a government unlike any heretofore seen on earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers
They succeeded. But they most likely would have been horrified at the desecration of their efforts and the taking of the portion of the name of their document "Federalist" 194 years later by an organization secretly funded by some oil billionaires to create a front for preventing Congressional legislation which would rein in their voracious appetites for acquiring more wealth than their next thousand generations could ever hope to dissipate, and which was intended to put "We the People" last in line, behind corporations, the super wealthy, and government tyranny in the name of "law and order," with the primary emphasis on "order" and not so much on "law." But with guns. Lots of guns.
"Other early donors included the Scaife Foundation and the Koch family foundations. Donors to the Federalist Society have included Google, Chevron, Charles G. and David H. Koch; the family foundation of Richard Mellon Scaife; and the Mercer family. By 2017, the Federalist Society had $20 million in annual revenue."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society
And through their efforts- Madison, Hamilton, and others, the Constitution- the actual birth of our nation, our republic (not a democracy, but similar) went into effect when 9 of the 13 states- the former colonies- ratified it. Delaware was the first- hence, their license plates "The First State." My home state of Pennsylvania was #2 (funny, our license plates have never proudly advertised "We're #2!")
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-constitution-signed
Famously, when a woman stopped Philadelphian (and University of Pennsylvania founder) Benjamin Franklin on the street and asked him what form of government the convention had created, he responded:
"A republic, if you can keep it."
The year 1788 marked the first election of Congress and the President. Senators were appointed by State legislatures for the next 125 years until the 17th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1913.
Voters for the House of Representatives were solely white males.
Only an elite group, electors which comprised "Electoral College," selected by state legislatures, per Article II, Section 1, could vote for President and Vice President. Until 1800, the person getting the second most votes became Vice President. Separate votes for each did not go into effect until the Thomas Jefferson-Aaron Burr imbroglio when the votes ended in a tie, even though voters clearly intended Jefferson to be president and Burr his vice president.
The Twelfth Amendment, which went into effect before the 1804 election, fixed that particular flaw in the original Constitution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
That constitutional republic lasted 73 years, until 1861, when it was torn asunder by the secession by force of arms of eleven Southern states which formed a Confederacy intended to preserve the institution of slavery from the incursions of a government now headed by Abraham Lincoln, the nominee of a party created to end that horrific violation of human rights. Oddly, decades later, Southerners attempted to justify the violent insurrection and treason by claiming the war was never about slavery but that it was about "States' Rights." That was true, in a narrow sense. But only insofar as the Articles of Secession of the seceding states and the speeches of the president and vice president of the Confederacy made clear: the States' "right" to which they referred was the right to own Negro slaves. Here's a direct quote from the South Carolina articles of secession:
"The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Carolina_Declaration_of_Secession
The presidential election of 1860, which put into office the first member of the new anti-slavery party, the "Republican Party," was the immediate catalyst for the secession. But that party did not intend to abolish slavery outright immediately. Its first goal was to stop its expansion into the western territories and new states, and to end its existence gradually as more states came into the union with the power to eventually legislate it into the dustbin of history.
Four years of bloody warfare later- over 600,000 dead- with the unconditional surrender of the leaders of the Confederacy and the capture of its capitol, Richmond, and the capture of its president, Jefferson Davis, the unified Republic existed once again. This time, without the terrible practice of owning human beings as property.
https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/capture-jefferson-davis
It lasted another 156 years until it almost ended January 6, 2021, where for the first time in history, a president who lost an election launched a violent insurrection intended to prevent Congress from ceremonially confirming that the winner of the election would be inaugurated president on January 20, 2021.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trumps-5-hours-white-house-160708543.html
After hours of a bloody insurrection launched by the defeated president, he watched with fascination and apparent satisfaction and pleasure as the event unfolded on live televsion.
Then he began receiving telephone calls from beleagured members of his own political party crying for help as the insurrectionists battered on the doors of their barricaded offices in the Capitol.
One call came from the House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy, who asked him to have his people, his supporters, to "call it off."
Instead, the president, ensconced in front of his television in the Oval Office, claimed that the riotous mob was "anti-fa," a group dedicated to opposing fascism and violent white supremacists who were the supporters and allies of the president.
"McCarthy confronted Mr. Trump on this, telling him that it wasn't antifa and that Trump supporters were entirely to blame for the rioting, according to a person with direct knowledge of the call."
And that was when the president responded:
"Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,”
And instead of responding to the rioters who had stormed the Capitol, injuring dozens of policement, killing one, KILLING A COP, breaking into the building itself by smashing windows, battering doors, and at the entrance to the House chamber itself, getting one of the rioters fatally shot by a House Sergeant at Arms defending the room where members and their families were hiding from the mob, the president called members of the Senate, including one call to newly minted Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, to ask him to enlist more support for challenging the certification of states' electoral college votes in an attempt to overthrow the Republic.
At which point, Mr. Tuberville told the president of his own party that the Vice President had been hustled out of the Senate Chamber to protect him from Trump's mob.
"Tuberville recounted the phone conversation to reporters on Friday, saying,
“I said, ‘Mr. President, they’ve taken the vice president out. They want me to get off the phone, I gotta go.”
Instead of responding to protect Congress, to protect his Vice President, who had loyally stuck behind him for four years, Trump sent out a tweet to his mob:
"Timestamped at 2:26:02 pm, the previously unreleased security footage from inside the US Capitol during the 6 January insurrection showed Mr Pence and his family being rushed out of the chamber as rioters got within 100 feet of him.
Just two minutes earlier, at 2:24 pm Mr Trump tweeted from his now-suspended account, saying:
"Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!"
The mob had erected a gallows with a noose, and began chanting "Hang Mike Pence" as they searched for him to murder him..
They also chanted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's name, as they searched for her to "tear her to pieces."
If Trump's mob had succeeded, if they had found and killed enough Democratic legislators to have allowed the election challenges by Republicans in the House and the Senate to have succeeded- and eight Republican senators and 139 Republican members of the House- a large majority of the 199 Republicans in the House- still voted to overturn the election, even after the riot- then our Constitutional Republic would have ended on that date, January 6, 2021.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/07/us/elections/electoral-college-biden-objectors.html
And, as Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, formerly Senate Majority Leader, who inexplicably voted "Not Guilty" on the sole article of impeachment, said minutes after casting his vote in an impeachment trial which failed by 10 votes of the 67 needed to convict- all 43 voting "Not Guilty" being Republican senators:
"....They stormed the center floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president. They did this because they’d been fed wild, falsehoods by the most powerful man on earth because he was angry. He lost an election. Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot are a disgraceful dereliction of duty. "
Here is the complete text of the first part of his speech:
"January 6th was a disgrace. American citizens attacked their own government. They use terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of domestic business they did not like. Fellow Americans beat and bloodied our own police. They stormed the center floor. They tried to hunt down the Speaker of the House. They built a gallows and chanted about murdering the vice president. They did this because they’d been fed wild, falsehoods by the most powerful man on earth because he was angry. He lost an election.
Former President Trump’s actions preceding the riot are a disgraceful dereliction of duty. The House accused the former president of quote “Incitement”. That is a specific term from the criminal law. Let me just put that aside for a moment and reiterate something I said weeks ago.
There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it.
The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president and having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole, which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.
The issue is not only the president's intemperate language on January 6th. It is not just his endorsement of remarks in which an associate urged quote “Trial by combat.” It was also the entire manufactured atmosphere of looming catastrophe. The increasingly wild myths about a reverse landslide election that was somehow being stolen. Some secret coup by our now president.
Now I defended the president’s right to bring any complaints to our legal system. The legal system spoke, the electoral college spoke.
As I stood up and said, clearly at that time, the election was settled.
It was over, but that just really opened a new chapter of even wilder and more unfounded claims. The leader of the free world cannot spend weeks thundering that shadowy forces are stealing our country and then feign surprise when people believe him and do reckless things.
I said many politicians sometimes make overheated comments or use metaphors. We saw that. That unhinged listeners might take literally, but that was different. That’s different from what we saw.
This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voter’s decision or else torch our institutions on the way out. The unconscionable behavior did not end when the violence actually began.
Whatever our ex president claims he thought might happen that day, whatever reaction he says he meant to produce, by that afternoon we know he was watching the same live television as the rest of us.
A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name, these criminals who are carrying his banners, hanging his flags and screaming their loyalty to him. It was obvious that only President Trump could end this. He was the only one who could.
Former aides publicly begged him to do so. Loyal allies frantically called the administration. The president did not act swiftly. He did not do his job. He didn’t take steps so federal law could be faithfully executed and order restored.
No, instead, according to public reports, he watched television happily as the chaos unfolded. He kept pressing his scheme to overturn the election.
No, even after it was clear to any reasonable observer that Vice President Pence was in serious danger. Even as the mob carrying Trump banners was beating cops and breaching perimeters, their president sent a further tweet, attacking his own vice president.
Now predictably and foreseeably under the circumstances, members of the mob seemed to interpret this as a further inspiration to lawlessness and violence, not surprisingly.
Later, even when the president did halfheartedly began calling for peace he didn’t call right away for the riot to end. He did not tell the mob to depart until even later.
And even then with police officers bleeding and broken glass covering Capitol floors, he kept repeating election lies and praising the criminals.
In recent weeks, our ex-president’s associates have tried to use the 74 million Americans who voted to reelect him as a kind of human shield against criticism. Using the 74 million who voted for him as kind of a human shield against criticism. Anyone who decries his awful behavior is accused of insulting millions of voters.
That’s an absurd deflection. 74 million Americans did not invade the Capitol, hundreds of rioters did. 74 million Americans did not engineer the campaign of disinformation and rage that provoked it. One person did, just one."
*******
Then, McConnell stated that he voted "Not Guilty" because the president impeached when he was still president on January 13, 2021, was no longer president when the trial began.
What he didn't say was that if he had left the Senate in session on January 13, 2021, and not refused to allow it to resume until the inauguration on January 20, 2021, they could have conducted the entire trial while Trump was still in office.
It's as if the manager of a baseball team shoots out the tires of the visiting team's bus as it drives to the ball park, wrecking it, then claiming a forfeit when the visiting team fails to show up on time for the start of the game.
posted by James Finkelstein (Ga.) at 3:37 PM
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