FEBRUARY 2, 2020 –
Yesterday’s edition of The Washington Post published an opinion piece by James Comey, one of Trump’s many outspoken nemeses. Comey provided cool reassurance to those among us who can’t stand Trump. He cited major upsets in our history, from the assassination of JFK to the demise of the Democratic Party with the rise of Reagan. He also mentioned the hatred between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (before they made up) and quipped that the last time “stable genius” occupied the White House was George Washington—during his first term. Comey reminds us that in Washington’s second term, the president mounted his horse to lead personally, the government’s military put-down of the Whiskey Rebellion. Talk about “executive privilege”! Comey’s words are well taken.
They could be supplemented with many more examples, lengthening the opinion piece beyond its allotted space in The Post. Comey could’ve added (a) corruption embedded for generations in the presidential patronage system; (b) the patently unconstitutional Palmer Raids during Wilson’s regime; (c) the effects of the Great Depression and FDR’s consolidation of executive power—and his attempt to pack the Supreme Court; (d) General MacArthur’s insubordination under Truman and the general’s triumphant return to the West Coast (after Truman fired him) to the stunning adoration of over a million supporters, many of whom demanded the impeachment of Truman; (e) McCarthyism; (f) the illegal means deployed by J. Edgar Hoover; (g) the lies deployed to justify escalation of force in Vietnam; and . . . worst of all, the bloodiest time in our history—the Civil War—followed by the assassination of Lincoln. And so on.
The point being, we’ve survived a lot of bad stuff that ran rough-shod over the Constitution, the norms of civil society, and our basic operating principles. But survival to this point doesn’t ensure our survival going forward. Moreover, such a conclusion begs the question, What is survival?
. . . because meanwhile, spaceship earth has a problem; a problem that is closing in faster than remedial reactions are being deployed. With the current rate of (a) warming of seawater; and (b) ice-melt in Greenland, in the Arctic generally, and in Antarctica, the feedback loop now underway will gain momentum and overwhelm all other problems we’ve created for ourselves.
Enter the candidacy of Tom Steyer. He’s focused on the paramount issue of our time and our future. Yet given our structure of government (even as now compromised), Steyer is not running for Dictator, and even if he were, the position wouldn’t come with a supernatural scepter. Why doesn’t his message resonate more widely than it does? Because we homo not-so-sapiens have yet to evolve to where we can assign equal importance to both our current survival and our species’ future prospects.
“Moreover, in the meantime,” you argue, “who among the Democrat candidates is most likely to defeat Trump? If we don’t defeat Trump, we don’t get to make climate change an issue at all. Would Steyer draw sufficient turnout? His campaign hasn’t yet caught fire.”
And that, my friends, is the nature of our current conundrum.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
