“I am not a crook.”  – Richard Nixon, 1973

“I’m a crook.  So what?” – Donald Trump, 2019

And GOP leaders don’t care.

In 1974, Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace to avoid being impeached and removed from office for obstruction of justice.  New shiny new president, Gerald Ford, pardoned him of any possible federal charges immediately after taking the oath of office citing that it was in the best interest of the country and “a tragedy in which we all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it. I have concluded that only I can do that, and if I can, I must.”  Nixon walked and lived out his life out in isolation in San Clemente.

In 1998, Clinton was impeached by Republicans in the House for obstruction of justice (for lying about sex), but the Senate failed to convict.  Clinton’s popularity actually rose during the proceedings and the impeachment hearings ended up hurting the GOP in the subsequent mid-term election.

From 2002 through 2008 George W. Bush and Dick Cheney led one of the most lawless periods for the executive branch in US history, prosecuting the “War on Terror” by terrorizing millions of innocents, killing hundreds of thousands of people, detaining thousands without charges, kidnapping and torturing, and killing thousands more remotely by drone.  That’s not to mention the war profiteering and mass surveillance of millions of Americans.  President Barack Obama refused to allow any investigations of the Bush Administration, sweeping 7 years of crimes against humanity under the rug saying, “We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”  Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the sorry lot walked, most into lucrative speaking and lobbying gigs.

So.  Bad conduct, lawlessness, violation of human rights laws, obstruction of justice, and profiteering don’t matter anymore, especially after internal DOJ memos of 1973 and 2000 opined that the President of the United States cannot be indicted for a federal crime while in office.  These memos are just another nail in the coffin of our democracy, giving a criminal like Trump free reign to plunder and pillage the US government, allies, other foreign governments, US industry, farmers, religious devotees, workers (especially union), children, migrants, and the poor with impunity.  Surely, there’s a special place in hell for the sumbitches who came up with that stupid policy that led to the catastrophe playing out on our televisions on a daily basis.

The Founders feared corruption in the executive branch as a critical threat to our democracy.  That’s why they inserted the Emoluments Clause, (Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 8), that forbids federal officials from receiving money, gifts, and titles from foreign governments.  They also inserted Article II, Section 4, which provided for the impeachment and removal of a corrupt president or vice president.  The problem?  Our elected gerrymandered representatives don’t give a shit about us.  Our Senators are drunk with power (or just trying to hang on), and corruption is consuming the very core of our democracy.  The Supreme Court has become a cancer on the rule of law, infested with deplorables who believe that money is speech, unlimited money does not corrupt, and that individual liberty is subject to corporate power and permissions they grant.  And all this set the stage for…

Trump.  Trump is the president the Founders dreaded.  Trump is the president we all feared.  Trump has destroyed our norms of conduct and common decency, ignored our laws, and exuberantly claimed the WH, the US government, our society, and the global economy for himself.  He’s too stupid to actually govern, but smart enough to line his own pockets.  And he’s mean; cruelty and revenge are hallmarks of his infestation of the Oval Office.  Yet, we do nothing. NOTHING.  Our decades long practice of looking the other way in the face of felonious conduct has now come home to roost.  Past presidents and congresses have demurred in the face of abject corruption, and this is what we get.  Who do I blame?  I blame everyone…Nixon, Ford, Clinton, Bush, Cheney, Obama, Gingrich, McConnell, and yes, absolutely Trump.

All these sumbitches let us down, and now we, as individual Americans, are threatened…threatened with the undoing of over 230 years of democracy and the greatest experiment in the history of free people.  Politicians know they can urinate all over our laws and society and there is no price to pay.  Trump understands this…McConnell understands this…they’re raking in millions and millions of dirty dollars as our justice system does nothing.  Our representative form of government atrophies while our leaders do nothing.

Such is the price of complacency and corruption.  The Founders saw Trump coming.  The problem is that those who followed took the easy route and let him come.  Now we’re paying the price.