[Peace-discuss] FW: CIVIL RESISTANCE!--not "disobedience"

[David Swanson]

Fantasies About Russia Could Doom Opposition to Trump
By David Swanson
http://davidswanson.org/node/5399

To many Democrats for whom killing a million people in Iraq just didn't
rise to the level of an impeachable offense, and who considered Obama's
bombing of eight nations and the creation of the drone murder program to be
praiseworthy, Trump will be impeachable on Day 1.

Indeed Trump should be impeached on Day 1, but the same Democrats who found
the one nominee who could lose to Trump will find the one argument for
impeachment that can explode in their own faces. Here's
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/impeaching-trump_us_5869b806e4b0eb586489f3a4>
a "progressive" Democrat:

"In his dalliance with Vladimir Putin, Trump’s actions are skirting
treason. ... By undermining further investigation or sanctions against the
Russian manipulation of the 2016 election, Trump as president would be
giving aid and comfort to Russian interference with American democracy."

There's a bit of a nod there -- in the word "investigations" -- to the lack
of any evidence that Russia manipulated any U.S. election, yet that
manipulation is stated as fact, and a failure to support further sanctions
as punishment for it becomes "aid and comfort." What level of punishment
exactly constitutes the absence of aid and comfort? And how does that level
of punishment compare with the level likely to produce war or nuclear
holocaust? Who knows.

Failure to sufficiently punish a foreign government, even for an actual
proven offense, has never been a high crime and misdemeanor. The United
States is in fact bound by the Hague Convention of 1899, the Kellogg-Briand
Pact, and the United Nations Charter to take any such dispute to
arbitration and to settle it by pacific means. But that would require
producing some evidence rather than mere allegations. Lawless "punishment"
is much easier.

But further evidence can emerge to counter the claim. The lack of evidence
for the claim can weigh ever more heavily on public opinion. And the
dangers of creating further hostility with Russia can enter the
consciousness of additional people.

Meanwhile, we have a man planning to be president later this month whose
business dealings clearly violate the U.S. Constitution in terms of not
only foreign but also domestic
<http://www.salon.com/2016/12/21/conflicts-on-top-of-conflicts-another-emoluments-clause-that-should-bar-donald-trump-from-office/>
corruption. That's a perfectly overwhelming case for impeachment and
removal from office that doesn't require opposing a single incident of mass
murder or offending a single Pentagon contractor.

Beyond that, Trump is becoming president after election day intimidation,
the partisan-based removal of voters from the rolls, and opposition to
attempting to count paper ballots where they existed. He's arriving with
the stated policies of unconstitutionally discriminating against Muslims,
murdering families, stealing oil, torturing, and proliferating nuclear
weapons.

In other words, Donald Trump will be from Day 1 an impeachable president,
and Democrats will have already spent months building their campaign around
the one thing that won't work. Imagine what will happen after all their
hearings and press conferences, when their supporters find out that they
aren't even accusing Vladimir Putin of hacking into election machines, that
in fact they are accusing unknown individuals of hacking into Democrats'
emails, and that they are then vaguely speculating that those individuals
could have been sources for WikiLeaks, thereby informing the U.S. public of
what was quite obvious and ought to have been widely reported for the good
of the U.S. government, namely that the DNC rigged its primary.

By the time the Democrats beat themselves to the floor with this charade,
more facts will likely have come out regarding WikiLeaks' actual source(s),
and more hostility will likely have been stirred up with Russia. The war
hawks have already got Trump talking up nuclear escalation.

Luckily there is an ace in the hole. There is something else that Democrats
will be eager to hold Trump accountable for. And give Trump a month and
he'll produce it. I'm referring, of course, to that greatest fear of Our
Beloved Founding Fathers, the ultimate high crime and misdemeanor: the
presidential sex scandal.
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