That flushing sound...

I've not been on a political high horse of late, purposefully. We know that politicians, of any stripe or ideology, are for the most part loathsome swine. There are few members who act with intellectual integrity. But we have all been inundated with so much impeachment noise, depending of course on which party's media accomplices we listen to, that most of us have long since shut down.

Democrats have been under a strange fantasy that Republicans had a desire to uncover the truth regarding the President's overtures to Ukraine to find dirt on his political opponent. Nothing of course could be further from the truth. Impeachment is a purely political exercise. An acquittal was a fait accompli from the GOP senate from day one. These senators have showed that they cared nothing for the concept of right and wrong or founding principles, this is simply about maintaining power. These past few weeks have just been a big show.

Now it looks like it could end as soon as Friday, without calling additional witnesses, especially John Bolton, the one guy who knows where the bodies are buried. They don't want to know.

What our leaders have been trying to do is to carefully craft a narrative where their own actions in this debacle can pass some ideological sniff test with their constituency and escape censure. It is called cover. Later on they can pretend that none of this occurred or that it was a one off event and they can try to once again assert moral superiority. They can do this three card monte sleight of hand with remarkably straight faces. Just look at Lindsey Graham, a master at the grift.

We often hear the words enlightened self interest and that is what it is about, will this vote cost me my job? It is funny to watch how the story constantly changed on Ukraine from Trump and his minions. It started out as it never happened, then perhaps it happened, than finally morphed to so what if it happened? Why do we allow our leaders to lie to us in this manner and then pretend that it never happened? What is the overriding message from the Senate? When Republicans do it it is okay.

Virtue and integrity is a funny thing, once it is surrendered it is very hard to stuff back in the bottle. Which brings me to the old quote from Canadian magnate Max Aitken, also known as Lord Beaverbrook, often wrongly attributed to George Bernard Shaw.

“They are telling this of Lord Beaverbrook and a visiting Yankee actress. In a game of hypothetical questions, Beaverbrook asked the lady: ‘Would you live with a stranger if he paid you one million pounds?’ She said she would. ‘And if be paid you five pounds?’ The irate lady fumed: ‘Five pounds. What do you think I am?’ Beaverbrook replied: ‘We’ve already established that. Now we are trying to determine the degree.”

This President has lied so many times your head spins. Just the last two weeks, the bombed soldiers in Iraq merely had headaches, while the truth is that fifty of them have now been diagnosed with brain injuries. Coronavirus will be good for the United States, that was this morning. What did Richard Shelby say last week - Hey he's human, he makes mistakes. Yes he does, but you never call him on any of them.

He has acted more like a king than a President and he has been enabled by the gutless members of his party, who care more about their own elections than they do about our constitution. Now of course there are the so-called moderates, people like Collins, Gardner and Murkowski. I am not so sure about the latter in this instance, she may be a lone holdout with Romney but you can be guaranteed that Collins will put up a big charade of impartiality and then vote for the home team. It happens every time. And if Manchin flips, and he probably will, they can proclaim a big bi-partisan acquittal.

This administration has turned our government on its head, far worse than Nixon. They have refused to comply with subpoenas, claimed blanket executive privilege on everything, refused to let any executive branch people testify and then have the audacity to poke the House Managers for not bringing proof. This is the end of our long time system of checks and balances and perhaps signals the end of our democracy itself.

Not that they will necessarily care. Do you think Mitch McConnell cares? It is just about winning for these loathsome and hideous vermin. There will be a very small political cost in our fractured world, if any, where the center is now abandoned and both sides flee to the margins. I hope that we Americans remember our once great country.