A Sequel to 'Suspicion Rules'

It must seem incredible to most foreigners that the United States has managed, via its 'democratic process' to saddle itself with an entirely unpredictable and untrustworthy president, and yet, with its 'laws-based' system, it seems incapable of getting rid of him.

In a previous article  http://www.otherjones.com/2017/10/suspicion-rules-in-land-of-free.html, I emphasized how easy it is for Americans to become the subject of investigations by the FBI.  What is becoming clear at present is that fidelity to 'the rule of law' and 'the constitution', can also be used to prevent desperately needed political processees from taking place -- or succeeding.

In the particular case of President Donald Trump, the political and legal systems appear more interested in ferreting out some sort of 'interference' by Russia in the election that brought him to the White House, than in finding the most expeditious way of removing him from the presidency in order to save the world from incineration.  America's pretence of  'playing according to the rules' haunts us now, as we try to figure out how to make 'the rules' result in his impeachment.

The frustration of our senators and representatives should elicit tears of compassion, given the amount of time (and taxpayer money) they have invested in this charade.  Every tweet, every word dropped from the Hated Leader's lips, are dissected ad nauseum for clues as to where he is taking the most powerful nation on earth, in a field day for pundits that dwarfs all others. Never mind that the rank and file are left to worry whether they will wake up the next day to news that North Korea has hit Los Angeles -- or that our own Dear Leader has hit Pyongyang.  (It is apparently vital to let Americans know that the president told his secretary of State not to waste his breath trying to negotiate with Kim Jong Un, while passing over the despair of our military leaders  at the idea that he could destroy North Vietnam.)

When yesterday, after hosting military families at dinner, Trump hinted that 'this may be the calm before the storm' the media was left wondering whether he planned to fire Tillerson, or attack 'Little Rocketman' -- almost as if the two held equal weight.

But hey, 'the people' have spoken, forget Hillary's disappointment, we are a 'democracy'.  (When Hitler was in power, Germans didn't tell themselves they were a democracy, but like us, they had been ordered to respect the 'political process'...)

We can only hope that behind the media version of events, clear-headed actors are putting in place the 'legal' and/or  'constitutional' means to remove Donald Trump from the White House -- currently referred to as a chaotic kindergarten -- before the irreparable happens.  The grounds for impeachment of the president defined in the Constitution are limited to  “treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors.” ... treason consisting only in "levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." However, the desperate attempt to prove the Trump campaign's 'collusion' with Russian efforts to influence the election could be seen as the only conceivable crime that could be made to fit that definition.  The problem is that at the same time, this witch hunt sets the country back domestically three quarters of a century, to the period of McCarthy, while risking World War III with the other nuclear superpower.