Have you ever wondered why the Flight Attendants waste 10 minutes of everybody’s time before every flight pointing out all the safety procedures and emergency exits even though we’ve all heard it a million times before and could repeat the whole spiel back to them word-for-word?
They’re not doing it for their own or our amusement. They’re not doing it for the 999,999 out of 1,000,000 flights for which everything goes as smooth as glass from take-off to touchdown.
They’re doing it for when things GO SERIOUSLY WRONG (as in Miracle On The Hudson level of wrong).
Ever wonder why:
- There are three separate, distinct, and (theoretically) independent branches of the U.S. Government?
- Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life?
- The Attorney General and other senior members of the Executive Branch have to be confirmed by the Legislative Branch?
- The President doesn’t get to make the laws, but can only carry-out laws that have been passed by Congress?
- The Constitution prohibits the President from receiving anything of value from a foreign power?
All of these strictures are not needed for the majority of the time when our Government is being run by honest, capable, and honorable men and women. They are there because the Founders of our Democracy knew from experience that, Human Nature being what it is, sooner or later things would go SERIOUSLY WRONG. If their cherished experiment in self-governance were to survive, mechanisms to limit and repair the damage would need to be firmly established and adhered to.
Most of us learned the above civics lessons before we were out of the 8th grade. Our bloviating bigot of a president evidently missed that year. How else can you explain his constant wailing and bickering about the interfering Judges who won’t let him discriminate to his heart’s content? Or his impatience with the Legislative Branch which refuses to rubber-stamp his every ill-conceived whim?
Or, even more ominously, his increasingly blatant disregard for the Constitutional limits on the power of the office he currently occupies which are their precisely to protect the rest of us from the excesses and naked personal ambitions of the tyrant he evidently yearns to become.
For the good of us all, though, it appears that he is about to be taught the one responsibility granted to the Congress to be used as a last resort in times of mortal danger to the very fabric of the Republic:
- The power to remove the President from office.
It Is Time.
Bridges-Not-Walls 