In case everyone’s forgotten, the push to end slavery in the United States was also “terribly divisive” for the nation.
There were plenty of people, well-meaning and nefarious, who pushed President Abraham Lincoln to let the slavery thing go, for the good of the nation.
The problem then and now is finding the courage to do what’s right no matter how inconvenient or divisive it might be.
The abolitionists were right. The slave owners were wrong.
A wave of Republicans and a handful of Democrats warned today that ramped-up impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump will create great division and angst among Americans.
So?
The president is an incompetent, dangerous criminal whose most recent treachery involved trying to blackmail the Ukrainian government into scandalizing his current chief political foe, Joe Biden.
The evidence of his corruption has always been overwhelming and clear. Trump has broken the law in trying to undermine and obstruct investigations into his campaign ties to the Russians. He has undermined the Constitution by stealing money from the military and usurping the power of Congress so he can build a useless and obscenely expensive wall on the Mexican border. Trump has personally and publicly profited by exploiting his position as president to send business to his hotels. He is an unrepentant and unrelenting racist and islamophobe.
And as of this week, he’s added treason and abuse of power to his growing catalogue of reasons why every principled, cogent and engaged American sees that he is unequivocally unfit for office.
That’s not to say that there aren’t huge numbers of Americans who, for a variety of reasons, just don’t care that Trump is a conniving crook. There are plenty of Americans who agree he’s a pox on the nation, but we elected him and we must suffer him until voters kick him out.
And there are millions of Americans who like what Trump does. They don’t care that he’s a criminal or don’t believe it, even though the evidence is inarguable.
These people are the confederates of our generation. They see their own rights, their own profits and their own interests as the only thing that matters. They are willing to force the nation to suffer Trump at any and all costs, equating him to a bad habit or a lemon of a car.
I’ve seen this before. As a kid, I was astounded at how popular President Richard Nixon remained until the sheer weight of his corruption became overwhelming to Americans whose opinions against him fell like dominoes at the very end.
Nixon was convinced that even if he was impeached by the House, he would survive a trial in the Senate because of his staunch Republican support.
When an overwhelming number of Americans understood the depths of Nixon’s corruption, it became clear that lawmakers voting against impeachment would be dealt with harshly.
And even as Nixon read his resignation on live television, millions of Americans still supported him.
Removing Trump from office doesn’t require unanimity, it just takes two-thirds of the Senate, and we’re likely fewer than 20 votes away — even before impeachment hearings begin.
The pundits confuse polls showing lukewarm support for impeachment with an overwhelming consensus that Trump deserves to be impeached.
With Trump’s tariffs, trade wars, exploding national debt and the unrelenting cycle of the economy acting as a ticking time bomb for the only thing propping up the president’s dismal approval ratings, the end of Trump’s political support will be merciless.
Even Trump must realize that politicians who at one time excoriated him as a candidate and new president and have now come to support him out of necessity will abandon him swiftly when it behooves them to do it.
Like any gangster, Trump has no friends, only victims.
America has suffered under this tyrant far too long. We can no longer allow him to break the law, abuse his office and inflict irreversible harm all over the globe.
We don’t have to.
Of course impeaching Trump is going to be divisive. He would never have been elected if the cancer of America’s new confederacy hadn’t already taken a strong hold.
But abolitionists and those from the Greatest Generation, fighting against other world tyrants, could hardly shrink from their fights because it was going to be divisive.
For the principled, impeaching Trump is inexorable. For the political, it’s just a matter of time.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com