It is snowing in North Texas and the temperature is in the low twenties (Fahrenheit) this morning as this is written. More of the same and in larger quantities is expected along with possible single digit temperatures. And the Senate did not convict Donald Trump.
This very cold weather is bound to give the climate change/global warming paranoiacs another event to hang their collective hat upon. Spending the past fifty years around here, I recall a number of events of extreme summer heat, persistent droughts that ended with huge floods, and severe winters, that appeared sporadically in our region. Interestingly, today’s newspaper mentioned that “The measuring stick for cold outbreaks is arguably 1983. The DFW temperature was at or below freezing for 295 consecutive hours from Dec. 18, through the 30 [sic].” It also reported that the record high for the day was 84 in 1918, and record low was one degree in 1906. (Before my time, actually.)
I am not a “climate change denier” by any means. But my attitude is not to alter our lifestyles in a vain attempt to halt or reverse it. There are too many moving parts to the phenomenon, and humans are not going to move back into caves and forsake the comforts of modern technology. Mankind has dealt with adverse and harsh physical environments from time immemorial— from campfire and frond fans to central heat and air conditioning. The innovators will do so again.
There have been four Presidential impeachments, but no conviction and removals from office. They were all partisan ploys. The looming impeachment of Richard Nixon, which was aborted because he resigned the office, was arguably nonpartisan, which was why the result sought was obtained.
A number of Presidents were threatened with impeachment. These include the founders George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Andrew Jackson, arguably the most like Trump in temperament (and, together with Jefferson, were the Democratic Party’s patron saints until the woke movement deracinated them) was threatened, as was John Tyler, the first Vice-president to succeed to the Presidency. There were others. All fizzled in the early stages.
It was a forgone conclusion that Donald Trump would not be convicted. Why, then, did the Democrats in the House go to the trouble? One excuse was that they wanted to get a conviction to bar him from running again. But his return is remote anyway. What they really wanted was to spike the football. Revenge for taking away the ruling class’s power for four years.
The Trump second impeachment and trial recall a similar, though much bloodier, event three and one-half centuries ago. Oliver Cromwell, who had much in common with Trump, led an insurrection against the then ruling class of England headed by King Charles I. After a decade long actual, not metaphorical, civil war, Cromwell prevailed and chopped off Charles’ head in January 1649. Slightly more than ten years later, tired of the Cromwellian party’s rule in what was essentially a military dictatorship, the populace clamored for and received a Restoration of the monarchy, essentially the former ruling elite. The restored royalists went on a rampage against the Cromwell adherents, executing ringleaders who signed the kings death warrant (a few escaped to the North American colonies and elsewhere). Cromwell himself had died and was “out-of-office” as it were. Nevertheless, his corpse was exhumed, hanged, and his skull placed on a pike at London Bridge.
So then was Donald Trump’s impeachment and post incumbency trial an attempted cathartic moment for our quasi-royalists. The Trump Presidency is dead; their attempt to dismember and desecrate the corpse failed. They will doubtless attempt to select those of his entourage they believe worthy of being symbolically hanged, drawn, and quartered. Perhaps, they speculate, the rest can be left alone to enter the oblivion of irrelevancy. Good luck on that.
