Imagine
Imagine, just for a moment, if Barack Obama had done even one of the things Donald Trump has done: imagine if Obama had unilaterally launched an invasion of Venezuela with no constitutional authority whatsoever, shredding the plain language of the Constitution that gives Congress, not the president, the sole power to declare war, as stated explicitly in Article I, Section 8, which exists for the express purpose of preventing exactly this kind of reckless, ego-driven authoritarianism from dragging the nation into conflict on a whim, and now imagine Trump voters sincerely believing that capturing Maduro is somehow going to “fix” Venezuela, just like capturing El Chapo “fixed” Mexico, because to MAGA this is not geopolitics or human suffering, it’s a reality show, it’s cosplay, it’s the delusion of people who still support a child molester while he steals their healthcare, detonates the national debt, explodes the cost of living, terrorizes hard-working non-criminal immigrants, accelerates climate collapse, tramples the Constitution, and allowed over a million Americans to die from a so-called “hoax” before unleashing a mob on the Capitol to try to steal the 2020 election, and you are easier to fool than a kitten with a ball of yarn; imagine if Obama had publicly lied about a deadly pandemic, told Americans everything was under control while privately admitting people were going to die, and then did absolutely nothing meaningful to protect them, imagine if Obama lost an election and decided he was entitled to stay anyway, summoned a mob, told them to “fight like hell,” and unleashed them on Congress while police were beaten, lawmakers ran for their lives, people died, and he watched it all unfold on television like a sociopath enjoying his favorite show, imagine if Obama deliberately destroyed America’s alliances and instead cozied up to Russia while they invaded a peaceful neighbor, imagine if Obama’s daughters were handed two billion dollars by Saudi oil tycoons in a corruption orgy so obscene it would have ended any presidency in history, imagine if Obama cheated on his wife with porn stars and tried to buy their silence to protect his election chances, imagine if Obama did all of this and then had the nerve to declare himself the victim, now stop imagining, because this is the grotesque reality we are living in, and we don’t want Venezuela, we don’t want Greenland, we don’t want Canada, we want healthcare that doesn’t bankrupt us, clean water and energy, living wages, bodily autonomy, and freedom from gun violence, yet instead we are being dragged by an unhinged authoritarian into international chaos while Congress and the Supreme Court sit on their hands, so I am exhausted, I am disgusted, I am sick of the hypocrisy and cowardice, I am beyond done watching the Constitution treated like a bar napkin while a malignant con man cosplays as a dictator, and if the people who supposedly govern this country have any spine left, they need to stand up and do something now, because this man is off the rails and the damage is already everywhere.
-Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.
Please go here for the original piece: https://substack.com/home/post/p-183593247
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