So last night as the vote came in my phone rang. It was my 14 year old Grandson who had just watched the proceedings and wanted to talk about them. The first thing that ran through my mind was, how do you explain this to a fourteen year old? How do you present it fairly while assuring he maintains his belief in our nation and its values? How do you make him understand this is not normal and in this greatest nation on earth, this is abnormal? Can I even say that, because this may very well become the norm?
Think about that and what you would say. You don’t want to influence his thought, you want him making his own decision.
With that thought, I raise another question to you the reader. If the generation of our parents and grandparents was called “The Greatest Generation”, what would you call the generation that came of age in the 60’s? This is the generation running our nation now. How do they measure up?
I go back to Tom Brokow’s book that named them “The Greatest Generation”. In it he wrote that when asked what their greatest regret was, they gave an interesting answer. It was that because they had so little, they wanted to assure their children had everything, and along the way they forgot to teach them values. They called that their biggest mistake as they watched the 60’s develop.
So here we are. A straight partisan vote to impeach, something no generation before us would ever conceive. A party that says we do this with heavy hearts and prayerful thought, when they talked about it since election day three years ago. A party that brought a vote on impeachment four times before wants us to believe they didn’t want to do this. Now if you believe that, then the “Greatest Generation” also raised some naive individuals.
On the other side, a shoot from the lip President, certainly gives them the ammunition to call him unhinged. He doesn’t have that button that says “maybe I shouldn’t say or tweet this”. His lip and fingers work before that kicks in. The Greatest Generation had a war slogan that applies here. “Loose lips sink ships”.
Thus the mess we have. A booming economy, with unemployment rates at their lowest in fifty years. A stock market that has a Dow at 28,000 after all these years – up 10,000 since in the President’s election day. That’s 35% of the total Dow in three years. Trade deals that everyone complained about with Mexico, Canada, China and the Asia Pacific region, adjusted and made better. No one before him could do that. Manufacturing jobs that the past President said you would need a magic wand for coming back. We are self sufficient in energy and oil, and the prices are down. ISIS, which we thought was here to stay, is limited and on the run. Remember the threat they were? We are exiting other wars and telling the world to pay their fair share. Who could argue with that except those other countries? I guess his “America First” focus also angered them (and some of our representatives for some reason), but sits well with most Americans.
Yet we end up here with an impeachment. How do you explain to a young grandchild? How will history explain it? In your opinion, was the President really trying to buy the 2020 election in asking for an investigation? Was that call really impeachable? Well 48% of us in todays WSJ poll say yes, and 48% say no.
Does anyone think that maybe (since this call was the day after the Mueller report release) after three years the President wanted to know why and what caused this three year investigation that exonerated him?
While on the subject, does anyone care about why Hunter Biden got the money he did for years from the Ukraine and China, the two countries his father was in charge of?
I imagine 48% of us do and 48% don’t.
The answer to all this, in the end, will be determined by you and our fellow citizens in November 2020. We will decide what kind of country we have.
meanwhile
Yesterday Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified yesterday before a Senate panel. There was not much coverage that I saw. He made it clear that the FBI’s top brass has not been cleared of wrongdoing for the slew of errors in the agency’s collusion probe and serious questions remain. He said: “There are so many errors, we couldn’t reach a conclusion or make a determination on what motivated those failures…” He added this on the FISA applications. “How did all these failures in the FISA process — that is layered with all these controls — happen and why? At this stage, we didn’t get good explanations on that and that is something we would have liked to have had good explanations about.”
As we’ve stated before, the Durham report is the one to wait for.
That same poll in the WSJ cited above had these numbers for the Democratic Primary:
Joe Biden was the top choice at 28%. Senator Sanders had 21%, and Sen. Warren had 18%. No other candidate had double-digit support.
While tonight the Dems debate for the final time this year. Seven candidates made the stage. They’re complaining they have no diversity on the stage. Well they have two women, an Asian, and a gay man. I guess that doesn’t count.