The Exemplary USIAN Impeachment Trial OF 2021 Morphed into a Tragedy of Wrongdoing

 

By RICHARD JOHN STAPLETON

I agree with Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein in their opinion.

The Impeachment Managers, especially Jamie Raskin, made excellent presentations to the full Senate, clearly and logically building and analyzing their case; but a few cowardly dim Dems made a poor call in the final minutes of the Game behind closed doors, which cost Dems the Game, assuming they really wanted to win, once again selling progressive Dems down the river.

They should have insisted on calling witnesses when they had the chance no matter the risks or how long it took. Nothing was more important than doing everything Dems could to convict Trump in the eyes of all Earthian humans, to send a permanent powerful message proving that democratic consensual truth can rule when threatened and confronted by the lies, machinations, violence, and crime of gangs.

In this case two hundred or so of the gang members will be punished with fines and jail time for their crimes, but the gang leader got away with his crimes scot-free, thanks to 43 Repugnant Senators voting to acquit, of 100 Dem and Repub senators voting. Seven non-repugnant Republicans voted to convict.

Most of the 43 Repugs voting to acquit did so because they thought it would help them get reelected, and/or they were afraid of violence or sanctions against them emanating from their own voters back home, or from Trump himself. They were cowards afraid of being considered a traitor to the Repug gang and cause. So they made themselves traitors to truthful law-abiding humans everywhere by voting to acquit. Repug senators now resemble gang leaders and members more than they do truthful law-abiding citizens.

In this case democratic consensual truth was overridden by yet one more arbitrary Senate rule, that required a sixty percent majority vote to convict a president in an impeachment trial. Why not require a seventy percent majority? Or just a simple majority? It’s as if US senators through time have tried to minimize real democracy in the senate by adopting arbitrary petty unfair rules.

This is not rule by constitutional law; it’s rule by whim and conniving capricious Game-playing, designed to protect the vested interests of political parties, senators, representatives, and presidents who want to keep their jobs. I was taught in history lessons back in grade school that “our wonderful American democracy” was supposed to be governed by elected citizen representatives who would go to Washington for a few years to use their common sense to vote their consciences on various issues and then go back home to live happily ever after managing their farms and businesses. I never dreamed back then that most of them would want to hang out in Washington for a living the rest of their lives.

This exemplifies what’s wrong with the US government. Rules are passed to favor political parties and persons not to cause efficiency and effectiveness of operations. This penchant for rule-making has turned the process of USian government into a process of Game-playing, rewarding connivers and manipulators, Adapted Child and Critical Parent people, who enjoy adapting to and using petty rules and playing psychological Games, such as NIGYSOB, Now I’ve Got You, You SOB, fostering constant competition and conflict, requiring I’m OK – You’re Not OK life positions to function, almost obliterating Adult ego state objectivity performing their duties, causing an incredible waste of time, energy, and money to get anything done resulting in real improvement for we the people of the US or citizens of Spaceship Earth.

As this televised invasion and Impeachment Trial made clear and obvious, tremendous energy is required to get anything done in Washington because the rules of the Game have been rigged in all sorts of ways to protect the vested interests of various individuals, groups, and organizations, almost destroying real democracy in governmental operations. Consequently what is needed in the US Congress is something that will eliminate most of their arbitrary petty rules and master-servant processes that limit real democracy. Rather than waste time trying to rig committees and elections to give various members unequal power, such as the obscene unfair power possessed by the villainous and treacherous Mitchel McConnell as the Senate “majority” leader, the now-“minority” leader, what they need to do is use a Classroom De-Gamer™ I invented such as the one demonstrated above. Give each member of Congress a number, and when openings on necessary committees arise or discussions of bills need to be conducted spin the spinner and select new committee members or a member to start a discussion in a group, wherein all members have an equal chance to say what they think about problems, alternatives, and recommendations, using their common sense, after the randomly-selected De-Gamer-selected leader of the day decides to stop talking. That would create real democracy and eliminate most of the psychological Game-playing that wastes untold time, money, and energy day in and day out managing states of affairs of the US Government, which are now in considerable disarray considering all branches around Spaceship Earth.

Based on what I saw and heard on TV in shots of halls, offices, and other rooms in the Capitol Building, and in commentary, watching the insurrection and the impeachment trial start, escalate, and play out, it seems to me today’s senators and representatives plodding about in and occupying the halls, offices, restaurants, pubs, gyms, beauty shops, and other rooms of the Capitol Building ought to enjoy their habitation and its amenities and perks, catered to by hundreds of excellent well-trained servants. The architecture, paintings and other art objects, overall decor, and intricate details of the building are exquisite and awe-inspiring. Several people on TV during the invasion and impeachment trial remarked about how easy it is to get lost in the Capitol Building, containing hallways heading in various directions at various angles, secret rooms and what have you, in a linked labyrinth. It’s no wonder gang leaders needed to take reconnaissance tours of the place allegedly led by senators or representatives the day before the invasion in order to be able to find specific senators and representatives they wanted to capture, once they broke into the building. One capitol policeman was clever enough to trick invaders into following him down a wrong hallway instead of knocking down a door where the invaders were, behind which several congresspeople were hiding. It’s likely the anger of the loser-survivor gang invaders of January 6, 2021 was to some extent caused by envy they felt for winner-survivor congresspeople.

Mark Twain in his time said the US Congress was the largest criminal class in the world. Many of the January 6 gang invaders thought much the same about today’s Congress members, having been primed to hate them by their supreme gang leader, former president Trump. On the bright side, senators and representatives might now have less concern than they did about getting reelected, since they now know violent gangs can break into the Capitol Building in broad daylight. They might now think running a boring farm or business back home might not be so bad after all.

I also agree with this article, “The Capitol Siege Was White Supremacy in Action. Trial Evidence Confirms That,” by George Yancy.

Mainstream TV media generally lied by omission about this white supremacy issue during the invasion during the early stages. I told my wife I have yet to see a single non-white face in the crowd, but they’re not saying anything about it. It’s also interesting that some of the violent white gang members had no compunction about chanting and saying they wanted to do serious harm to white congresspeople, especially Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence, by violent means, including gunfire and hanging. In some ways they resembled a very large lynch mob.

I watched the whole thing, both the insurrection and the trial, on MSNBC, occasionally switching to Fox So-Called News to see what kind of picture they were painting of the invasion and trial for their audience. At times the events were riveting and horrifying; at times the presentations were inspiring and exhilarating, watching the good guys; at times they were disgusting, watching and listening to the bad guys, Trump’s dissembling lightweight lawyers; but the whole psychological Game was sickening and depressing in the end, like watching your team lose an extended days-long Superbowl game by deliberately fumbling the ball on the one yard line as time ran out.

MSNBC did a good job technically showing the Game in real time, the greatest show aboard Spaceship Earth at the time, a massive panoramic extravaganza started, promoted, partially orchestrated, and starred in by one of the biggest con artists of all time, reality-show star Donald T. Trump, surpassing by far the circuses of P.T. Barnum & Bailey. Maybe Trump really is a “stable genius”, a strange and evil genius, a pantomime clown with the vocabulary of a sixth-grader.

This was the sickest part: “McConnell Says Trump ‘Responsible for Provoking’ Attack, After Voting to Acquit; Trump Says MAGA ‘Has Just Begun’.”  

Trump also possesses magical Houdini-like skills extricating himself from seemingly hopeless predicaments, and so far he’s been lucky. McConnell and the other 42 Repug senators voting to acquit and Rescue Trump, despite the facts of the case that were clearly and professionally presented and explained by the very competent House Impeachment Managers, proving beyond a reasonable doubt Trump incited an insurrection against the US government, won the Game for Trump at the end with their 43 acquittal votes, thereby insulting human common sense and decency in a display of greedy, thuggish, disingenuous, despicable, cowardly human behavior, which, thanks to an arbitrary rule requiring a 60 percent Senate majority to convict a US president in an impeachment trial, can now result in disastrous consequences for all USian citizens, possibly anarchy and civil war, leading to military states of affairs in the US resembling states of affairs happening in the Middle East and North Africa in the last seventeen years, with war lords and gangs roaming about the country conquering and controlling whatever they can as long as they can.

If so, hopefully the USian military will be more successful fighting a “war on terror” inside the US than it has been fighting a War on Terror outside the US.

Since January 6 internal agitations between political gangs and between political gang leaders and political gang members in the US now resemble more and more the internal agitations of war-torn Game-playing countries in the Middle East and North Africa, aided and abetted in some cases by the Game-playing USian government and its military forces, ostensibly to spread and preserve “democracy” around Spaceship Earth, to control oil supplies for chosen people in NATO countries and elsewhere, and to preserve faith in the “American” dollar as the Earthian reserve currency in international trade.

Regardless of what common sense might tell you, a 57 percent majority of the US Senate voting to convict Trump was not good enough to really convict him. Trump was three votes away from conviction, a very narrow Houdini-like escape from his much-deserved condemnation.

Convicting Trump would have led to his disqualification from ever again holding a USian political office, and his personal vampire-like MAGA fascist gang in the US, containing probably at least thirty million true-believer loser-survivor followers, would have figuratively had a wooden stake driven through its hard heart. Instead, tragically, because 43 Not-OK Repug gang members and leaders in the US senate Rescued Trump with their acquittal votes to win the psychological Game, Trump and his gang members can now continue to threaten, harass, and recruit Victims inside the US, as they try once again to install an authoritarian fascist regime in the US, with Trump as president in 2024, depending on the verdicts of civil and criminal trials Trump faces in the meantime. May the 43 Repug senators voting to acquit Trump, thereby Rescuing him in this monstrous psychological Game, live in infamy for their flagrant discounting of facts, common sense, consensual truth, and human dignity.

What are grade school teachers supposed to tell their students about this psychological Game in Usian history lessons?

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Richard John Stapleton, PhD, CTA, certified transactional analyst, educator, octogenarian emeritus professor of management, writer, editor and publisher at Effective Learning Company.

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