Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead… Or is She?
By Eric G. Weiner
Well hallelujah, Biden and Harris seem to have won, and barring nefarious moves by Trump and company, they will assume office in January. However we should not celebrate too soon or allow complacency to set in. In four, or possibly, eight years, people will have grown disillusioned with yet another neo-liberal regime that basically favors the rich and the corporate world over all else. And what will be on offer ? — Donald Trump, his horrible son, or yet another demagogue who can probably still count on the frightened white vote and the still downtrodden working class. So while we may have escaped outright fascism by a hair’s breadth this time… what about next time around?
Unless safeguards are put in place we will be right back at the precipice. Donald Trump showed us some important things. The question is, will we take note of them?
The Trump presidency vividly displayed the need for true safeguards and real checks and balances in the United States. The ones everyone thought could be relied on have shown their great frailty. Most depend on a legislature with at least a minimal willingness to cooperate on issues of national welfare as well as a president and a supporting party with some sense of shame, ethics and allegiance to the concept of democracy. This is no longer a given. Most of these checks and balances are also dependent on traditions that have historically been honored, but turn out not to be enshrined in law, but turn out to be merely optional.
So what needs to be done to protect America from falling down the fascist rabbit hole once again?
Here are the things I think must be made mandatory, at a minimum:
1. Full disclosure of a would-be president’s complete finances. There is no way this should be discretionary as it is now. There is a very good likelihood that Donald Trump’s debt was alleviated by Putin and his oligarchs working through the Deutchbank and that he was consequently beholden to them during his reign as president. The national security implications of this are enormous. We can not have a blind spot for people who are given this level of power. If they don’t want the scrutiny they should not be in the office. Period!
2. A president should need to demonstrate a minimal level of knowledge about, and understanding of, the principles and history of democratic and constitutional society. This was almost certainly absent in Donald Trump. Such basic ignorance in such a high office is absolutely unacceptable.
3. There is an urgent need for immediate reform of political contribution laws. At present, money is defined as “free speech” so campaign contributions can be unlimited. This notion of “free speech” renders the average citizen, without such vast sums, essentially “speechless”. This is absolutely the opposite of Democracy and instead enshrines Plutocracy as the true current system. This is why Republicans and Democrats alike serve corporate interests and the wealthy ahead of the people they are elected to protect. As long as the Corporations and the wealthy pay for their campaigns, politicians will continue to serve their needs and wants first. In the United States as elsewhere, money is not free speech, it is power. This power is being grossly abused.
4. There needs to be a depoliticizing of the office of Attorney General and a change in the ways that the A.G. and other heads of powerful agencies are appointed so they cannot become captive or threatened (and thereby controlled) by the political party in power. Trump showed how an unscrupulous president under the present system will threaten or replace these appointees so they will serve him rather than the public interest. He has undermined the Justice Department, the EPA, the FDA, the CDC, the FBI, and numerous other agencies that exist to protect the public. He has put in place agency heads to serve himself and the special interests he represents. This must change. Perhaps the head of these agencies can be chosen by bi-partisan panels, elected by the citizenry, or by members of the agencies themselves. Any of these would be superior to the present dangers of appointment by reigning politicians who can (and do) use these agencies for their own political ends.
5. There needs to be serious penalties for a President of the United States lying to the American public. A democracy depends on truth and fact to make reasonable judgments as citizens. Being truthfully informed by the President should be a basic right of the public, not a matter of political convenience or whim on the part of the executive.
6. A President should never be above the law. The law is supposed to apply equally to all. For a President to be exempt is the definition of a dictatorship not a democracy. Mueller did not “exonerate” President Trump of Obstruction of Justice, he clearly stated he was unable to indict him due to the current policy of the Justice Department (whose authority he was working under) which prohibited indicting a sitting President. If we expect people to respect the law, we cannot continue to have their leaders be above it.
7. There needs to be a limitation on the use of the “Executive Order”. Trump used this power like a sledgehammer over and over to destroy much of what many thought to be legally enshrined by democratic processes. Limiting the number of executive orders possible would cause an incumbent to use this power more judiciously, and clearly delineating its scope of use, would make it a far safer tool.
8. It should not be discretionary, but mandatory that a President be prosecuted for any and all crimes committed while in office. The current tradition of letting “by-gones be by-gones” must be gone. The tradition of letting abuses of the previous administration go by the wayside is, in part, a consequence of incoming administrations not wanting to be any more accountable than the outgoing one. There is also the understandable wish not to unduly antagonize the supporters of the previous administration. Finally there is a long-standing, and I think, very dangerous belief, that by prosecuting a President you undermine the stability and prestige of the office. Hence George Bush and Dick Cheney got away with torture, indefinite incarceration, and the suspension of due process. This policy of giving previous administrations “a pass” makes it more and more likely subsequent presidents will act with impunity. If such prosecutions were mandatory it would take the weight of decision off the hands of any incoming administration and would work to increase the stability, trust and prestige of the office, not diminish it.
9. A serious re-thinking and reordering of the Party system as it presently stands is a necessity. The DNC and RNC are powerful gatekeepers that often run counter to the interests and desires of the voting public. The public generally does not know who these people are or how they got there, let alone does the public have any say in critical decisions they make. Generally these are behind the scene “parties” that serve powerful vested interests as witnessed by the relegation of front runners Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders to the distant outfield while a miraculous resurrection of Joe Biden was engineered by the DNC. The takeover of the RNC by the Tea Party and the Libertarian Koch brother machine is another example of the dangers inherent in the current system.
10. Gerrymandering must be stopped and a far better system that is not subject to political control must be established. There must be clear inviolable rules governing any reapportionments. The current system makes a travesty of the democratic process and encourages corruption.
11. If the Electoral College is to remain, it must be reformed to better reflect the will of the people, and strengthened, so possible rogue votes can never occur. The processes in the event of a contested vote also desperately needs to be clarified and protected from partisan bias. At present it is quite possible for a corrupt party to overturn both the popular and electoral college results through what are, at present, perfectly legal means. Trump may yet attempt this before he is due to turn over the White House in January.
12. The Supreme Court should never be allowed to become a partisan plaything as it has now become. To allow such a critical position which is held for a lifetime to be decided by a single party (as has been done for the past three appointments) is absurd. Appointments should be merit and experience-based, subject to bi-partisan and peer-review, and dedicated to principles of law and justice rather than personal belief systems or political alliance. Judges not adhering to these strict principles should lose their tenure.
13. Protection of the fourth estate. President Trump in declaring the press that didn’t fawn on him: “The Enemy of The People” did not take the step most totalitarians do of shutting these down. Given another four years mandate he well might have. There must be built-in protections against such things happening. There simultaneously must be better regulations regarding the way the fourth estate’s great responsibility is wielded. A recent case against Fox news for defamation was ruled in Fox’s favour because in the judge’s words “no one really takes Sean Hannity seriously as a “news provider” he is just an “entertainer”. Unfortunately he himself, and millions of his credible followers take him seriously as a fact provider. Facebook only recently seems to have awoken to the havoc they have let be unleashed by allowing wholly unfounded misinformation and hate groups to flourish on that platform. There must be protection against false witness and fake news (by the press and the government) while still fervently defending the freedom of speech and the press. This is no easy line to walk. But we have to learn to walk it much better than we have. It should not be considered freedom of the press to knowingly disseminate false information. Hundreds of thousands of people have now died and many more will die as a result of the viral spread of false information. Freedom of the press (and the internet) should not be considered a license to willfully endanger the lives of others.
14. There must be the institution of Hate Crime Laws. These have been effectively in place in Canada for many years now and draw clear lines between freedom of speech and when that line is crossed and becomes a hateful endangerment to citizens. This is sorely needed in the United States, which will remain an extremely dangerous country until something similar is enacted.
15. Finally the presidential power of the pardon needs to be reined in. Its use to free people who have committed crimes in the service of the pardoner is unacceptable. Donald Trump recently pardoned his crony Roger Stone who was found guilty of witness tampering, lying to congress, and obstruction of justice on behalf of Donald Trump. It makes a mockery of any concept of justice. Why should any person fear breaking the law for a president if they know he can get them off scott-free before leaving office? This kind of self-dealing must be brought to a stop if there is to be any respect for the rule of law and the office of the president and forestall even greater abuses of power.
16. There needs to be clarification and reform of the mechanism of impeachment. Impeachment is supposed to result in a trial by the senate. In the case of Donald Trump the Republican-dominated senate refused to even allow witnesses to be called, and without any trial, simply declared Trump innocent. This is a travesty. It makes any accountability of a sitting president null and void. Basically, this means that so long as the president’s party dominates the senate, the public has no remedy whatsoever to bring a president to account which is obviously a violation of the intent of the constitution. This too must change if the United States is to be considered a true democracy.
If the above reforms are achieved, the United States will still not avoid being occasionally captured by demagogues and corrupt people who will utilize hate and resentment to rise to power, but it may help minimize their ability to wreak terrible destruction on people and institutions that are in grave need of protection.
