Impeachment And The Crisis Of The Constitution….And The Nation

Article author: 
James Kirkpatrick
Article publisher: 
VDare
Article date: 
17 October 2019
Article category: 
Our American Future
Medium
Article Body: 

The impeachment fight is everything—and nothing. On the one hand, it shows that there really is a Deep State, that it’s working with the Main Stream Media, and that it maniacally wants President Donald Trump out of office—"a de facto intelligence community veto over elections,” as the occasionally deviationist Leftist journalist Matt Taibbi put it [We're in a permanent coup, Untitledgate, October 11, 2017). On the other hand, it reveals that America is not a serious nation, as ridiculous charges of “treason” are made back and forth while our territory remains occupied by tens of millions of foreigners and the rule of law is a sick joke. The specifics of the “impeachment inquiry” don’t matter. What matters is that our political institutions are collapsing as the Historic American Nation itself is displaced....

Oliver Stone’s film JFK looked conspiratorial once;  now, it looks positively prescient in its portrayal of “the intelligence community.”...

Yet the truth is more banal. President Trump has great political instincts but is an amateur when it comes to political staffing. He’s clumsy, not some master of intrigue....

President Trump campaigns and speaks like a radical but has governed like a conventional Republican moderate....
What the whole controversy really shows: the U.S. Constitution can’t hold up under the pressure of cultural fragmentation.

  • First, though the federal judiciary has arguably usurped power since Marbury v. Madison, judges had to at least pretend to ground their decisions in the Constitution. Now, in their fury to stop Trump, random federal judges are claiming the right to make binding decisions on the whole country....
     
  • Second, though the president has the theoretical authority to enforce laws and exercise the inherent duties of his office, the government employees in the sprawling Executive Branch are now a power unto themselves....
     
  • Third, Congress itself lacks any appreciation for the Separation of Powers....

In some ways, this means that America is moving towards a parliamentary system. Thus, contrary to conventional discourse, impeachment is not a response to a crime, but a political act, ...

The plain fact is that American constitutional order is not working anymore. It’s not President Trump’s fault; he’s one of the few playing by the rules....