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Opinion | Morgan Liddick: Democrats introduce tempest to a teapot

“There cannot be even a scintilla of doubt about the impartiality and fairness of the attorney general, the top law enforcement official of the land… Because the Department of Justice should be above reproach, for the good of the country, Attorney General Sessions should resign.”

Thus, Senator Schumer on Attorney General Sessions. One wonders where the Senator was when Loretta Lynch had a private tête-à-tête with the former president who appointed her — and whose wife was under investigation — days before FBI Director Comey told everyone in detail why Hillary should be indicted, then didn’t do it.

He was in place, but blithely unconcerned about the “impartiality and fairness” of that Democrat Attorney General; he told us so last week. Ditto about the integrity of a Democrat Secretary of State who transferred control of 25 percent of America’s known uranium reserves to Russian “businessmen,” and who solicited payments to her “foundation” while in office.



If one thinks that harsh, review the exchange around which this latest tempest in a teacup swirls. A complete copy, as opposed to bowdlerized versions offered by the Washington Post and others, is available at National Review or Politifact. Read it, and remember: Senator Franken’s rambling, imprecise and speculative question is based on a “dossier” almost immediately disavowed as a fraud, and it was not followed up. Sessions clearly answered what he thought Franken was asking, and the latter did not clarify either question or answer. To conjure perjury from this is beyond reason.

Do they believe that, if they reduce the Trump agenda to smoking ruins through methods rarely seen in America, they will be greeted with the ecstatic support of an overwhelming majority of citizens?

Welcome to the preliminary maneuvers of outright warfare. Like the European Great Powers of 1914, we’ve been building up to this for quite a while; perhaps since Bill Clinton, certainly since the election of 2000 when Democrats made the first attempt to delegitimize a duly-elected president. Following the election of Barack Obama, Republican leadership announced that they would oppose his agenda, which they did with some success but with respect for the office: one notes for example that Obama’s entire cabinet was approved by the end of January.



Now we have scorched earth: Trump nominees are slow-walked, facing opposition over everything from their friends to their opinions from the 1980s. Obama-appointed officials like Sally Yates sabotage White House initiatives; nameless, faceless bureaucrats leak unsubstantiated, patently false information; Democrat Congressional leaders hurl wild accusations and use the press to bootstrap baseless smears into howls for resignation. Now the same sort of stuff is starting to come from the administration, targeting their predecessors. We all better take a breath and step back, lest our “progress” accelerate toward the abyss. Because that’s where this road ends.

What do Democrat leaders like Senators Schumer and Pelosi think the next Democrat president — yes, there will be one — will face, given the performance their party and its anonymous and sometimes violent acolytes are now turning in? Do they believe that, if they reduce the Trump agenda to smoking ruins through methods rarely seen in America, they will be greeted with the ecstatic support of an overwhelming majority of citizens? Do the Republicans now helping them expect heroes’ laurels? If so, they should get out more and talk to people who aren’t in thrall to Progressive paymasters; they may be shaken by the level of anger and impatience they find with their obstructionism.

What’s next if fabrications, half-truths and violence become acceptable methods to derail agendas unpopular with this or that political faction? That question apparently hasn’t occurred to those who applaud mobs shouting down politicians, closing down venues and beating down people with whom they disagree. What’s next, car bombs? Political assassinations? Will “resistance and persistence” drag us into the Hell that was Lebanon or Bosnia — two recent examples of the class, ethnic and cultural warfare that some politicians seem only too eager to stoke?

Or will people simply stop participating in — or paying for — government? Unresponsive states cannot rely on citizens for support in a crisis unless they compel it — which often creates more problems than it solves. This sort of national death is more protracted and agonizing than that of outright warfare, and history is rife with examples. Nor are we immune.

Alternatively, we could stop and talk to one another. We could argue out our differences understanding them as differences, not as marks of inhumanity to be extirpated. But it takes will to see each other as fellow citizens with different ideas, not as enemies to be crushed. Are we up to that? Time will tell.

Sooner, one fears, rather than later.

Morgan Liddick writes a weekly column for the Summit Daily News. Email him at mcliddick@hotmail.com


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