A NEW WAY, A NEW SAY!

By Edwin Cooney

As I listened to and read the tweets and the testimony from Friday's impeachment hearing, I began to be alarmed about a number of things.

First, there was the very need for impeachment hearings.

Second, there is the likelihood that the hearings and the process will not succeed in the conviction of President Trump.

Third, there was the obvious harassment of Marie Yovanovitch, a nonpolitical but professional diplomat, whose job of representing America was obviously politicized by her boss President Trump.

Fourth, and most stressing of all, there was that intimidating tweet from the president even as she was testifying.

Fifth, the president's angry and outrageous self-justification against the reaction by the media and the Democrats to the way he reacts to things or, if you prefer, his "modus operandi."

As the hours pass, I'm becoming increasingly unhappy with my own resentful reactions toward the president and the state of affairs he's put us through, not due to their lack of justification, but for two other perhaps more significant reasons.

First, my anger toward and resentment of the president is largely due to how difficult it has become for intelligent, well-meaning, and knowledgeable leaders to reach a bipartisan consensus as to what’s real and what’s partisan about the crisis through which we’re passing. In other words, truth and reality have become distorted making it more difficult to develop a sense of direction and thus peace of mind about the future. 

For instance, throughout the Watergate era, there was a consensus that when President Nixon was forced from office, we’d be a government of laws and not of men. Hence, the political and social crisis would pass. Second, even more, I spent last weekend insisting that peace is a state of mind rather than an absence of war. The fact of the matter is that modern lingo and politics have had a tendency to enhance rather than denigrate the very idea of conducting war itself.

Traditionally, war has been a state of political and social existence between nations that have been or are about to be militarily engaged in battle. I've always been rather fascinated with the words Franklin D. Roosevelt used back on Monday, December 8th, 1941 when he asked Congress for a declaration of war against Japan. Here they are:

"I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire." (Note that the president was both specific about the date and the act that brought about that "state of war.”) In other words, there was no ongoing ideological or sociological cause of the war. Since that Monday, December 8th, 1941, because the very idea of war is so deadly, politicians have been using the idea of war to tackle any number of unhappy conditions, projects or activities that threaten the safety and happiness of a people. These include the “cold war,” wars on disease, the war on poverty, the war on crime, and, finally, the culture war which has been going on since 1973, a war which many sociologists and historians insist was launched by Roe v. Wade.

As you read this, you may well insist that this musing is little more than an exercise in intellectual semantics. However, I insist that semantics or language altogether reflects our thoughts just as our thoughts reflect our conclusions about circumstances and even life itself. If we are perpetually at war, then most of the time we are not at peace! If we're perpetually not at peace, we're obviously unsettled and angry, are we not?

I'm not suggesting that either you or I should be in denial, or try in any other way to mask our feelings about President Trump, pro or con. However, I do suggest we should compel ourselves to think more affirmatively about the type of leadership we prefer rather than to merely curse the darkness.

As I listened to the president's self-justification regarding his own attitude toward his political opposition casting them all as liars and of being entirely dishonest, I wanted to ask him when was the last time he granted any opponent the benefit of the doubt he demands for himself.

The unhappy fact for me is that President Trump as president is a reality. It would be silly to pretend that nothing he says or does really matters by saying all politicians are crooked or dishonest. The reality of President Trump will be of vital importance as long as he's in office. What we need is a new paradigm or way of thinking about who he is and what he does!

Here's the bottom line. As Mick Mulvaney might say: Get over him, especially if pondering him is poisoning you! If he's angering you too much, he's got you exactly where he wants you!

By all means, avoid going to war with him. Be at peace with your convictions and the peaceable intentions behind those convictions and you'll be at a peaceful state of mind — thus a new way and a new say!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY