Alberto Benegas Lynch (h)
EL OBSERVADOR – Unfortunately for some time now, the American decline from the remarkable values and principles established by the Founding Fathers is notorious. I dealt with this decline in detail in my book America Against America, the first edition of which was from the Fondo de Cultura Económica. My admiration for North American traditions is very great, I attended part of my college in that country and I went back to study there when I finished university. I have many good friends in that great nation but, as has been said, there are signs of moral decay that worry supporters of the free society, whether local or foreign, the advance of Leviathan reveals to them since life goes to the free world.
Certain interpretations assert that the United States has been becoming Latin American in the worst sense of the term. Public spending, foreign debt, fiscal deficit, suffocating regulations in the context of nationalisms, protectionisms and xenophobias have increased dramatically.
To confine ourselves to the recent past, the sight of a former President who questions electoral results is sad even when these were duly certified by the fifty states of the union, by the Courts of Justice in 61 cases between federal and local (including eight judges appointed by Trump), by the Armed Forces and by the former Vice-President himself.
Donald Trump was subjected to a second political trial where his incitement to the unprecedented excesses that occurred in Parliament was conclusively demonstrated and due to the aforementioned certifications the defense did not even dare to resort to the argument of electoral fraud that Trump and the The scant and hasty data on display were immediately refuted in the question-and-answer period. When in that period it was asked if the elections had been won by Trump, the defense responded that the question was irrelevant to the substance of the process, when it all began precisely by alleging fraud. The trial was unsuccessful due to purely electoral reasons, a temptation originally severely condemned by the Founding Fathers and despite the clear demonstration of the constitutionality of the process with the support of prominent academics and the antecedents of that trial to officials who were not in office at the time. moment of the impeachment (there were 57 convicting votes and 43 acquittals: three-quarters are needed for a firm conviction). This failure naturally runs counter to key values in American history, as evidenced time and again by, among others, who had excelled in the Senate for his sobering interventions: Republican Jeff Flake who published the well-known book Conscience of a Conservative, the same title made by the legendary Barry Goldwater. As a result of this forecast, on February 5, 120 important referents of the Republican Party met, summoned by Evan McMullin – former Chief Policy Director of the Republican Conference – to insist on the urgent need to form a powerful internal line in the party ” to step aside from the risk posed by Trump ”and take up the tradition of his party.
The Republican former governor of the state of South Carolina and former ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Harley, has just declared to Politico that “Trump disappointed us, he embarked on a path that he should never have traveled, we should not have followed. We cannot allow that to happen again. “
It is true that the former President reduced some taxes, but that reminds me of the offering of colored mirrors to the aborigines by the Spanish conquerors in order to impose the slave-owning institutions of the mita and the yanaconazgo. He also adopted other measures considered correct but on the net balance increased spending, debt and deficit along with unacceptable demonstrations that began in the Charlottesville episode where he equated as “good people” those who marched under the insignia of the swastika.
It is not admissible to pretend to play by shared rules on democracy and when the electoral results are adverse it turns out that they are unknown. After Trump’s embarrassing telephone conversation with the Secretary of State of Georgia -Brad Raffensperger- opportunity in which he suggested modifying the electoral result and after the violent episodes in Congress it turns out that nothing less than the President of the United States tells them to the seditious who are very special people and who has great appreciation for them. He had to resign the Secretary of Education -Betsy DeVos- and the Secretary of Transport -Elaine Chao- claiming that Trump was responsible for instigating those who broke into the Parliament headquarters causing enormous damage and his former Chief of Staff John Kelly and Colin Powell, former Secretary of State of GW Bush – who said that the abuses in Congress “assimilate us to a banana republic” – proposed that he be removed via the 25th Amendment, only then do we say that Trump, late and reluctantly by the way , acknowledged that his presidency had ended and stated that the transition of command should be orderly and peaceful. Then Secretary of the Interior Chad Wolf resigned and the FBI established security measures to prevent further acts of vandalism.
Peggy Nooman, the contributor to the Wall Street Journal, ABC and NBC News and the famous speechwriter for Ronald Reagan has written that “The main person in charge, the President of the United States, must be removed from office through the 25th Amendment or the trial political, whichever is quicker. ” Due to the limited time available, not all the steps of these decisions were completed but I mention them for the purpose of checking the current climate. Anyway, Republican Senators like Mitt Romney, Patrick Toomey and Lisa Murkoski and members of the Lower House like the also Republican Adam Kinzinger at the time called for the immediate resignation of the then President. Then no less than the Republican leader in the Senate Mitch McConnell has declared from his bench that “Trump lied about the elections and is responsible for the savage acts in Congress.”
Even Vice President Mike Pence had to absorb the onslaught of Trump (who abandoned him when he was seriously threatened in the aforementioned episode of vandalism) to annul the formal and final count before both Houses in Congress, which he rejected outright and proceeded to the confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden after his triumph was certified as established by current regulations.
William Webster – former Federal Judge, former IMF and CIA director – publicly stated that he is ashamed of Trump’s attitudes. And in the international order the convictions did not wait, for reasons of space we only highlight the statements of Angela Merker who emphasized: “I deeply regret that President Trump has not admitted his defeat.”
As his first Secretary of State -Rex Tillerson, formerly CEO of ExxonMobil, the third-largest company in the world- has repeatedly pointed out- “Trump has no idea of the meaning of free trade and many of the things he affirms are not consistent with reality”.
The Attorney General -William Barr- has stated that “the President has betrayed his position” and the former speaker of the House of Representatives and former candidate for the Vice Presidency in the 2012 elections – Republican Paul Rayan- has declared that “It is difficult conceive of a more undemocratic and anti-conservative act than an intervention to nullify the results of state-certified elections and deprive millions of Americans of their rights ”.
At the closing of the trial, the responsibility of the former President in the attacks on Parliament and related attacks was once again demonstrated, all based on the infundy of electoral fraud repeatedly repeated by Trump. It is very true that a good part of the Democratic Party teams aim to intensify the already overwhelmed size of the Leviathan and insist on the generalization of homicide in the womb called “abortion”, but this in no way justifies the intention to operate under certain norms and then violate them when the results are adverse, as has clearly been the case we are considering. It is not a question of letting yourself be stabbed by one so as not to be machine-gunned by others. The indefensible cannot be defended.