This is the true national emergency

Ever since faux-president Donald Trump first suggested declaring a “national emergency” to get funding for his ill-conceived and clearly unnecessary southern border wall—funding which Congress has steadfastly refused to appropriate, even when Republicans controlled both legislative chambers—opponents of the administration have been spewing forth a litany of issues that they propose are true national emergencies:

* Gun safety;

* Climate change;

* The opioid crisis;

* Poverty.

I beg to disagree. These issues are not national emergencies, they are national tragedies. Gun safety would only qualify as an emergency if armed men were roaming the country in packs shooting up schools, theaters, concerts and dance clubs, were presently lined up outside in the parking lots and were poised to strike at any minute unless the government issued an emergency declaration. Even then, what would such a proclamation actually do? Buy all their guns? What would stop someone from doing it anyway? Would gun violence end because Congress says “don’t do that again?” I think not.

Climate change has been a national tragedy for so many years that declaring it to be an emergency now is much too little and far too late. What would Congress appropriate money for? Giant freezers to re-solidify the polar ice caps? Could they pay the science deniers to change their minds? Could the government outspend the Koch Brothers and others who thrive on the profits from the burning of fossil fuels? The only way to stop climate change is to completely alter the way energy is produced, shut down polluting businesses, park half the cars in America and tell cows to stop farting. Not going to happen. Sorry.  

The opioid crisis could be stopped with common sense legislation, the opening of a few treatment centers and a crackdown on the suppliers who flood the market with millions of pills. This could have been done a long time ago if not for the lobbying efforts (and dollars) of large pharmaceutical companies and the inability of Congress to do much of anything. However, this would only rise to the level of an “emergency” if something specific were about to occur. Otherwise, as I said, it’s just an ongoing national tragedy that needs to be addressed in conventional ways.

And poverty? We’ve always had it and we always will. What’s the “emergency” remedy for poverty? Sending food baskets to every hungry person three times a day? No. Again, this is a complex issue that requires thoughtful solutions, but you can’t declare a national emergency over a problem that has been around for all of my lifetime and several lifetimes before that.

So that said, I suggest that all of us are, in fact, facing an actual national emergency and it’s a really, really big one. Want to know what it is?

It’s a two-pronged emergency. First, a large number of members of Congress—who took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States—are standing back and watching while the current administration dismantles our Constitutional protections one by one and gradually transitions the country from a democratic republic to a third-world autocracy, ruled by an insane narcissist with traitorous intent who shouldn’t be allowed to visit the White House, let alone live in it.

Need proof?

The aforementioned members of Congress have, for two years and counting, allowed the sitting president to break dozens of laws that would have disqualified any other politician from holding the office of dog catcher, enabled the appointment of Supreme Court judges who believe in expanding—not limiting or counter-balancing—executive power and most recently sat quietly while an unqualified huckster under investigation for fraud assumed the position of Acting Attorney General so he could learn the full details of the special counsel’s investigation into the president’s various crimes and report the status of the case directly to White House lawyers.

Just this past week the president of the Senate took to the Senate floor to announce his support for the president’s ginned-up national emergency, even though he knows it’s a clear violation of the Constitution he is sworn to defend and a usurpation of the authority granted to Congress by Article 1 of the Constitution. In other words, our Congress has allowed the president to buy “get out of jail free cards” for himself and his minions by stacking the judiciary with friendly judges, and now is trying to abdicate its own Constitutional authority to the executive branch.

Do you see what I’m saying? The three separate and co-equal branches of government that have stood as the pillars of our democracy for more than 240 years are being melded into one by an incompetent con man with an aversion to the truth who was elected to office with the support of a foreign adversary and our Congressional leaders—specifically those on the Republican side—are loathe to do anything about it. That, my friends, is an actual national emergency.

Americans who treasure our democracy should be taking to the streets by the millions to protest what is happening in Washington. We should be calling and writing and texting our elected representatives and showing up at their offices to demand that Congress do the job for which it was elected, and the protests should continue until we get the government the Constitution says we are owed. We the people should declare a national emergency if no one else will and we should not stop fighting until the emergency is brought to a close. This needs to happen now, before the dictator is fully empowered and all semblance of democratic government is lost.  

And that brings me to Part Two of this two-pronged national emergency. It’s the fact that at least half of the country doesn’t seem to care.