Not the election. My response to the election will be coming shortly, but it’s taking a while because it’s long. Unlike that future post, I am not going to attempt to be politic or diplomatic here, because I have been watching this issue for 15 years, and I am sick and tired of being right on the matter.
Begin with Charles Blow’s comment, a scant two day after the election, the first sign of a sudden dawning horror at a self-inflicted fear:
Power must be challenged, constantly. That begins today.
Today, ‘constantly’ doesn’t mean yesterday, yesterday power was fine.
Now let us see the horror spelled out in exquisite detail, in a NYTimes article titled “Harsher Security Tactics? Obama Left Door Ajar, and Donald Trump Is Knocking“.
Here’s a choice quote:
Over and over, Mr. Obama has imposed limits on his use of such powers but has not closed the door on them — a flexible approach premised on the idea that he and his successors could be trusted to use them prudently. Mr. Trump can now sweep away those limits and open the throttle on policies that Mr. Obama endorsed as lawful and legitimate for sparing use, like targeted killings in drone strikes and the use of indefinite detention and military tribunals for terrorism suspects.
And even in areas where Mr. Obama tried to terminate policies from the George W. Bush era — like torture and the detention of Americans and other people arrested on domestic soil as “enemy combatants” — his administration fought in court to prevent any ruling that the defunct practices had been illegal.
To everyone responsible for this state of affairs, for Obama who set this up and the politicians and press and populace that defended him: You weren’t concerned when this is what it took to Get Things Done in the face of Republican obstruction. You were only briefly concerned when Obama used drones to kill a US citizen without due process. You conveniently forgot to press Obama on the fact that he was elected in part on promises to roll back Bush’s executive overreach. It didn’t matter then because the RIGHT people, the trustworthy people were in power. Now that Clinton has lost the election, just five days later, NOW you are suddenly remembering what this whole ‘due process’ and ‘constitutional limits’ thing is about.
You short sighted fools. All I can say is, at least the article suggests some of you recognize what you created. And aren’t we all so ‘lucky’ that I firmly expect the Republicans to immediately forget their own criticism in this direction, Trump or no, thus ‘allowing’ me to maintain my independence from either party.
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