28 Sep The Moral Test of Our Time
While the media debates the legal justification for impeaching Donald Trump, we are ignoring a much larger moral question that will determine humanity’s future. At stake is not only our democracy and our national security, but our entire species (among countless others), and our planet.
At this point in time, I give impeachment a 50-50 chance of removing the most immoral president the United States has ever had. Traumatizing children for life by separating them from their parents, reversing more than 80 important environmental regulations that protect public health, cozying up to vicious dictators and alienating our allies, telling bold-faced lies on a daily basis, promoting white supremacy, stealing money from the poor and middle class to benefit the already rich, trying to take health care away from tens of millions of Americans, fighting gun control, and making $350 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia are just a few of the moral issues on the list.
Unfortunately, the way it works, is that impeachment, like so many other issues, is a legal, not a moral issue. That means that if someone can get away with a crime, they are scot-free, while the victims of the crime suffer the consequences. And if those victims are future generations, so be it, technicality of the law prevails. Never mind that some of those laws, like the Electoral College, were put in place in a very different time, and have shown disastrous consequences for legislation on climate change, war and peace, and economic justice—issues that effect nations far beyond our own.
We all know the system can be gamed—that corporate executives and politicians can legally steal massive amounts of money, while a young African American running scared from a traffic stop can wind up dead. Gutting the Clean Air or Clean Water Act allows corporations to legally dump carbon into our air and chemicals into our water, while the victims of that pollution pay the price for the rest of their lives. It’s morally reprehensible that more children have been killed in mass shootings since Sandy Hook than all the American soldiers since 9/11—yet most anyone can legally own a gun.
I’ve long written about how humanity is facing its adolescent initiation into adulthood, a transition from the love of power to the power of love. Every initiation has a test of values—choosing Door A or Door B, this action or that. Each of these decisions can have life or death consequences for the initiate. As a species, the path we choose today will determine whether we survive the initiation and make it to our planetary adulthood, or plunge into social chaos and environmental collapse. This is our moral crossroad.
As the impeachment proceedings fill up the airwaves until the public grows tired of it, pundits on all sides will weigh in as to whether it’s the right thing to do, whether it will be successful, or whether Donald Trump planned it as a political gamble to his advantage, as the recent influx of money from his donors might imply. Lawyers will battle out technicalities of the law. News media will spin the truth every which way. And taxpayer money will be lavishly spent in political gridlock between Democrats and Republicans.
Ultimately, it will be a test of public opinion, for it is more than just Dangerous Donald who is facing reelection in the coming year, as the Senators and Congress people know all too well.
What is needed is a moral outcry from the American people. We need to speak out, to write, to march, to vote, to canvas, and to do everything possible to voice what we will and will not stand for. We need to articulate and implement a morally just foundation for our country and for our future. We need to create a movement so powerful it can’t be ignored, a movement of love and justice. We need the courage of climate activist, Greta Thunberg, who says, “How dare you?” to the elite powers destroying our future, and live that activism every day of our lives. We need a movement like the Suffragettes, the Civil Rights movement, or the peace movement of the 60s.
This is the trajectory of history. It moves toward freedom and justice. But with freedom lies responsibility—and that responsibility is the mark of maturity. If we take on that responsibility now, and do it fully, we just might make it to adulthood.
Here’re some actions you can take:
Earline Willcott
Posted at 21:52h, 28 SeptemberThanks for speaking out.