Impeachment proceedings

 

Subject: Impeachment proceedings 

And so the Impeachment Proceedings have started first by the democrats laying out their case by showing a montage of film clips to show the mob breaking into the Senate interlaced with clips of Donald Trump supposedly egging them on. Then it was the Republican turn to respond with their lawyers forensically picking apart the Democrats case by extending the video footage of what the Democrats had shown, to give the footage more context. They also  presented the case that an 'elected official' (in this case the president) is excluded from the limits which a non elected person is governed by when it comes to 'free speech'.

I'm always fascinated by words and their meaning, especially when a professional word smith like a lawyer gets to work. The Democrats had made much use of pent up emotion in the case of storming the citadel, sacrosanct ground and the violence shown within the building. Great play was made of the Senators fleeing down corridors and stairs in an effort to get away from 'their electorate', no political leader from any side seemed to come forward to reason with them, that was left to the poor undermanned cops who are always expected to put their lives at risk for the men and women seen running away.

The videos were used as an example of what had happened on that day and yet with anything photographic, the "touch up" was always present. Photography is the art of presentation, if it's a dark stormy sea or a warm sunlit landscape whether it's a picture or a video of and old man crossing the road or a young woman trying on a dress in the dress shot, the photographer or cameraman has an image in their mind and the cutting floor is knee deep in discarded film, ejected because it betrays the story they wish to tell. For instance amongst the images of the violent triumphal yobs are the ones in my mind of an almost calm tourist image as the so called rioters strolled across the the roped off rooms and roamed around like school children on a day out.

The the Presidential diatribe had been cut to show a man urging on his troops, to show those craven politicians what he thought of them and their office but when shown in the full they were not inflammatory but were within the limits of political protest calling for a peaceful protest and It could and should be argued that a standing President should never call on his supporters to lay siege, even in a peaceful protest but Trump was never normal.

And so the forensic mind went to work, cutting and pasting to show the opposite of what the Democrats showed. If the general public stayed around to watch and I'm sure they did it was an unpleasant example of political bias at work which I fear the Trumpians will use to their advantage in the months and years to come.

There is always a pivot, a locus on which we build our surety. In this country we are  amazed at the brutality of the American  prison system, or their apparent lack of care for the poor and the sick. We are confused when the impasse of a checks and balances a system dreamed up by the 'founding fathers' to prevent the weak from being confronted by the powerful, find their system stymies their electoral device, leaving the victor, the people's choice toothless to act and implement the bills on which the electorate elected him to do.

But what is truly amazing is the force of words that the Constitution lays on all Americans whether it be the right to keep a gun or the minuter to which the Founding Fathers addressed the issues of political hegemony. Even today in this complicated modern world their words ring true when addressing their interactional space, it's something the American nation has come to rely on and the lawyer spelt it out, letter by letter.

This may be unpalatable to us over here with our ability, not having a Constitution, to waffle and bamboozle ourselves, invoking law which found its footing in 1250 and set amongst the federal dealings of a kings court toward the commoner, but then we have always been wedded to patronage which sadly caused us to wind up with Boris.