Freedom can be an awkward concept in America, mainly because there’s so little agreement over what it actually entails.
In 1814, an American lawyer penned the poem, “Star Spangled Banner”, which asked if a flag last seen at “Twilight’s Last Gleaming” still flew over a bastion threatened by enemies.
That same flag, albeit bearing a lot more stars, stood atop the Capitol Building in Washington DC earlier this month as the Republic was yet again put under siege.
At one time, the United States was regarded as a melting pot big enough to accommodate a vast range of people with different outlooks and beliefs.
However, as one observer recently wrote, “America remains the land of the free and home of the brave provided you’re white and wealthy. Otherwise, kneel down on the floor, facing the police officer, with your hands behind your head”.
Yet it wasn’t the usual suspects that broke windows and trashed offices in the nation’s legislative heart. Nor was it some radical socialist revolutionary who spurred the mob on its destructive course.
President Trump has been accused of a lot of things over the years yet I’m guessing sedition was never on the list before now.
That’s all changed. Because let’s be clear, inciting insurrection is exactly what the guy did. What’s more, he did it on live television in front of the whole world.
Let’s be equally upfront about the mob that surged up the steps of the Capitol Building. They weren’t there to exercise any constitutional right to freedom of assembly. This was a deliberate action intended to disrupt and deny due process going on within.
It’s emerged in recent days that while ‘patriots’ were wrecking the place, Trump was himself phoning up senators in an effort to get the vote delayed instead of deploying the National Guard. Accordingly, even those closest to the President admit that the blame for the damage and the death toll lies squarely with him.
Trump’s relentless descent has already begun as allies & accomplices start to walk away or else release incriminating voice recordings,
Even so, while social media platforms switch off his access and political opponents once again stoke up the impeachment option, the truth is that there is no worse indictment he could receive in America than to be labelled a “Loser”.
The irrefutable facts are that Trump’s first term saw Republicans lose control of Congress. He went on to lose the presidency itself and GOP critics reckon his continued asinine claims over voter fraud backfired to the extent that it finally lost them a Senate majority.
Meanwhile, corporate America, hitherto saddled with his boorish interventions is distancing itself. The PGA has already pulled its prestigious 2022 tournament from his course in New Jersey. More cancellations are likely to follow.
Resignations from the White House and elsewhere continue as an apparatus riddled with nepotism comes apart in full media glare. Unsurprisingly, no-one is claiming that it’s all “fake news” either.
The US Oath of Allegiance requires citizens to “support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic”.
It’s probably no exaggeration to say that in light of his actions, Trump has attained something close to public enemy status in the eyes of millions of Americans.
It’s possible that what started off as a last-ditch attempt to stay in power could result in the need for a strategy to stay out of jail.
Did someone say, “Lock ‘im up”?
