Settings

ⓕ font-size

  • -2
  • -1
  • 0
  • +1
  • +2

Mueller, Trump & people's impeachment

  • Facebook share button
  • Twitter share button
  • Kakao share button
  • Mail share button
  • Link share button
By Shelton Bumgarner

The United States of late seems to be careening towards a dark and unknown future. Every news cycle in America seems to bring with it new and unexpected scandals. Things are going so fast that I'm reluctant to mention anything specifically because by the time you read about here it will seem rather quaint and outdated.

But two scandals in the scandal prone Trump Administration don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. One is the never ending saga of Donald Trump's potential collusion with the Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign and the other is the newer scandal of his pay off of adult film star Stormy Daniels.

Both of these scandals would bring down any normal American administration, but, alas, Trump's administration is anything but normal in the context of American history.

This is the point where I would like to praise the people's impeachment of President Park Geun-hye. Americans could learn much from that movement, but there are some problems in any direct application of the lessons learned.

The United States' political system is broken. It is so broken ― and the country is so much bigger than South Korea ― that it would be extremely difficult to attempt to enact a people's impeachment in the United States.

I only mention this because there is a lot of talk in the United States that Trump will eventually fire Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller and cause an enormous Constitutional crisis the likes of which the United States has not seen since Watergate.

There is a real chance that given how broken the United States political system is, the Republicans who control Congress would dismiss the whole thing as a kerfuffle that the American people should ignore as they enjoy the "humming economy."

This is where Americans could take a cue from South Koreans.

If Americans hit the streets in large numbers, huge numbers, historic numbers to protest such a firing, it's possible we could have a People's Impeachment of our own. But it would be complicated because of the size of the United States. A smartphone app would likely have to be designed that would facilitate enormous protests across the country on a consistent basis.

Even then, the Trump Administration has any number of different tricks it could pull to divert attention from it all, from starting a war with the DPRK to an actual crackdown of protests in a way not seen in the United States to date.

But all of this is just me musing nervously at this point.

Hopefully, it won't be an issue. Hopefully things will proceed peacefully and justice will be served.

At this point, that's all I have.


Shelton Bumgarner (migukin@gmail.com) is a writer and photographer living in Richmond, Virginia. He, along with the late Annie Shapiro, started the English journal ROKon Magazine in 2006.




X
CLOSE

Top 10 Stories

go top LETTER