To the Editor:

Just when I thought it was safe to be optimistic about the trajectory of our country, I came up from my crouch and took a double gut punch. That one-two punch left me reeling from what I’d just seen and felt.

When the Senate voted not to allow any witnesses or additional evidence to be admitted during their hurried impeachment proceedings, I dropped a tear of anger and loss. How can one even hope to find the truth and offer transparency without hearing from those directly involved on the front lines? Blocking testimony from the highest-ranking staffers in the field is the most blatant way to insure that the facts are never heard. 

This comes after weeks of the president specifically instructing government employees to ignore congressionally issued subpoenas to testify before recognized bipartisan committees, giving our Constitution a swift right hook, busting the collective lip of truthfulness. 

Even before the trial began, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed that he’d not only be in the President’s corner with the stool and a pep talk between rounds, but also with the assurance that he would fix the fight from the beginning with help from his complicit cohorts in the chamber to hamstring the opponent — transparency. The truth and any unbiased hearing would be buried under the canvas cover along with another piece of our democracy. 

Shock and disbelief fell across many American faces as our long-held faith and belief in the sacred process of fair and equal justice and our national character were thrown into the ropes with a little fancy footwork by those whose job it is to defend those very ideals. This is not how our systems of checks and balances and due process work, this is how thugs, gangs, dictators and mob bosses operate. The only thing missing here was the sound of kneecaps breaking.

I couldn’t watch any of the proceeding that followed, knowing that a complete sham and cover-up was taking place, and all the world had a ring-side seat, our Constitution reduced to bookies bet sheets and birdcage liner. The pre-arranged acquittal followed, not because of our unbiased, equally applied system of government, but in spite of it.

An emboldened lightweight emerged, eager to retaliate against his critics, knowing that his spineless backers in the Senate, including our own Sen. Tom Tillis, were giving him the green light and freeing him from any accountability going forward, regardless of rules, law or sense of decency. 

He celebrated by throwing Purple Heart recipient Lt. Col.Vindman and his fellow soldier brother, along with world-respected US Ambassadors Gordon Sondland (EU) and Marie Yovanovitch (Ukraine) out on their asses for providing information and testimony as requested by investigators, and required by law (incidentally!).

 In the meantime, he disgraces previous recipients of the Medal of Freedom by awarding it to his ass-kissing, bigoted pal Rush Limbaugh with a bare-knuckled jab into American honor. He followed with his appointed lapdog Attorney General William Barr directed to intervene in a presiding judge’s sentence for his long-time dirtbag buddy Roger Stone in yet another flagrant abuse of power, usurping the distinct separation between the judicial and executive branches of government. 

Now, officially above the law and given free rein to re-make our legal system to his benefit, the most recent series of punches that landed on America’s face make a mockery of our institutions and those who sacrificed and died to defend and protect them. 

My 2020 hope is that the nation can gather the collective courage and conviction to get up off the floor and come back swinging with the conjoined political punches of Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Leonard and Muhammed Ali. It’s imperative that voters deliver the needed knock-out blow to this blatant assault on our democracy. We want our nation back.

We don’t want to hear the ref count to three and await our democracy’s final bell sounding.

It’s up to us in November to land that massive punch, sending the dirty fighter and his backers to the locker room defeated, marking a win for America’s future as the real democracy champions.

John Beckman 

Cullowhee