Occupy Oakland assemblies. This is what People’s Impeachment Hearings could look like.

DSA should hold public “People’s Impeachment Hearings” across America. What good will it do to phone bank for Bernie Sanders if the ultimate outcome of these hearings is that Trump is strengthened and gets reelected?

Republican Smoke Screen
I was just listening to the Republican House members carry on. They made it clear why even the most guilty criminal, who has a mountain of evidence against him or her, can get off if they have enough money to hire a top legal team. The Republicans threw up one detail after another, one irrelevancy after another. It was like trying to see one’s way through a massive dust storm. The average person listening would come away confused at best.

But the Republicans, who are just doing their job, aren’t the problem.

Democrats
The Democrats are. The only way to fight aggression is with aggression.

One of the main lines of argument of the Republicans is that the Democrats have never accepted Trump, that they’ve wanted to get him from the day he stepped into the Oval Office, and that these impeachment hearings are but the latest attempt to overthrow the will of the people. To buttress this argument, they point out that there are no direct witnesses, that Trump never said there was a quid pro quo, and a mountain of other details.

The Democrats are left somewhat flat footed. Yes, the bare facts show what Trump was up to, but that’s not enough to really halt and revers the Republican offensive. What’s needed is a counter offensive.

“We’ve been after Trump since he came into the Oval Office?” Here’s a man who’s entire political campaign amounted an offensive against simply truth, against science, against any sense of human solidarity. Through his inaugural speech he in effect announced that he was going to use the presidency to continue that offensive. And the Republicans expect us to roll over and accept him?

People were out to get Trump? Please. The real issue is that they will defend him no matter what. As he said, he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue, and his supporters would still support him.

What’s more, it’s mighty funny hearing them whine about any opposition to Trump when they made it clear that they were going to use their majority in the Senate to do everything they could to scuttle the Obama presidency.

But the Democrats don’t come close to touching these issues because they still hope to keep the “decorum”.

Matt Gaetz
The Democrats won’t expose this lying hypocrite.

I haven’t listened to much of the hearings the last two days, but a couple of days ago, Representative Matt Gaetz in essence threatened violence against the Democrats. Not a word of objection was raised. He then went on to recite a list of issues which people are worried about and which congress should be addressing instead of impeachment. “Young people are worried about global warming,” he said.

What??? Here we have the global warming denier president and global warming denier party, the same party and president whose policies are accelerating global warming, and Gaetz is appealing to people on that issue?

Again, the Democrats let it pass.

Make no mistake: What Trump was up to in Ukraine is a real threat. That’s because it was part and parcel of his and the Republicans’ plans to fraud the 2020 elections on a wide scale. This means, among other things, Georgia-style voter suppression carried out in a series of the swing states, if not elsewhere also. It’s not that the working class and the oppressed have ever really made change through the Democrats, but widespread voter suppression is only possible in conjunction with widespread repression in general. Just ask any black person who ever lived through the official segregation period in the South.

What really lies at the heart of the matter is the fact that according to one of the Trump administration’s own former representatives, William Taylor, Trump really never wanted to provide any aid to Ukraine at all. That has never been raised by the Democrats. Not once.

Putin with his puppy dog at Helsinki

Question: Why didn’t Trump want to provide aid to Ukraine?

Answer: Because he’s so closely tied to Putin.

Question: What is the reason for this tie?

Answer: That Trump has served as a money launderer for the Russian oligarchs, of which Putin is the head.

Question: Why, then, have the Democrats been ignoring this?

Answer: Because money laundering for the drug cartels is rampant throughout the real estate industry, which means that the major financial institutions – the same ones who help keep the Democrats afloat – must also be involved.

If all of this even started to become a central part of the public discourse, it would drive Trump out of office and, more important, it would start us down the road towards building a working class alternative to these two corrupt capitalist parties.

That is why DSA, with now over 60,000 members, should hold public impeachment hearings in every community where it can.

Occupy Oakland assemblies. This is what People’s Impeachment Hearings could look like.