Bullying

by
Ken Melvin
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Sen. Lindsey Graham, SC has been busy as a cat trying to cover up his saying, “And I’ll say this: If there is a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information after the Clinton debacle … there will be riots in the street,” comment by saying several different things about what he was trying to say, when what he was really trying to do was bully the Justice Dept, the Democratic Party, the President, the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader, and the Nation into halting the investigation into former President Trump’s purloining of secret files (there is reason to believe that the Senator has good reason to want to halt the investigation). This is not the first time Sen. Graham, other persons, parties, or even countries have employed the tactic. Unfortunately, there have been too many times when it has worked.

By now, we should, must, know better than to let ourselves be bullied by anyone. Not by the Sen. Grahams, Jim Jordans, Marjorie Taylor-Greenes, Rudy Giulianis, Gregg Abbotts. Josh Hawleys, Ted Cruzs, …, nor the Sam Alitos, Neil Gorsuches, and Clarence Thomases of the world. Not by Republicans, Armed Right-Wing Militias, white supremacists, ideologue judges or justices, nor by self-centered, self-absorbed narcissists like Trump. Not by the overthrow the government second amendment crowd.

This is America. The America where, as children, many of us were taught to not allow anyone to bully us; that bullies are really cowards. Turns out, the part about bullies being cowards is most often true. Case in point: Sen. Graham, is a case of a bully being afraid of a bully who is himself a coward. Seems that Trump likes to gather dirt on someone, then use that dirt to bully them around (an old Robert Moses trick). Sen. Graham is very afraid of Trump. If only a few more republican politicians had stood up to Trump from the get go, hundreds of thousands of Americans would still be alive; January 6^th would not have happened.

Now we hear from these same Republicans and a lot of media pundits, and Trump himself, that we should not even investigate, let alone prosecute the former president because to do so would further divide the nation. What message does that send to the next want to be dictator? For far too long now we have watched the likes of Gingrich, DeLay, Armey, Issa, Gowdy, and McConnell bully the nation; let them get by with it. That allowance in big part is how we got here. That allowance brought us Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Louis Gohmert, …, Donald Trump, a sorry Supreme Court, and a slew of Right-Wing Armed Militia.

For far too long we have watched and listened as Right-Wing Armed Militia strutted around talking about overthrowing the government. They not only didn’t go away, they multiplied like rabbits. And, on January 6^th, 2021, they marched on the U.S. Capitol. What if after the first or second strutting, the effected state’s Governor had called in the National Guard; ordered the Guard to take away the Militia’s weapons, record their names and addresses, and then told them to go home and stay there; or else face trial for attempting to overthrow the government.

Given office, bullies like these use the power of that office to impose their (more likely others’) beliefs on the rest of us. In doing so, they would take, have taken, away our right of choice. From the first and always, we must stand up to bullies.

Opinion | Lindsey Graham’s vile ‘riots’ threat over a Mar-a-Lago prosecution gives away Trump’s game – The Washington Post

Donald Trump was asked what would happen to the country if he were indicted. His answer is something else. | CNN Politics

— Trump: “It would not. But I think if it happened, I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before. I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it.”