A Modest Impeachment Proposal

 A Modest Impeachment Proposal

 

I recommend that Schumer rule that the impeachment trial's evidence and testimony be public, but the balloting be in secret, to protect the jurors. That's how you try a crime lord.

 

My brother Daniel has objected to this plan. He says that McConnell won't cooperate, and he questions the precedent that it sets. I say that McConnell will cooperate, because his caucus needs to purge Trump from the party, and all future politics, with plausible deniability. They don't want exposure to Trump's stochastic assassins. So McConnell needs a secret ballot as much as Schumer does. It's a classic DC convergence of interests.

 

As for the precedent: Dan's right, a secret ballot would be as shady as Hell. But that's appropriate! Impeachment is a sublimated assassination, just as a political campaign is a sublimated war, and an election is a sublimated revolution. All of the necessary upheaval, yet none of the blood; what a bargain! And any assassination, sublimated or not, must be as shady as Hell, to do what it must do.

 

I say that this country needs fewer assassinations, and more impeachments. There haven't been enough impeachments, and none of them successful, because impeachment isn't rotten enough. I propose this filthy reform to make impeachment fit for purpose.

 

I also recommend that any secret impeachment conviction be followed by a secret ballot on Amendment 14, Article 3, on barring the impeached President from ever again holding public office. When you symbolically shoot at a President, then you must symbolically kill him.

 

A secret ballot to convict Trump would be corrupt. It would be betrayal. It would be a backstabbing. It would be a gross revelation of foul maneuverings by hidden cabals conspiring in smoke-filled rooms. And that too is appropriate. It's what Trump richly deserves.

 

I am well aware that one day I will regret this modest proposal, for a President that I like will be impeached and secretly convicted. But I do not expect politics to be perfect. All I require is that it be for real.