The hiatus has to end.

And I am back. And now on the other side of the world, living in a new place – back in the Pacific- and galavanting across multiple time zones every month.

I loved my time in Europe, but the clock of age stops for no one -and eventually for everyone – and I had to make some decisions that involved unwanted change. So when an avenue presented itself to lay some foundations on the other side of the world, I took it. As a result, I have been packing and re-packing and unpacking and re-unpacking for the last two months.

And that’s all I have to say about that for now. Thanks to the unwarranted attacks on this site last spring, a little ambiguity is in order. I still need to publish and I still have my rights to do so.

Plus, it’s been hard for me to work up the energy to write about the current US political situation. How anyone could have watched the blatant criminality and corruption of the last months, by the orange monster and believe in any hope for the future is beyond me. The events of 2019 have been stunning and disgusting, to say the least. The country that I knew, the country that I served, is dying a slow and painful death. It remains to see whether it can yet recover and stand up on its own. Two years ago I believed it would come to its senses. Now? I think the sickness may be terminal. Witness this:

What Giuliani admitted — and then tried to deny he admitted — is that he went to Ukraine in order to get the government in Kiev to investigate a potential scandal involving the Bidens. Once again, Trump was seeking support from a foreign power in order to influence next year’s presidential election. Hey, he got away with it once. Why not twice? All of which casts a whole new and incriminating light on that phone call with the Ukrainian president that an intelligence agent brought to the attention of the authorities via the whistle-blower statute.

Do I believe that Trump is perfectly capable of using his office to lean on a foreign government to expose a political opponent? Well, duh. And do I believe that he and his attorney general will do everything they can to keep this bottled up and away from the congressional oversight it clearly merits and legally requires? Of course they will. And the worst of it is: They have a point.

The trouble in our constitutional system is that a confidential presidential phone conversation with a foreign leader is obviously covered by executive privilege. In fact, I’d say it’s one of the most defensible cases of executive privilege there is. The president must have the ability to speak candidly with foreign leaders, and his conversations should not be available to anyone outside the Executive branch. Separation of powers requires that even the Congress be excluded from the details of this kind of discussion. And yet that discussion may well present a real threat to national security, and constitute an impeachable offense.

What do we do then? The elevation of a despicable, shameless liar and con artist to the presidency has revealed a core weakness in the U.S. Constitution. Its attribution of executive authority to one individual, the president, gives that individual extraordinary control over the entire government. If that individual is a traitor, a crook, or a pathological liar, too bad. You either impeach him … or he wins. You begin to understand why the Roman republic vested this kind of authority in two men, so that if one were corrupt, the other might correct it. We have no such system. We have, in effect, a dictator of sorts, and since Trump has no other way of operating, we have slid — perhaps irrevocably — away from liberal democracy toward an elected form of tyranny. The Founders simply assumed that a figure as depraved as Trump would never win an election.

More to the point, his criminality is backed by a solid majority of his own party. It seems increasingly likely to me that Trump’s “defense” will be to admit he did it, and insist there’s nothing wrong with it. And who believes that the GOP won’t support him on this? Rudy gave Hannity the game plan last night, and from now on, the right-wing media will likely ignore a massive abuse of power and focus on yet another largely incomprehensible conspiracy theory about Biden.

As I’ve said over and over again, the instinctual tyrant never stands still. Each time he survives, he moves the baseline. The corruption, profound now, will only intensify. The abuse of power will grow. Each time we fail to hold the tyrant accountable is an opportunity for him to up the ante yet again. Which is to say there is one obvious remedy for this lawlessness and borderline treason. Impeach!

The author of that quote is right, and the recognition that there is little I can do about this bit of national self – immolation is troubling indeed.

On the other hand, at least I will be watching it from the proper hemisphere. And staggering down the streets of my favorite places while doing so.

Saddle up Sancho, we’ve still got windmills to tilt at!