–Final Senate Trial Verdict Vote Set For Wednesday 4p ET
–Senate Rejects Calling Witnesses 51-49
By Denny Gulino
THE WHITE HOUSE (MaceNews) – Remember when an inverted yield curve was top of mind? Or Brexit? Or Iran’s Gen. Qasem Soleimani? Or Kim Jong Un? China tariffs? Mattis? Comey? Khashoggi? Or – wait a minute, let’s not take anything away from the preoccupying Senate trial of President Trump.
The yield curve is inverted again, incidentally. Brexit’s became a done deal on this very day without a wrinkle in the space-time continuum. That may take many more months. Iran is still one bad misstep away from war. Kim’s minions are still busy building bombs.
Accumulating monster budget deficits are heading to what the CBO says are “unprecedented” debt-to-GDP ratios. U.S. productivity growth keeps sputtering, putting some unknown future cap on U.S. prosperity.
Ordinary flu has killed more than 8,000 Americans so far this 2019-2020 flu season. The previous season killed 61,000. U.S. gun-related homicides are still 25 times higher than the next highest nation. More than 100 people a day die in U.S auto accidents.
And stocks, with investors gripped with apprehension about the potential of the corona virus to cripple global growth, suffered steep Friday losses of up to 2.1%.
Finally, more than 10,000 people have caught the corona virus and it is one mutation away from becoming much more lethal. The open ended threat is just beginning. The SARS scare lasted more than eight months.
Now with all that context, how important is the ultimate Senate vote now set for late Wednesday afternoon and which is expected to be for acquittal? Only two Republicans, not the required four, voted with the Democrats to extend the trial to hear witnesses.
A “grand tragedy, in the words of Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer? Or a grand vindication?
History or perhaps developments as soon as the balance of President Trump’s first term will render that judgment. Meanwhile it’s important to remember the significance of what is at stake, something easy to overlook in the numbing incremental passing of day-to-day developments.
The Wikipedia entry on total U.S. war casualties gives a hint, showing lives lost in service to the country or, in the Civil War, fighting for a certain kind of government. Among the list of dozens of “wars,” some very tiny, the top 15 including the war between the states show more than 1.3 million American lives lost. That’s a solemn recounting of the kind of very human investment there has been to assure some hoped for better kind of American future.
Regardless how boring the battle can be, either in the World War I trenches or just trying to stay awake watching a Senate impeachment trial drone on, history everywhere shows that people ultimately care a whole lot about the way they’re governed and step up when great sacrifices are called for.
The final Senate verdict may become just a footnote to American history, a jot in the Trump timeline, or perhaps it will grow in significance in retrospect. Its aftereffects may be hard to see in the turbulent river of time, or may come to overshadow the vote itself.
After all, in 1863, the author of those 271 words suggested, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here,” So it may be said of the Senate verdict – for now.
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This update includes a correction of annual auto deaths in the U.S,, averaging more than 100 a day vs. more than 3,000 a day worldwide.
Contact this reporter: denny@macenews,com