Donald Trump: Impeached

Yesterday, in a historic vote, the US House of Representatives approved two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, becoming the third president in US history to be impeached.

No one is above the law, Mr. President. #DefendOurDemocracy pic.twitter.com/59FND6JZWg

— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) December 19, 2019

No Republican voted "yes" on either article of impeachment, which comes as no surprise given that the Republican Party has rotted to the core and will use any means necessary to grab and maintain political power, even if, now, that involves colluding with foreign states to win elections.

Nonetheless, despite what may happen in the Republican-controlled Senate, this impeachment will forever stain the presidency of a fundamentally bad, immoral, criminal, corrupt, reprehensible, and predatory man and this win, even if "just" symbolic, would have never been possible had Democrats not won back the House in the 2018 mid-term elections.

In addition, given the status of the Republican Party, we also have to remember that while defeating Trump, either through impeachment or the 2020 election, is vitally important for a plethora of reasons, the issues facing our nation do not begin or end with Trump.

Many factors in our media, social media, and political landscapes enabled his rise, and no matter what happens, we must continue addressing those factors.

This topic, of course, merits multiple posts if not an entire book, but these issues include (but are not limited to) realities like Fox News effectively serving as a propaganda arm for the Republican Party, the paywalls that exist for mainstream news sources but not for rightwing media sources, the mainstream media (even liberal, leftist, and progressive sites) being dominated by cishet white men (some of whom are, still, predators and abusers), the mainstream media treating Trump and politics like reality TV/entertainment for ratings and money, political commentators engaging in "both-sidesism" with respect to the two major parties, coddled and unacknowledged bigotry among the US populace, the fallout of Citizens United, the spread of propaganda on unregulated social media, voter suppression, gerrymandering, the unrepresentative electoral college, and, oh yeah, cheating in our fucking elections.