Cat on a Curtain
A metaphor I have enjoyed using for many years is that of a cat on a curtain. We can all envisage a scared and jittery cat jumping up to cling to a sheer curtain and digging its claws into the flimsy fabric with its unsupported draping flow. It is an image of utter fear combined with a very insecure foundation of support for the wary feline. The metaphor conjures an image of desperation and a lost cause. There seem to be too many of those lost causes in the world, which is probably why I find myself using the metaphor more and more these days.
There is a part of me that wants to say that no causes are lost and that all righteous efforts serve a purpose even if it is becoming increasingly clear that they are unlikely to succeed in the absolute sense of being victorious as defined by the fundamental contest in which they strive. My best example of a worthy lost cause in today’s world is the war on poverty. Poverty has plagued the world since man has walked the earth. Its definition has varied as the world has evolved, but the sense of absolute depravation and ignominious demise is hard to ignore or fail to identify in each stage of human evolution. People like to give TED talks to display how much better off much of humanity is today versus fifty years ago and that’s all well and good, but we are still left with lots of people in the world who lack basic Maslowian needs to stay alive. This is not about not having the latest iPhone or broadband, this is about clean air and water, sufficient nourishment and basic shelter and safety from harm. It’s something that one can rarely, if ever, claim victory over and it may always be a cat on a curtain, but it is a fight that must be continuously fought regardless.
The current impeachment efforts might also qualify as a cat on a curtain. We all know the math involved with the removal of President Trump. It requires a majority vote in the House of Representatives, so at least 218 votes for impeachment. Since there are 234 House members that are either Democrats or the one Independent who has said he is pro-impeachment, it is unlikely that there will be defections enough to undermine an impeachment vote. Clearly the hearings are to prepare the public for a complete understanding about the overwhelming nature of the accusations against Donald Trump that justify impeachment. The 197 House Republicans are the cats on this particular curtain because the evidence as just displayed during the first round of witnesses has been overwhelming and incontrovertible both in terms of the guilt of his actions and intent and the qualification of the high crimes and misdemeanors that rise to the level of being worthy of impeachment. Bribery and obstruction are the two most obvious crimes and now that there is a direct linkage between him and Sondland and the deeds, it will be hard for anyone to suggest otherwise.
Perhaps the biggest cat on the curtain is Ambassador Gordon Sondland himself, and where he started off clinging with four claws, two of them have already been pried off, first by Ambassador Taylor’s testimony and then by Ukraine Embassy staffer David Holmes. Now Sondland is hanging out to dry on that curtain and will have to either directly implicate Trump, lie to Congress and risk certain indictment (ending up as another member of the Trump Rogues Gallery) or take the Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination, which will make him look guilty as hell and probably still land him in the same Rogues Gallery. Meow!
Rudy Giuliani is another cat who is not yet on the curtain, but is inching towards it and here’s the thing, he a much bigger and nastier cat than Sondland and has scorched more people along the way and can hurt Trump in more ways than any of us can even imagine. Rudy has thrown many a defendant on the curtain in his years as a federal prosecutor. He knows how the game gets played and that might seem to make him more agile in avoiding getting cornered, but I would suggest it really only makes him more vulnerable and simultaneously dangerous because he certainly can’t claim any ignorance and he is far more likely to understand the point-by-point advantages of turning states witness against Trump to get himself out of this mess.
The cats that I am more interested to see scramble away from the curtain are first the House Republicans when confronted by the mountain of evidence Congressman Adam Schiff is gathering to array in front of the world that makes voting against impeachment at least a very brazen act of denial. Then, depending on how that all goes, this will go to the Senate for the formal trial of the President for the charges of impeachment. According to the rules, the Majority leader gets to set the logistics of the trial within some bounds, but with Chief Justice John Roberts (age 64, a relatively young man for the post) acting as the trial judge for the proceedings. That means both Moscow Mitch and Chief Justice Roberts are cats on the lower part of the curtain in that their reputations are on the line in terms of the fairness of their handling and comportment of these very serious proceedings. Enter the big senate cats that have to then act as the jury in this trial. There are a few of the Democratic cats (Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly…and maybe Doug Jones) and fifty-three Republicans who will all be purring and pacing about not wanting to be hoisted on the curtain petard of being on the wrong side of history versus the wrong side of the Trump base.
What is needed for the two-thirds majority of sixty-seven senators to vote to convict is all Democrats and twenty-two non-Democrats (really only twenty since two already caucus with Democrats). That’s a lot of Republicans and for that to happen would require a wholesale shift in the public’s perception of Trump’s guilt and need for removal. I’ve heard experts suggest that if public support for removal tips over 60%, which seems very unlikely since it now stands just at 51% and to move that other 9% would be tough since polls also show that only 19% of all voters say that there is a small chance they might change their mind based on the evidence (despite 70% of voters now saying that Trump did something wrong in Ukraine). That is astounding partisanship that places party over truth and rule of law to a very large extent. That places all those of us who believe Trump should be removed and that the evidence is already sufficiently clear to justify that as the ultimate cats on the curtain, clinging to the realization that all we can do is perhaps wound him a bit, but that he is like Dracula hanging upside down from the curtain rod and we have no silver bullets.
Nevertheless, as with all desperate and worthy causes, this is a case where the cats should not be running out of the house but should rather cling tenaciously to that curtain for whatever outcome is delivered. It remains the only course of action when the deeds are so egregious and the stakes so high that we must all fight the evil lurking in the window and simply hope that the sunlight will evaporate all our fears at some point.