Did Democracy just die?

Well, despite my avowed purpose to write something reasonably intelligent almost every day, I have been MIA from the blog for a coupla-two-three weeks now. But the 1st of February is here, and this always amounts to a kind of New Year's Day Reboot. In other words, let's try that again, shall we?

It's absolutely no defense that I've been paying a lot of attention to the Impeachment Trial in the Senate. That was like watching a slow-motion train wreck. You knew exactly what was going to happen, and yet you couldn't turn away!

This morning, which is the morning after the Senate voted "No" to witnesses and documents, 51-49, thus ensuring the acquittal verdict that is surely soon to come (next Wednesday at 4:00, that's when they will actually vote), I'm sipping my coffee and getting ready to go to church for our monthly men's breakfast. In other words, all this cataclysmic political stuff is not changing my life one whit. Or even half-a-whit.

Some of my more doctrinaire Democratic co-workers are suggesting it's the end of the world, or at least the end of democracy, separation of powers, the rule of law, etc. I think they're over-reacting bigly. I saw this CNN article that says the balance of power has now shifted to the presidency at the expense of the Congress. I think that "shifting" has been going on for quite some time, with the willing participation of the Congress itself (the Senate likes to call itself "the greatest deliberative body in the world," but it is actually a gaggle of cowards and ninnies).

So, bottom line, no I don't think democracy died yesterday (as one Facebook meme would have us believe). I think democracy is always on its deathbed, always breathing with a scary rattle, and the worst part is that it absolutely requires in leadership at least a few good brave honest and intelligent folk for whom lust for power is not the driving force. At least a few, but preferably more than a few.

The danger we face, then, is the same danger we've always faced. Lack of the above folk.

OK, gotta run. Those eggs for men's breakfast won't cook themselves!