Impeachment and the Ray Rice Effect




As the Democrats wrestle with the idea of impeachment, we continue to hear from Nancy Pelosi that impeachment is too divisive, that we need to continue gathering evidence, or that the number of Representatives who back impeachment is still a minority in the House and she worries about public sentiment and poll numbers.

There’s one sure way to ensure that the backing she so desperately wants is created, as opposed to passively waiting for the support to grow.

Starting an impeachment inquiry will put a huge spotlight on the amount of obstruction that has been perpetrated by Trump. There will be hearings, there will be wall to wall news coverage. Examples of obstruction will be discussed, examined, defended, shown for all to see. 

 And that, the seeing, is the most important part of the equation.

Allow me to illustrate the power behind seeing a crime, as opposed to being told about a crime.

In February of 2014, NFL running back Ray Rice was arrested for punching his girlfriend, Janay Palmer, in an elevator. At the time of the arrest, all we saw of the incident was the police report and a video of Rice dragging his unconscious girlfriend out of the elevator. The police report stated that Rice struck Janay in the face, rendering her unconscious. So, we knew what happened in the elevator and we had all the information we needed to hand out his punishment, right?

The following month, given the information available at the time, Rice was indicted on 3rd degree aggravated assault, which came with a possible 3-5 year sentence and up to $15,000 in fines. (These charges were later dropped after Rice agreed to undergo court-supervised counseling.)

In July, given the information available at the time, the NFL decided to suspend Ray Rice for the first two games of the season. And, that was the extent of his punishment from the league. Two games. We’d read the police report, we knew Rice struck Janay in the elevator, knocking her unconscious (though we’d only actually seen him dragging her unconscious body out of that elevator), and we knew he’d been charged with 3rd degree aggravated assault. And a two game was the punishment.

While some were not happy with what could be seen as a slap on the wrist, Ray Rice was set to return to the field on the 3rd week of the NFL season.

Then, on September 8th, everything changed. Video from inside the elevator was released. In this video, we finally saw what we had already read and knew to be true.

We saw Ray Rice punch his girlfriend in the face and knock her out cold.  

The effect of the video was instant and the response took a huge turn. The Ravens immediately cut Rice. The NFL changed their two game suspension to an indefinite suspension, which meant no other team could pick him up. Rice went from sitting out two games to, effectively, being kicked out of the league.

Because we saw Rice punch Janay in the face.

The power of visual proof. It’s much easier to brush aside a written report of what he had done. They’re just words on a sheet of paper. But, when we saw him punch her, saw her collapse, unconscious, it all became much more real.

It’s time to stop talking about what’s in the Mueller report. It’s time to stop expecting the public (not to mention our representatives) to actually read the report and fully comprehend it. It’s time to open an impeachment hearing, call witnesses, ask questions, share exactly what the report found by showing it to us via an impeachment hearing.

Impeachment will have the same effect on Trump as the final video did for Ray Rice. 

 Nancy Pelosi, if you want more people calling for impeachment, then put Trump’s crimes on display for all to see.

After all, seeing is believing, right?


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jesus Loves The Little Children (wait, not you)

Image
Jesus loves the little children All the children of the world Red and Yellow, Black and White They are precious in his sight Jesus loves the little children of the world Singing this song is one of my earliest memories from growing up going to Sunday school. It taught me that all of us, no matter what we look like or where we come from, are loved by the God we were gathering to worship twice on Sundays and Wednesday nights.  This song taught me that I should accept those who might look differently than me (which, growing up in a small, whites only town in Indiana, was a rare occurrence, to be sure), because GOD loved them.  That was the point, wasn't it? That if God loved these people, then we should, too? This week we saw a story about the popular, and notoriously anti-LGBTQ, food chain Chick-fil-A and the reaction some on the right had when discovering Chick-fil-A's website included a section on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and that they had "just hired" a...
Read more

Impeach Trump: Now

Image
The Democrats should be moving full speed ahead on impeaching the president. This is the moment where, historically, Democrats have chosen to take the sensible, well-thought out, reactionary way forward, when what was needed was for them to grab ahold of the narrative and shape it to THEIR will. We don’t need to wait and contemplate while hoping the unredacted version of the Mueller Report gets released soon (we’ve seen enough already). What Trump does so well is to set the framing of the narrative. For instance, when he repeatedly made his racist birther claims about President Obama, Trump introduced a frame, a worldview, that included the possibility of Obama not being an American citizen. The narrative within that frame, whether for or against, necessarily included discussion of Obama’s citizenship, a topic we’d never addressed before in reference to a sitting president. It didn’t matter that his birtherism claims weren’t true, they became a part of the narrative, the disc...
Read more

McConnell's Misplaced Historical Precedent

“You have to go back to 1880 to find last time a Senate controlled by a different party from the president confirmed a Supreme Court justice to a vacancy created in the middle of a presidential election,” McConnell said on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday morning, turning to historical precedent. This isn’t even an honest point (shocking!). It’s a complete Red Herring. A misdirection. The point isn’t that this particular situation hasn’t happened since 1880, the argument McConnell should be making is to point out ALL the times since 1880 where this exact situation actually presented itself , and then a nomination wasn’t even considered. Just like Merrick Garland wasn't even considered. That would be historical precedent.
Read more