John Peeler: If they don’t impeach, he will have cemented the precedents for further unchecked abuses of power. By doing their constitutional duty as they see it, House Democrats have fallen into Trump’s trap.
John Peeler
John Peeler is a retired professor of political science at Bucknell University, specializing in Latin American and international affairs. After growing up in Florida and Georgia, he moved north as a teenager, and began a lifelong leftward migration. He’s been writing primarily for LA Progressive since 2008. He continues to live in central Pennsylvania.
Universal Solvent: Trump the Anti-Conservative
John Peeler: Whatever structure obstructs him, he will undermine it. Whoever has independent authority, he will destroy. If he stays in power, there will be no power but his.
Political Addiction and Creative Destruction: Dilemmas of Radical Reform
John Peeler: Any serious reform plan, whether for health care or green energy, must think through how these workers are to be helped. I think Warren and Bernie Sanders do fairly well in thinking through this challenge.
Exhuming Aristotle
John Peeler: Foweraker seeks to exhume Aristotle’s concept to make sense of some stubborn realities of democracy in Latin America and elsewhere in the world.
Climbing Out of the Swamp: What to Do About Trump’s Misdeeds
John Peeler: it is also clear that the testimony to date has not moved a single Republican representative or senator to announce support for impeachment of the president, nor has it significantly moved national public opinion on this matter , which remains closely divided.
Cut to the Chase: Fundamentals of Trump and Ukraine
John Peeler: Putin seems to have planted the idea with Trump that Ukraine is a bad place. Hence Trump’s negative predisposition toward a place he probably couldn’t even find on a map.
The Rise and Fall of Evo Morales: Implications for Democracy
John Peeler: Morales saw that his position was untenable. So he resigned. Perhaps he lives to fight another day. He still has much of his original popular base, the indigenous majority of the country. Out of power, out of the country, he will still be able to render the country ungovernable without him.
God Made Me Do It: The New Religious Freedom
John Peeler: What’s novel about this new approach by religious conservatives is that it seeks to justify their refusal to recognize rights to which they object.
Let the Voters Decide
John Peeler: The House should vote to censure the president based on an array of objectionable conduct, including but not limited to the Ukraine imbroglio. And then leave it to the voters.
The Art of Global Leadership: Trump Has No Clue
John Peeler: Practically everyone outside Trump’s hard core base thinks he screwed up badly in Syria, but there is no agreement on what should be done instead.
Trump’s Criminally Insane Asylum Policy
John Peeler: Here’s the deal: people fleeing criminal violence in any of the three Central American countries are required to seek asylum in another country that is just as hazardous.
Syria: Stunning, Dangerous Incompetence
John Peeler: The US has turned its back on faithful Kurdish allies who have done most of the fighting and dying in the fight against IS. This obviously will cause others we are allied with around the world to question the reliability of US support.
Turkey and the Kurds: A Century of Bad Faith
John Peeler: No Turkish government up to the present day has ever admitted to [the Armenian] genocide, and the Kurdish leadership has never admitted to the Kurds’ role.
