The latest Republican lie is that trying an impeached former president for offenses he committed while in office is unconstitutional. The vast majority of legal scholars who have opined on the subject declare that the trial is indeed constitutional, especially since Trump was impeached the second time before he left office.

Saying he cannot be tried is akin to declaring an embezzler who was charged can’t be tried because he’s no longer employed by the company he stole from. Furthermore, there have been two prior cases of federal civil government employees who were impeached and tried after leaving government service.

The lie that it’s unconstitutional to try former President Trump since he’s no longer in office is merely another Republican excuse not to hold Trump accountable for instigating and inciting the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol that resulted in five deaths [to date] and the often severe injuries to 140 police officers. While it is likely that the majority of Republican Senators have neither the ethics nor the courage to convict Trump, to hide behind a legally unsustainable lie is just another form of cowardice.

Five deaths and 140 injured police officers! If a sitting President had told a Black Lives Matter demonstration to attack the Capitol, and that demonstration resulted in equivalent deaths, injuries and damage, does any thinking individual have any doubt that such a President would be impeached and convicted, whether or not he was still in office?

As I’ve written before, Republicans can vote to impeach a Democrat president for lying about an affair with an intern, but they appear all too willing to refuse to convict a president for actions that many of them have publicly deplored, for various reasons, giving a range of reasons unfounded in fact or law.

Why? The only answer I can find is that they care more about being re-elected than they care about doing what is ethical… or about their country… no matter how they protest to the contrary. And what’s more, all too many of their constituents agree.

In a secret ballot, the majority of the U.S. House Republican Caucus voted not to remove Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney from her position as House Republican Conference Chair, in effect supporting her right to vote her conscience in supporting the House vote to again impeach Donald Trump. The vote was 145 House Democrats voting not to remove, 61 to remove. That secret ballot allowed Republicans to vote their conscience – or beliefs – without political backlash.

On the other hand, the Republican conference refused to sanction the QAnon spouting, hate-mongering Marjorie Taylor Greene, who had also earlier threatened Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, and Barrack Obama. To top matters off, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy claimed he was unfamiliar with the QAnon extremists – except he seemed to forget that he denounced QAnon months ago.

Before joining Congress, Greene posted videos questioning whether the 9-11 terrorist attacks ever happened, stalking and taunting a teen survivor of the deadly Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, as well as suggesting that space lasers owned by wealthy Jews were causing deadly wildfires in California. She claimed school shootings were staged by Democrats to promote gun control laws and that “the stage was being set” to hang former President Barack Obama and former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Even Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell denounced Greene’s views as a “cancer” on the Republican Party and on the country.

When the Republicans refused to discipline Greene, the Democrats pushed through a bill to strip Greene of her committee assignments. One hundred ninety-nine Republicans voted against the bill, in effect publicly supporting the ultra-right-wing, hate-mongering Greene. Only eleven House Republicans wanted her to be sanctioned for her actions.

And what do all these votes illustrate? That the majority of Republican national office-holders are either scared to death of the extremists in their political or base or that they think they can’t get elected without pandering to those extremists… if not both.

And, by the way, Greene says that she’s raised almost $2 million from small donors in the past week or so.

The assault on the U.S. Capitol and all of the right-wing rhetoric about individual freedoms got me to thinking about some other related aspects of American culture. In the United States, there coexist two “schools” of how matters get accomplished.

The longer-standing one is an outgrowth of the myth of the rugged individualist, and today we see that modeled in the business world by entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, and in earlier years of the Republic by others such as Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford, etc. All of them built supporting organizations, but those organizations initially existed to further the dreams and aims of the founder.

The other model has also been around for a time, but those following it tended to emphasize “team-work” or cooperation.

In fact, in the end, in terms of function, the organizational structures didn’t turn out all that differently, for a very simple reason. No large organization can be effective and survive without cooperation and teamwork.

What’s so often overlooked is a key element in success of organizations. That key element is the person or persons who hold everything together – call them “glue.” But “glue,” whether in holding furniture or physical objects together or in holding organizations together, seldom gets its due.

In any business, government entity, non-profit, or other organization with more than a handful of people, I’ve never seen much recognition of such individuals. I have seen great hoopla over a single achievement of an individual, who may never replicate that, but who continues to be rewarded, recognized, and promoted, often years after that single “flash in the pan,” but seldom much recognition of those whose quiet efforts produce more over time and who hold things together.

I’ve also seen continued quiet achievements of various individuals minimized, even when their combined results far exceed the single one-time brilliant accomplishment of another, far more highly recognized and paid, individual (individuals whom I personally mentally tab as “flashes”).

So why does glue so seldom get its due?

The Republicans who voted to impeach Bill Clinton because he once lied about screwing around with an intern can’t be bothered to even consider impeaching a President who spouted lies about non-existent voting fraud for over two months and then topped it off by inciting a mob attack on the Capitol to stop the certification of those votes… and apparently followed that up by plotting to remove the acting attorney general in order to allow a junior political appointee to try to void the election. Nor do Republicans appear to consider that Trump has had lawsuits filed against him for rape.

Even AFTER the attack on the Capitol, most Congressional Republicans still voted against certifying the results of a free and fair election.

They complain about non-existent election fraud after spending decades supporting various voter suppression schemes all across the nation.

These same Republicans insist on the right to carry firearms everywhere, but won’t allow women the freedom to determine what goes on with their own body.

They also cite the need for fiscal restraint and decry welfare to poor people, many of whom can’t get jobs or who work full-time and still make wages below the poverty level while enacting tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans and supporting massive subsidies to American big business… and while refusing to support a living minimum wage.

They suppress largely peaceful marches and demonstrations by people seeking equal treatment under law with massive arrests and tear gas, but fail to use the same level of suppression and arrests against white supremacist mobs… and they support a former President who calls white supremacists “good people” and who has said he “loves” them.

For years, the FBI has warned that the highest levels of violence and greatest danger comes from the far-right, but Republicans continue to ignore that danger and blame the far left for all forms of violence, even falsely claiming in some cases that the far-left was behind far-right violence.

The question isn’t just how craven, ignorant, unethical and self-centered these Republicans are; it’s also about how ignorant, unethical, and self-centered those who elect them are as well.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the majority of Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate do not want to convict former President Trump in an impeachment trial, despite his months of efforts to overthrow an election that even all Republican state election officials said was without fraud and despite his successfully inciting a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol while Congress was in joint session to certify the results.

These Republicans offer a number of excuses, ranging from the barely plausible to ones far worse. The barely plausible one is that the U.S. needs “to heal.” Who do they think they’re kidding? The only ones who need “healing” are the far-right and their supporters, and they’re not interested in being “healed.” They’re still plotting to overthrow any democratically-elected government that doesn’t support them and their goals.

The next excuse is that it’s unconstitutional. Bullshit! First, legal precedent has already been established in the case of federal officials previously impeached after they left office. Second, as a practical matter, do we let embezzlers off the hook just because they’ve left the company they looted? Or teachers who’ve been abusive because they’re no longer teachers?

The third excuse is that Trump really didn’t do anything wrong. He just got carried away. Really? Plotting and pressuring officials to overturn election results for over two months and, apparently, even after the assault on the Capitol, from recent reports from the Justice Department.

The fourth excuse is that it will get in the way of the new Administration. This one is incredibly hypocritical. Already the Republicans are signifying opposition to many of the Biden administration’s proposed policies.

The fifth excuse is that it’s just better to let Trump fade away, as if he’ll EVER willingly fade way. Not the man who treated the White House like the set for a TV reality show.

The sixth excuse is that Trump was the only one addressing the needs of the “forgotten workers.” Just because he told those workers he identified with them shouldn’t give him a free pass. Besides, as far as the neglected workers go (those pushed out of the workforce by technological and economic change), Biden’s far more likely to address their problems in a meaningful way than Trump — or most Republicans — ever would.

The real reason is that those Republicans care more about getting re-elected than they do about morality, about law, and about the Constitution. They’re either self-interested cravens or too ignorant about law and ethics to be a U.S. Representative or Senator [not that ignorance is any barrier whatsoever], and they’re still afraid that Trump will strike back at them.

All the rhetoric and all the excuses to the contrary, they won’t oppose Trump because they’re either too unethical themselves, too stupid, or too cowardly to do their ethical duty…if not all three.