Well, we’re in it now.

There was a certain inevitability to Donald Trump’s investigation for impeachment.  It’s as if he’s been trying to bring it on ever since he found himself, to everyone’s surprise including his own, the duly elected president of the United States.  In the early days, Republicans kept insisting that he would become more “presidential” the longer he served in office. 

Instead, with every outrageous tweet or insult, he steadily grew less presidential.  It was the Republican party itself that grew more and more Trumpian as the horrifying months careened by.

Yesterday, I went out and bought myself knitting needles and wool, resigned as I was to the lengthy spectacle of can’t-miss testimony and “ah-HA” moments that is about to unfold before us.  Americans from my generation are old enough to have been here before.

We’re a different nation now than we were back in 1972 when the Watergate investigation began to unfold.  After a brief moment of unity in 2001 following 9-11, the country began a slow motion decline into dissolution.  How many times was it repeated that the expressed purpose of Al-Qaeda in attacking the capitol of American capital was to “destroy the American way of life?”

An honest observer from the future would have to agree that they have succeeded; but it wasn’t the direct actions of the terrorists that did it.  We did it to ourselves, descending into twenty years of continuous war, tribalism and self-harm, claiming to do so in the name of the very values and institutions the hijackers had despised. 

In the good ol’ days of Watergate, Republicans hadn’t yet sold-out completely to Wall Street, the NRA, Big Oil, Big Pharma and Fox News.  We were still singing from more-or-less the same songbook, and both parties were still courting the so-called center. 

Republicans were all about small government, capitalism and minding everyone else’s business globally.  Democrats were about the social safety net, equal rights and avoiding international conflict.  Both sides liked Social Security, Public Education, infrastructure investments, farm subsidies and cheap oil. Neither side fully appreciated the urgency of environmental issues.

Religious differences were to be carefully avoided in conversation and it was mutually agreed that racism was a bad thing.

I remember how tired we all became with the endless Watergate hearings, but they provided a real service to the country in bringing the public along gradually to majority agreement on at least one thing:  Dick Nixon had to  go. And go, he did; voluntarily, and one might even say presidentially.  He knew when the jig was up and preserved enough of his shredded dignity to say a tearful “goodbye” from the steps of Airforce One.

After that, we never saw our government through quite the same eyes. Nevertheless, the presidency  survived, separation of powers survived, and the hero of the ordeal was a young Republican in the Nixon administration who gave evidence against him.  John Dean went to jail for his role in enabling Nixon’s crime, but emerged older, wiser and equipped to provide valuable perspective on the corrupt reign of Donald J. Trump.

As much as Michael Cohen apparently fancies himself to be the John Dean of this story; so far, no one has come near to earning that distinction.

Donald Trump proclaimed that his administration would appoint the “best people” to run things.  After roughly 75% of his appointees have been replaced, sometimes with multiple changes in rapid succession, we have yet to see any of the “best people” that he promised. Character is in remarkably short supply.

Although quite a few of the folks who exited through the rapidly swinging doors readily dished on the president and first family, most were too thoroughly intimidated by the Oval Office Godfather to delve very deeply into his corruption.

The people who really know where all the bodies are buried are all immediately related to Donald Trump.  Chances are they’re just as guilty as he is.

With no John Dean in the wings and a soul-less vampire clinging to the ledge of the Oval Office, our poor battered constitutional democracy might not survive to 2024.