Congress and the Military should force Trump out, just like Nixon

On Saturday, April 5th, 2025, 5 million Americans, marched  in our streets, in every major city of the United States, in peaceful demonstrations, under the theme of Hands Off, protesting the depredations of Donald Trump‘s policies. The last time there were protests as large as these in the U.S. was during the Vietnam War era, during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. However, there is a big difference between such events then and now. Compared to these nascent efforts, much more was done to end the presidency of Richard Nixon. More than is widely known, and even more was done than is even suspected today.

First, as the Vietnam war dragged on, and despite the campaign promises of 1968 and 1972, while most of the protests were large and peaceful, growing frustration led to actions that were not as peaceful. As the Republican majority in Congress ignored the growing claims of illegal activities by the administration, there were frankly terrorist activities against the U.S. government. There were also petitions to end the war that were started in 1970 to go to all Congresspersons, both parties, from as many states as possible, and likewise eventually for greater civil rights. People stood outside stores collecting signatures, and printed names and addresses. The petitions had a page of short resolutions, and behind them two pages of a short fact sheet either on Vietnam or Civil Rights.

I know this for a fact because I created some of the first of those petitions and fact sheets. I was with the groups that obtained permission from store managers to stand outside the stores, not blocking people going and coming to gather the petitions. My group even insisted that the young men and women who collected the signatures dress like the “young ladies and gentlemen” that most parents then expected, and be unfailingly polite and well mannered with everyone, no matter what.

Even then people had their own versions of selfies in the large rallies and peaceful protests–the brownie cameras and the polaroid instant cameras. But while these called attention to the issues and began to provide a sense of growing concern by more than just college and high school students, the petitions were harder to ignore, because it was understood these were voters and donors, some big donors. The students who were not allowed to vote being under-age, could be ignored. Their parents, their parents generation signing petitions could not be ignored.

Inside DC other things were going on. I came to know people who were inside at that time, later in my life, but I knew a few in DC at that time, already. The military was split in the Nixon White House. Some were willing to follow orders willy-nilly and illegally, secretly bomb Cambodia, for instance, lie to the American public regularly about the war and the protesters. Others were not, particularly the Navy. The split became more public when Nixon and Kissinger helped overthrow the Allende government in Chile and the Navy was ordered to provide intelligence and communications help to the Pinochet forces. Members of the armed forces began going to Congress, including to the offices of key members like Hubert Humphrey, Senator and former U.S. Vice President. The CIA was even dirtier, more involved, and the FBI under Hoover were making false arrests, abducting and beating up protesters, etc. I know that for a fact, also as I was one of their victims. Yet, at the same time I had four attempts on my life, there were other elements of the U.S. government who wanted me to work for and with them. The civil tensions and conflicts in the U.S. were getting to the level of what existed just before the U.S. Civil War.

At that time we did not have an entire political party turn into a cult to preserve their own power. When people who had worked with the Pentagon over the years do a study about U.S-Vietnam relations, and then some released it to the Press when four members of Congress, members of both parties would not put the report into the Congressional record, the divisions and the lying to the U.S. public, about life and death, war and peace, etc. matters, th illegal activities in southeast Asia, and the very real harm being done to innocent protesters was all exposed. A substantial part of the Republican party started reading it and became alarmed. Then came Watergate–a direct response to the “leaks” of the Pentagon papers, yet another illegal action by the Nixon administration, and a serious effort to keep him in power, affecting elections. Bad as the Nixon-Kennedy race had been in 1960, 1972 was much worse and, at that time, people of both parties believed this had to stop to preserve the Constitution and democracy. Civil rights also had to be supported as part of what needed to be done. A lot of minority young men were drafted and fighting and dying in Vietnam or coming home wounded, disabled, but were being denied the right to vote, to hold jobs, and more. Up until 1972, all young men were being drafted at age 18 but were not allowed the right to vote until age 21. They could die in the forced service of this country without having voted even once.

Nixon was impeached with three articles, a fourth involving illegal warfare and lying to the people about it, being argued and dropped to get something through both houses as necessary in October, 1973, not long after his last illegal act, overthrowing the Allende government of Chile. On August 9, 1974, he finally resigned after two things. Members of Congress, including long-time loyalists to him and leaders telling him he did not have the votes in the Senate to survive. He would have lost his Secret Service protection and his government pension had the Senate voted. He also could have been imprisoned. According to persons who were frequently in the White House, there was another delegation also, of members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and high ranking officers under them who were concerned about the growing divisions in the military itself and the ability of the President to handle both the still ongoing war in Vietnam, negotiations for peace, and to handle the cold war with Russia. They all urged him to resign for the good of the nation as a whole, the nation’s real, improved security, and to maintain an effective, accountable democracy.

Additionally, the economy was a mess, with “stagflation” growing unemployment with high inflation–and high interest rates. In 1974, Nixon did begin winding down the war and bringing more young men home–home to no jobs as the economy was still a war economy, not enough housing either for all the new young families as fathers and engaged young men returned. Again, the President was seen to be focused on his own power and not the good of the country, not for real, and ethical defense, not for the economy.

But today, the Republican party as a whole is not what it was in 1973 and 1974. There are no ethics, there is no loyalty to the Constitution. It has become a cult, and its only goal is its own unaccountable power and the constant re-election of more and more extreme party members in Congress. The members of Congress are ducking their constituents even, avoiding town hall meetings, limiting office hours in their districts and preventing any but loyalists to them and Trump from seeing them, ignoring letters and petitions.

The situation today is worse than in 1973, and as bad as just before the U.S. Civil War. Human nature has not changed since 1861-65, either. With the Republicans refusing to fairly apply impeachment, making it only partisan and political, there are fewer means to end a lawless, destructive presidency run by a demented madman and his not much better acolytes. Realistically, and from the history of other nations and the U.S. Civil War, violence has become much more likely, and the only two possibilities that MAY remain, now are a full-scale popular and real revolution with weapons, or a military coup, which may have more focused and limited violence but since the courts are about as functional as Congress when it comes to real criminal activity, just throwing the very real self-serving traitors into military prisons or mental institutions may not be considered enough.

The only way this is can be avoided, is with the military to do what it did in 1974: Have the guts to act on their oaths to the U.S. Constitution, go to Congress, and flatly tell Congress, “you clean up the mess or we will”, and that all who supported Trump most strongly will be lucky to escape the fate of Trump, and likely others, if they do not finally act.

An aged member of Congress, Senator Chuck Grassley, has a bill to put tariffs back in the hands of Congress. I’ve seen reports that Grassley has 7 Republican Senators onboard, but that bill needs to include a lot many more congress members bi-partisan support, and there needs to be another bi-partisan impeachment effort. Grassley is not yet gaining a lot of support, and each day that passes, Trump is wrecking the economy, dividing the nation as a whole–in every state, and the military, and separating the U.S. from its long term real allies and best trading partners.

The huge April 5th rallies that were in all 50 states should have served as a real “wake up and do what you should” call to both parties and all members of Congress, and it appears, already, they were not enough. With the internet, cell phones, the “tweets” that become law as soon as they are posted, the executive orders–and the ridiculously slow pace of opponents filing lawsuits and the courts hearing them, evil is moving faster than it ever has before, real evil.

Worse, because Trump, was elected by a majority even if slimmer than Nixon’s victory, the nations who all teach history and also have elderly who lived through the late 1960’s and 1970’s, are growing weary of the stupidity and gullibility, the lack of commitment to real democracy and equal rights, in the U.S. and among trading partners and allies of the American VOTERS and feel they can no longer trust this country to be a leader for democracy and fair trade.

There is nothing in Congress, not even polite out of the ears of the press/media discussions, much less legislation to improve the education and mental heath of the voters. Almost 55% of the voters are functionally illiterate and almost 30% are alcoholics and drug addicts, including members of Congress and the administration. The quality of voters determines the quality of government ultimately and even though Americans don’t appear to realize this, a large part of the rest of the world, particularly the developed, also industrial world does realize this. Again, this means there are fewer options to get rid of a deranged, self-serving lawless administration and an entire political party that has become nothing less than an equal self-serving cult.

Late last week Congressman Jimmy Panetta, said it best. At the moment it is entirely up to the red states’ voters and donors to hold their own representatives accountable, however they must do so. So far that’s not happening. That is within all the laws and the most peaceful and most optimal situation. Again, however, this is not happening and the longer this very damaging chaos continues, the windows for the optimal peaceful options are closing.