She Doesn't Have a Prayer

In our time of trouble, Mother Nancy comes to us
speaking words of wisdom, Let it be...

As I’ve blogged in the past (here and there) I’m somewhat of an authority on prayer, so my ears really perked up last week when Nancy Pelosi announced that she was so worried about the state of Donald Trump’s being that she was going to pray for him. Since Nancy and I share the same religious background, I started rummaging through the prayers we both would’ve learned in catechism class for a prayer that might apply. The Lord's Paryer? Glory Be? Hail Mary? None of them fit. Maybe she could improvise a prayer like people do when called upon to deliver a prayer in emergency circumstances: Bless us, Father (more than ever before!) and give us the strength to endure and overcome this raging asshole.There are many who believe that Speaker Pelosi is shirking her responsibility by opting for prayer rather than articles of impeachment for an evidently criminal President. For the time being, I’m with her. First of all, on the very difficult and little understood level of dealing with Trump’s narcissistic personality disorder, she’s probably been as good as can be for someone who is not a trained therapist. Her announced prayer for him, her call for an intervention for him, her claim that he’s not worth impeachment and really not worth talking about are all sharp-tipped arrows pointed directly at the fragile, puffed-up ego that feeds his NPD. The complexity in dealing with NPD sufferers is that though they readily portray themselves as victims for the purpose of manipulation, they shrink when others portray them as victims because of its implication of weakness. It’s important to keep in mind throughout this entire impeach or not to impeach debate that this is not just a political process…in Trump’s case it’s a deeply psychological one as well.In considerable addition, I think Nancy’s track record in leading Congressional Democrats* over most of the last two decades should earn her--at the least--the benefit of the doubt that she knows what she’s doing in regards to impeaching Trump. She maintains that the issue is divisive, that Trump is goading her into impeaching him because he sees it to his advantage, and that not only don’t they have the votes to convict in the Republican-controlled Senate but even to charge in the Democratic-controlled House. I find all these arguments specious at best, yet strategic. I believe a large part of her strategy is to portray her party and especially herself, the bête noir of the Right, as reluctant impeachment warriors…to show she’s being dragged kicking and screaming toward impeachment in order to blunt the obvious charge from the Right that impeachment was her obvious, insidious aim all along. Nancy Pelosi coming out for impeachment a month from now will have considerably more impact than had she come out for it a month ago. In the meantime the drip-drip-drip of evidence, the slow but sure dawning of public awareness, and Trump’s daily words and deeds of self-indictment will contribute mightily to making the ultimate, inevitable impeachment of him more of a success. That success will not be measured in an impossible Republican Senate vote against Trump, but in the results of a national vote against him in 2020. But that election has to be an epilogue to impeachment, not a substitute for it. I think in her heart of hearts, Nancy Pelosi knows that.     To help her stay true to her heart, I’ve called upon my seminary background to retrofit The Apostle’s Creed for Nancy...and so now she has a prayer:I believe in the Constitution of the United States
as the foundation of order and stability
I believe in Article 1, the vested powers of Congress.
As was conceived by the wisdom of the Founders
And born of the Constitutional Convention
It suffered through Civil War
Was attacked and bloodied, but triumphed.
It descended again in the Age of Trump
And the sin of authoritarianism
But Congress will ascend once more
And sitteth witnesses and gather evidence before it
And it will rise again to judge high crimes and misdemeanors
I believe in Congressional responsibility
Executive accountability
The Rule of Law
The Pursuit of Justice
The Resurrection of the Body Politic
And the validity and imperative of impeachment  Amen.
*For those with short memories, this from her Wiki page:Pelosi was a major opponent of the Iraq War as well as the Bush Administration's 2005 attempt to privatize Social Security. During her first speakership, she was instrumental in the passage of many landmark bills, including the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act, along with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and 2010 Tax Relief Act, which served as economic stimulus amidst the Great Recession.