Standing back, surveying the social and political landscape unfolding before me, contemplating Robert Mueller’s report on the Trump-Russian collusion drama, still playing in national publications, online and print, I find myself awed by the elegance of how Mueller has managed the challenge put before him.
The report he has crafted can serve Congress, the American public and other powers that be, for the good, in the days, weeks, months and years ahead in many ways.
Certainly, the bi-partisan polarization that has hog-tied our nation, in recent decades, is breathing hot and heavy, as instantaneous reactions, fill online, broadcast and print spaces.
But does this necessarily need to be the enduring result of Mueller’s report?
Coming up slowly into the realm of articulation, I discover that reverence is what the report calls up in me, as I make room in my mind — and — my heart to absorb the significance and the magnitude of what has been carefully placed before us, as a society, now so embroiled in controversy and chaos that it is hard, these days, to find a place to be quiet, within oneself and with the world around us.
Mine is a social systems’ approach, entwined with perspectives having to do with human evolution and personal and collective transformation. Thus I am inclined to consider not only immediate impressions, turning them into appropriate next steps, but to, also, puzzle over hypothetical, longer term applications, seeking certain, desired outcomes.
So I am asking myself, not only what am I to make of this Mueller report, as it comes hot off the presses, but what, precisely, do I see as its future benefit to our evolution as a respected and powerful nation, spinning out what I know of it, now, and the significance it might hold for us farther down the road a bit.
Like many others I adjust to upheaval and chaos, finding them, presently, the norm. Yet it is order I seek, unity with all things of nature. Constant disorder is much too taxing to foster the optimum ways of doing and being that make life meaningful.
I remember how I experienced the debt ceiling debates of 2011, between Obama and his administration and Congress. I recall, getting to a point where I strongly resented the drama surrounding that situation.
I thought to myself that I had voted for my Congressional representatives, thereby delegating responsibility to them to manage our national finances. Yet what I was witnessing was the equivalent of a schoolyard fight, with one gang of kids bullying another, some aggressively, some passive aggressively, creating a daily battle until, finally, they were spent, the crisis abated.
Similarly, the Trump-Russia drama has kept this nation of people on tenterhooks for more than two years. Now we have, with Mueller’s report, a great amassing of information, backed up by substantial details.
Is this not enough for our leaders, to whom we have delegated certain responsiblities for running this country, to now take up the reins and guide this substantially-funded cache of data into its proper channels, for some form of reasonable resolve, whatever that may be?
Or, must we, now, spend the next two, plus years, analyzing what has already been evaluated, ad nauseum?
In Mueller’s report I see order emerging out of the chaos and corruption Donald Trump and his administration have made of our national heritage.
Mueller and his team have given us facts-based information on this.
What a gift they have given the American people: details, facts and figures for establishing meaningful dialogue, among ourselves, should we choose it — not endless debate, as if we are all Monday morning quarterbacks!
The Mueller Report has provided an opportunity that can open up fresh conversing for us, among ourselves, as friends, family and neighbors and as constituents, while our elected representatives take what has been handed them, through the report, to promote forward movement for our country, beyond the drama of the 2016 election that was over, going on close to three years!
When Congress works together for the collective good of the people, regardless of sexual orientation, color, creed, ethnicity or country of origin, balancing needs with practicalities, offsetting the power of the few by providing for the many, this is achievable.
Light that shines out of facts, as a foundation for meaningful discussion, dialogue that can bring about solutions to problems, bridge-building across rivers of discord.
Anticipating the potential, future impact of having the detailed facts we now have, I want to see them turned into some kind of positive, long-range change in our society.
Be that across the neighbor’s fence, at the local coffee shop, in civic gatherings and meetings and beyond.
We do have enough in this report to use its fact-finding, prudently, as an opportunity to come together, in some meaningful ways and go beyond polarization.
The Nixon-Watergate scandal and the Clinton-Lewinsky affair have shown us how our nation views potentially impeachable offenses. Both have taught us much that has been often discussed, as we moved through the Trump-Russia investigation.
What can we have learned from this brouhaha, about ourselves as a nation of people of varied opinions, that will enable to manage presidential conflict of interest problems, such as we have recently been through, with less upheaval, should similar incidents arise in the future?
Certainly, there is much to be learned.
I have a neighbor who has become quite dear to me. Living up in the mountains as we do, folks on our road are not wont to have block parties, celebrating Memorial Day or the Fourth of July, as they did in the small Ohio town in which I was born. Nor are they estranged from one another, as were the residents in the suburban Maryland area in which I raised my children.
After all, power outages, such as we have up here, and even more so a flood disaster like we experienced last year, causing road closures and a limited ability to get to even the nearest grocery story for months, can and do draw diverse people together, in times of natural disasters.
My neighbor, who I will call Dave, for privacy’s sake, is a taxidermist, living on close to fifty acres of his own hunting turf, up here in the mountains. Obviously, Dave is a pro-gun advocate though a firm believer and adherent of gun safety who has taught, even his wife and children, how to use guns, carefully.
Me — I want only gun control with guns as far away from me as possible.
Still Dave’s view has opened my eyes to considering the possible future place of guns in my life, from a different vantage point than I had held previously. Might I even consider owning one, I now ask myself?
Dave is definitely, even defensively, pro-Trump. I am a registered Independent, formerly a Democrat who does not like or approve of Trump. Again, it is easy to see how Dave and I might be at crossroads.
But there is a bond between Dave and me.
Both of us deeply love home, family and the historical lands upon which we have built our lives up here in the mountains.
Dave and I don’t want to fight over our diverse viewpoints and be at odds with one another.
Prior to Mueller’s report, but after Barr had released his preliminary statement, Dave wrote me an email expressing his strongly held viewpoint that certain criticisms of Trump and the Trump-Russian drama were totally “delusional” and “collisional” on the parts of the Democrats.
I agreed with Dave on some things, having to do with this subject. Suspecting, however, we might not continue to see eye to eye, should we continue to develop our discourse. Agreeably we halted our discussion. What might lie ahead, neither of us was inclined to explore further.
Might not Mueller’s report, now, provide Dave and I with enough added, factual, non-partisan information that we can expand our dialogue on the society we live in and the politics and policies that govern so much of it?
I would hope so, as Dave is one of my favorite people, up here in the mountain, to expand my thinking on a variety of things, such as what do we do about the bears that are raiding our trashcans.
And has anyone yet seen the copperheads, this year?
Such topics give meaning to our lives, day to day, in this neck of the woods.
Yet our greater society and politics matter too.
So what is in our best interest, Dave’s and mine, as neighbors hanging out, now and then?
And, yours and mine, short term, midterm and long-term, as we take our next steps into the future, post Robert Mueller’s Report On The Trump-Russia Investigation?
On my end, I can assure you I do not wish my days and nights to be spent, tuning into the drama Mr. Trump creates!
Nor that of Republicans, Democrats and the media, all of whom have a vested interest in holding the American people hostage to their special interests.
