Sometimes you can see it. You can see the car running the red-light, the truck hydroplaning as its semi-trailer jackknifes its way through all the lanes of the freeway, the train as it starts to derail. You can see; nevertheless you feel powerless and horrified. Knowing doesn’t make it better; does not ease the grief and pain.

Our democracy has slid along a terrible, terrible road. I look at the senators who voted to acquit Donald Trump and I want to scream “How?!? Why?!?” Especially those who admitted he was guilty but opined that “the voters should decide.”

That’s not the voters’ job; it was YOURS. You took an oath to protect the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. The Constitution that said that a president should be removed for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” You listened and accepted an argument that the President can do ANYTHING while in office. God only know what he will do next. He’s talking about finding a way to charge John Bolton — the man who stood up to him — with a crime. How long before he goes after Nancy Pelosi? Or Adam Schiff, who so ably prosecuted the case against him?

And God bless Mitt Romney. He took his oath seriously. There are some on the left that are downplaying Romney’s action, saying he did nothing other than what he should have done. They’re wrong; unlike Democrats who voted to convict, Romney can expect payback from his party, and I would be very surprised if he were not receiving serious death threats. For the Republicans who viewed this as a partisan exercise, Romney stabbed them in the back.

I know that I — we — will rise from this determined to take our country back. We will fight — we may not win — but by God we’re not going down quietly.

But right now, I grieve.