Congress Authorizes Itself to Turn and Cave
by Peter Gerler
3/16/26
"There can't be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience? And what is anybody's conscience except a little piece of the conscience of all men that ever lived?"--Walter Van Tilburg Clark , The Ox-Bow Incident.
On March 5 of this year, The Guardian reported that "The U.S. House of Representatives...voted to reject a War Powers Resolution proposed by Thomas Massie, a Republican representative, and Ro Khanna, a Democratic representative." The resolution, it went on, "would have forced the US to withdraw from the (Iran) conflict until Congress authorized military action."
The key idea was to stop an unauthorized, scattergun attack on a foreign nation, in the same way that the "two-person concept is designed to prevent accidental or malicious launch of nuclear weapons by a single individual."
The key line is "until Congress authorized military action."
According to the National Constitution Center, the Constitution (Article I, Section 8) "specifically lists as a power of Congress the power 'to declare War,' which unquestionably gives the legislature the power to initiate hostilities."
But the current Congress has now refused to authorize a war that Trump has already started --knowing that, despite their refusal, the war would continue. Congress has caved.
This may in part have arisen because, in a cult-based setting (and even outside one), a radicalized group may turn toward the leader, substituting his thinking for their own. Trump supporters may deny they are in a cult; but denial is the nature of the beast. Trump does it blindfolded; he has never once admitted fault.
"The first rule of recruitment," wrote the late cult psychologist Margaret Singer, "is that a recruit must never suspect he or she is being recruited." This comports with an essence of the grift: "In the perfect con, the mark never knows he has been taken."
Mark Twain spoke of this a century and a half ago, in his "Sweet Smelling Lies":
"...therein lies the pathos of it all, the hopelessness of it all. It shows at what trivial cost of effort a man can teach himself to lie, and learn to believe it, when he perceives, by the general drift, that that is the popular thing to do."
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