Am I old fashioned?  Are my beliefs naive and outdated?  I remember growing up in an America where I was taught to embrace and believe that no person was above the law, not for a privileged class, not even for the president.  Where even the youngest cub scout takes an oath to doing their best for “god and country.”  And where two wrongs don’t make a right.  A world where you do your best and do the right thing, even when it hurts.  And where if you’ve done a wrong, you fess up to it and accept the consequences.

As I worked in embassies and combatant commands around the world as a U.S. Army Colonel, and diplomat, not that long ago, the belief system in my professional world expressed above was the same.  And for good reason.  You had to be counted on, and you had to be relied upon, to do the right thing and accept accountability for your actions.  And you knew that there were consequences and prices to be paid for failing to do what’s right.  We behaved this way because it was in America’s best interests – your best interests.  So I ask, has the value of no man or woman being above the law changed?  Has this value that gave America such credibility on the global stage become outdated, or is no longer relevant?  Have we now embraced the idea that the political party in power will vote to retain their power, blindly follow their party bosses, even at the cost of doing the right thing?  I ask because I want to know.

So now we ask our elected officials to transparently investigate wrongdoing allegations.  We ask them to do it not because of a politically motivated “witch hunt”, but because that’s what our constitution directs them to do - and now, they get chastised.  My hope is we have faith in a system that’s served us pretty well for 250 years.  That the truth will emerge, and those deciding the matter will do-the-right-thing.  Have we forgotten the consequences of the alternative – the prospect of accepting a daily footnote from Congress that merely says, “move along, there’s nothing to see here folks, move it along, we’ll take care of it” with no public record of due-diligence or accountability?  Are we okay with that now?  If you like an accused person, and they have a track record of having done many measurably good deeds, and you wholly embrace their leadership style, but the facts are clear that wrongdoing was committed, do you excuse them anyway?  Or, do you embrace the idea that there’s a price to be paid that’s commensurate with having broken the law?  I ask because I want to know.  I want to know if something has changed while I was down range standing up for the values I thought most of us embraced, and what I thought was healthy for America.

I’m a pretty far distance from what anyone would call a perfect person, and I’ve made my share of mistakes.  But I try to do the right thing and when it comes to America, I behave honorably.  But today it seems to me many of our elected officials are not behaving very well.  We have elected officials, who are the jurors in the case at hand, weighing in before the facts are fully disclosed and without entertaining due process.  Why isn’t it shameful that so many in the republican party have already decided where they stand before the Senate Chamber has had a chance to officially listen to all the facts and take a vote? 

Even our own Republican Senator, Mike Lee, has changed his original disdain for the president’s numerous misgivings, and is leading the committee, with his erstwhile colleague and mentor former Senator Orrin Hatch, to re-elect President Trump before he’s even participated in the impeachment proceedings (https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2019/11/15/sen-mike-lee-says-hes-co/).  This, after ranting about his complete disgust for then candidate Trump in 2016 and the “deplorable comments about woman” he made (https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/8/13209224/trump-mike-lee-facebook-live-republican-president), and now states he took “The Scenic Route” to embrace the President’s behavior.  Was Mr. Lee raised with a different value system, or does his value system simply adjust to what his party bosses tell him what his values are?  It seems that when it comes to getting what he wants, even our incumbent Republican Senator Mike Lee will do and say anything his party tells him to too get what he wants – re-elected.  He’s clearly now on board with the President’s, his boss, among other misgivings, hiding of the hush money to pay off his prostitutes (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/mitt-romney-has-a-secret-twitter-account-and-it-sure-looks-like-its-this-one.html).  He’s also on board with leaving our Kurdish partners at the mercy of the Turks (https://www.businessinsider.com/us-veterans-trump-abandoning-kurds-sets-dangerous-precedent-2019-11), et cetera, et cetera, et cetera…

So Utah, especially our wonderful ladies out there, I ask, do you want more from your elected representatives?  Is Mike Lee’s changed attitude toward the treatment of our ladies, after having taken the “Scenic Route” really what you’d hoped for in a leader?  If so, I of course urge you to keep voting for them both.  Or, how about you reservists, like me, who would like to see a little better representation of our warriors in Congress – presently at historic lows.  Do you ever stop and think, I wish I could have better?  And what about Senator “Pierre Delecto” (aka: Mitt Romney: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/10/mitt-romney-has-a-secret-twitter-account-and-it-sure-looks-like-its-this-one.html).  Is Pierre (I mean, uh, Mitt) really what you had in mind when you could not find a Utah citizen and had to outsource your senate seat to a celebrity politician with carpet bag in tow?  If these guys would worry about simply doing the right thing for America, maybe we’d all be a lot better off. 

So I ask you Utah, do you want better?  Would you, could you, get behind that?  I want to know.  Come to The Mad Moose… I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.  You can tell me where I am wrong.  I want to know. 

COL Mike Seguin

Utah Bull-Moose Party 2022

www.utahbullmooseparty.com