This week, we witnessed what I hope will be the worst moment in the devolution of the 2020 presidential election process.

The incursion of violent rioters into the US Capitol -- at the behest of the US President -- was both horrifying and clarifying. Beyond all doubt, in that moment, we saw how far things had gone.

Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Trump finally went on Twitter (of course) to tell the insurrectionists to "go home", and simultaneously inflamed the situation with his continuing assertions of a stolen election. In that moment, I screamed at the TV, "That’s it! Invoke the 25th Amendment!" The man was clearly delusional and incapable of governing the country.

This morning, the CNN website has a long analysis headlined, "The day America realized how dangerous Donald Trump is." The headline is inaccurate on at least two fronts.

1. I’m afraid that a large segment of the American population still does not get it. At this point, I don’t have a clear sense that Trump’s passionate supporters have had any sort of awakening to Trump’s lies, or the reality of a fair election. Many of his faithful followers still are rallying behind the President.
   
2. Many people have known of the danger for a long time. At the end of October (the last time I wrote to this list), I named the likelihood of violence after the election. Toward the start of my long post, I wrote, "Trump has offered thinly-veiled encouragement to his followers to engage in violence and turmoil if the election doesn't go his way. A peaceful transition of power is a hallmark of the US constitutional system, and there is a good chance that such a transition will not come easily after this election." I urged y’all to connect with a broad coalition, Protect the Results [https://protecttheresults.com/], which was organizing to resist the likely attempts to overthrow the election.

But Wednesday’s attempt to disrupt a joint session of Congress -- a Constitutionally-mandated session to finalize the vote tally from the Electoral College -- was a powerful wake-up call. There now are public calls for Vice-President Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, even though it is unlikely that he’ll do so. And articles of impeachment have been drafted in the House of Representatives, with a vote expected by the middle of next week.

As we close out this tumultuous week, I have some broad thoughts to share. I’m eager to hear your responses and reflections.

The 25th Amendment, put in place after the assassination of President Kennedy, defines an emergency measure to protect the stability of the nation. Under the amendment, and especially Article 4, the sitting president may be displaced only by a circle composed of the closest of the insiders: the Vice-President and a majority of the Cabinet. That small group can act when the President is clearly incapacitated, perhaps by a stroke, or by mental impairment. It has nothing to do with political policies. It is a safety valve when national leadership has fallen apart.

I honestly believe that Wednesday afternoon was a legitimate time to remove the President from office under those provisions. His public statement showed a man who was unhinged, and not seeking the best for the country. He had been calling on his own Vice-President to violate the Constitution in discarding electoral votes. He was praising the insurrectionists.

I don’t know if Mr. Trump has regained some level of sanity. I do get a sense that Trump has realized that one more outburst will get him removed immediately. I do see signs that his staff (what remains of it) is keeping Mr. Trump on a short leash. He has lost access to his social media accounts, so he has less ability to inflame his base without some editor’s intervention. Military leaders have given Speaker Pelosi assurances that Trump will not be able to launch military attacks. Our nation has pulled back a tiny bit from the most immediate crisis.

This week, for the first time, we have seen a dramatic event when the 25th Amendment could have been invoked to remove a president for mental instability. That’s a frightening reality. I hope that moment of extreme danger has been tamped down. I’m glad that the tool is still in place if the need arises in the next 10 days.

Impeachment is the other legal avenue for removing a president from office, and the US House is moving in that direction.

Impeachment is a political tool, an extreme act of censure requiring action by both houses of Congress. As we saw a year ago, when Mr. Trump was impeached by the House, and when the Senate refused to hear witnesses and acquitted Trump of the charges, there’s very little constitutional definition of the impeachable offenses. "High crimes and misdemeanors" can be drafted to reflect the outrage and disgust of the House. Impeachment can succeed only when 2/3 of the Senate agrees with those charges.

Impeachment, on one hand, is an act designed to protect the nation from an out of control president. If both the House and the Senate agree on abuses of power or high crimes, they can protect the country by kicking the bum out. Or, in the current situation, a conviction by the Senate sometime after the January 20 inauguration could impose an order that Mr. Trump can never again hold elected office at a Federal level.

But impeachment is also a political instrument, which can be used to punish the President. Even if it does not succeed in replacing the President, it does put an indelible stain on that person’s historical record. A vote to impeach is a dramatic pronouncement of a fracture in the halls of power. It is one way for the House to register extreme disapproval for the President’s egregious actions. When the President incites insurrection with two weeks left in office, that sort of denunciation may be appropriate. A press release from the Speaker of the House is not an adequate response.

But I am anxious about taking that step. Our nation is deeply and passionately divided. Mr. Trump has millions of loyal followers who are already tuned to paranoia and conspiracy theories. They believe that the recent election was stolen from Trump and from them. A rebuke of Trump through the vehicle of impeachment will inflame that base, and confirm their belief that "politicians" are out to get him.

I’m hearing some reports that a scattering of Republicans, in both the House and Senate, are open to considering impeachment. Without a fairly broad and firm base of support among GOP leaders, though, I fear that a vote to impeach would be a threat to the nation. In its own way, a vote to impeach (for the second time!) would be an inflammatory spark that would kindle violent insurrection and destroy trust in our nation’s institutions.

As I’ve pondered these concerns, I dug back into the writings of my seminary ethics professor, Max Stackhouse. I recalled a phrase that he was trying to promote in the mid-70s about "the good, the right and the fit." (If Google is an adequate measure, the verbal trio never caught on.)

Max described this three-part standard in his book, Ethics and the Urban Ethos. Ethical decision-making in the public sphere should seek to find ways of addressing all three dimensions.

• The good points to that which is of intrinsic worth, something that is in and of itself commendatory. In today’s matter, seeking to preserve a constitutional democracy might apply.
• The right gets a bit more specific, "asking whether the ends and probable consequences of a trend, a policy, a position, or a perspective are, so far as known, relatively consistent with the very best purposes [we] can project." This is a mid-range projection, trying to see if social forces are likely to bend in the desired direction. Would impeachment be likely to improve political behavior in the foreseeable future, by constraining presidents to come? Would the moral message of a vote to impeach carry into coming administrations? The way you answer this one may determine whether you think impeachment is a moral necessity or a political stunt.
• The category of fit "asks whether the ‘rights’ and ‘goods’ actually pertain to the present conditions, the genuine issues of life, the actual fabric of existence, wherein people and societies find themselves." Does it make sense right now? As I said above, in the current situation of a fractured populace and deep anger, I fear that impeachment is not ethically fit.

I am convinced that Trump’s denigration of democracy and his inflammation of violent mobs needs to be denounced. Not just in this moment, but for all of US history, he needs to be condemned as genuinely dangerous. I am not convinced that impeachment is the right tool to accomplish that -- but neither am I completely dissuaded.

Finally, I have another concern about the political tool of impeachment in this situation. (And I’ll be brief.)

Impeachment puts all of the blame and all of the punishment on Donald Trump. But the lies, and the attacks on democracy, and the fracturing of the national community have been coming from many sources. What Trump has done is horrible, but he could not have done it without his enablers and his handlers. If impeachment is the primary tool for moral action, then these other folk are off the hook.

What do we do about Rudy Giuliani, that evil little man who has given advice and counsel on so many illegal escapades? What do we do about the members of Congress who provided active leadership in the attempts to cast aside the election -- by signing onto spurious lawsuits, and by sponsoring legally absurd "objections" to the electoral vote. (Let’s look especially hard at those who continued to push those objections late into the night on Wednesday, after the Capitol had been breached and reclaimed.)

Less actively, there are countless political and media figures who refused to challenge the clearly false claims of election fraud and conspiracy. They stood by in silence while the far right whipped the conservative fringes into rage. They even refused to speak of Joe Biden as the "president elect" -- in many cases uttering those words only this week.

Impeaching Donald Trump does not condemn these accomplices and co-conspirators. Putting the focus on Trump detracts from those who joined into the seditious trend of the last two months.

If we want to seek the "good" and the "right" then we have to look more broadly than a condemnation of Mr. Trump. Our actions to seek justice and healing must call for accountability from all who were active participants in the recent travesty, and we must be intentional in reclaiming that which we lift up as the good and the right -- a nation of laws, grounded in constitutional principles, seeking the common good.

Rather than impeachment -- or beyond it -- perhaps what is needed is some sort of a US "truth and reconciliation commission." That’s an approach which has been successful in South Africa after apartheid, and in some other nations, in addressing systemic abuses and violence, in holding perpetrators accountable, and in bringing some level of national healing.

It has been a painful week, a difficult two months, and a challenging four years. The work for justice, democracy, and "the well-being of all humankind as part of a thriving Earth" is always hard. But the recent struggles have been profound, and demand difficult decisions.

Let me know what you’re thinking and feeling. What are your core principles? What are your grounding experiences? What might we do in the next 10 days, and in the years to come?