The future demands impeachment

I remember fifth grade Social Studies, when I learned about World War II and Nazi Germany for the first time. The depth of brutality was beyond my imagining. It was agonizing to imagine being treated with such inhumanity. The daily schoolyard bullying I experienced paled in comparison. 
 
I felt physically sick at the images of emaciated men and women who were liberated from the death camps and the piles of human bones thrown carelessly in mounds. What kinds of human beings could create this evil? What hell did they come from? 

At the end of the lessons on World War II we learned about the Nuremberg trials. It was the first time in the school year I felt relief. The world had come together and declared, “This is unacceptable.” Accountability restored the balance of justice. The justice-seeking soul within 9-year old me felt the arc of justice renewed. Over the years, as more Nazi leaders were found hiding around the world and brought to trial, my sense the world was being made more whole increased. 
 
Yes, I know now there was plenty of other injustice happening around the world. But the knowledge a multiplicity of countries were willing to unify behind accountability gave me hope even those injustices, maybe even those I faced daily, would someday be made whole.
 
Without the trials, the historic narrative would be about one group of countries fighting against another until one of them won. The horrific atrocities committed by the Nazi’s would be myths rather than details televised for the world to see. The documents revealed and the testimony given at those trials gave depth to the Nazi’s true evil and exposed how they developed it.
 
Now, there is a debate about whether the current president should be impeached. My unequivocal answer: Absolutely yes! The trial, however short or long it may be, would reveal and record, for all posterity, the depth of his depravity and treasonous actions toward our nation. The future of our country must know that we who were on the planet in this moment and responsible for sustaining our systems of accountability have done our best.
 
We, the people, have been violated. Our trust in the arc of justice must be restored. In our democratic system, the avenue for restoration when the violator of our constitution is the president is the judicial process of impeachment. While the present asks it of us, the future requires it.  ​