TOO MANY TIMES FOR TOO MANY ANGRY MEN

Back in 1942, science fiction writer Robert Heinlein wrote (in Beyond This Horizon) that “An armed society is a polite society.”  I like a lot of Heinlein’s work, but the past 75 years of American history has provided more than enough evidence to call bullshit on that claim.

There are now somewhere between 250-350 million guns in America.  That’s approximately one firearm for every man, woman, and child in the country.  Some gun owners – most of them, let’s say – are law abiding folks who like to hunt, or do some target shooting, or imagine that having a gun makes them safer somehow.

But in a country of over 300 million people, where Republican lawmakers have done their best to make it as easy as possible for just about anyone to buy an assault weapon, some of those guns will inevitably find their way into the hands of criminals, or criminals in waiting.  And as we learned when James Hodgkinson shot up a group of Republican congressmen at a park in Alexandria, VA, violent criminals can be found at every point along the political spectrum.

To be honest, I’ve been wondering when something like Wednesday’s sniper attack on Congressional Republicans would happen.

Let me pause here to make myself perfectly clear.  I abhor terrorism in all its forms.  I abhor it when it comes from the political right, and I abhor it when it comes from the political left.  I abhor it whether it’s motivated by religion, by politics, or simply by mental illness.  I don’t approve of, condone, or sympathize with murder, no matter who or what the target.  Period.  Full stop.  Don’t do that.  Don’t do anything like remotely like that.  Please.

That said, I believe our politicians would benefit from conducting a thought experiment about the impact of their policies.  Let’s start with health care.  It appears more likely than not that some sort of Obamacare repeal will make it through the Senate this year.  We don’t know the content of the Senate bill, because Republicans have deliberately kept it secret.  We don’t have a CBO score for it yet.  Republicans in the House enthusiastically endorsed a bill that would lead to 24 million people losing health insurance.  Maybe the Senate number will turn out to be lower.  For the sake of the argument, let’s say the Senate manages to cut that number in half.  Let’s say “only” 12 million people will lose health insurance.

How many of those 12 million people own guns?  Maybe half of them?  Let’s assume that half of that hypothetical 6 million people stay healthy for the foreseeable future.  That leaves us with 3 million sick and potentially desperate gun owners.  Let’s say 99% of those 3 million people will choose to suffer in silence, maybe even die in silence.  That would still leave 30,000 armed and angry citizens who might not choose to go gentle into that good night.

You could extend that line of speculation to other issues as well.  How many immigrants (or immigrant-looking folks) will be armed and fed up in a year or two?  How many Muslims?  How many American minorities?  How many people hearing voices in their heads, full of adrenaline from all the free floating anger in this country?

Who will they be mad at?  Will they care about all your thoughts and prayers?

I repeat:  I don’t want any violence at all, directed against anyone for any reason. 

But I hope that Wednesday’s incident (I mean the one in Alexandria, not the three other mass shootings that took place on the same day) serves to remind politicians that their actions may have unintended consequences.  What goes around comes around, and not necessarily at the ballot box.

The title of this post comes from “Too Many Martyrs,” a song by Phil Ochs, from 1964.  Here’s the chorus.  “Too many martyrs and too many dead, Too many lies too many empty words were said. Too many times for too many angry men.  Oh let it never be again."   

NINETY MILES AN HOUR DOWN A DEAD END STREET

After nearly five months in office, Donald Trump finally had a full Cabinet meeting on Monday.  He left time at the concluding photo op for attendees to take turns praising him in full view of the press.  Apparently everyone took the knee except for General Mattis at Defense, who used his time to praise American troops.  Trump will probably fire him soon.

And speaking of being fired soon, rumors are circulating that Trump is planning to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller.  Mueller is putting together an all star team of attorneys with expertise in everything from criminal law to various aspects of impeachment.  By reputation, they aren’t the kind of people who are just there to pad their resumes.  If anything illegal happened, they’ll find it and build an airtight case for some prosecutor to take either to court or to Congress.

Trump, on the other hand, has had trouble hiring his own high powered legal talent.  Some prominent firms are afraid of getting stiffed when payday rolls around.  Others, mindful of Trump’s propensity for self-incriminating tweets, just don’t want a client who won’t follow their advice.  Still others represent financial institutions that have already been served with subpoenas as part of the investigation of Russian money laundering.

At this point, Trump’s only lawyers are a couple of long-time cronies whose expertise is handling his divorces, and collecting damaging information on anyone who sues, or threatens to sue, their dear client.  Those cronies are clearly in over their heads, assuming Mueller is allowed to do his work. 

And that’s why the rumor about Trump firing Mueller is credible.  One of Trump’s lawyers has already floated a trial balloon on the topic, and reliable toady Newt Gingrich has added his voice to the chorus.  Gingrich tweeted on May 17 that, “Robert Mueller is superb choice to be special counsel. His reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity.”  On June 12, echoing Trump’s lawyer, he changed his tune:  “Republicans are delusional if they think the special counsel is going to be fair. Look who he is hiring.”

Trump is unpredictable.  It’s one of his strategies.  It’s possible that his attorney is just blowing smoke. 

But I think Trump would like to fire Mueller.  He couldn’t do it directly, though.  He’d have to order Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, to do it.  Rosenstein’s reputation was compromised when he drafted a memo that gave Trump a pretext for firing James Comey.  If he topped that by firing his own Special Counsel, his name would live in infamy.  Trump has already thrown Rosenstein under the bus once.  If Rosenstein says no this time, then Trump could fire Rosenstein, and keep on firing people until someone agreed to do the deed – the Saturday Night Massacre all over again.  Unless Jeff Sessions un-recuses himself again and does the job himself.

At that point, Congressional Republicans will be looking like deer in the headlights.  At a defining moment in history, they won’t have any good options.

Their first two options are either to adopt Trump’s argument in its entirety, claiming that #TrumpRussia is all fake news, or to acknowledge that Trump is guilty of something, but that it doesn’t matter.  Elections have consequences, and we knew damn well he was a snake before we took him in.  Besides, Hillary’s emails!  Quite a few congressional Republicans come from safe districts.  Some of them will probably stick with one of these options and hope to ride out the storm.

But as Josh Marshall noted, “You don't keep firing investigators unless you know there is something catastrophically wrong waiting to be uncovered. This is obvious.”  Which leads us to the third option.  Something is indeed wrong, and it does indeed matter.  In that case, all they have to do is obey their oath of office – to “support and defend the Constitution.”  

How might they do that?  Representative Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, says that if Trump shuts down the Justice Department investigation, Congress will appoint a Special Counsel and then name Robert Mueller to head it. 

But there’s a catch.  As I read the law, though, even if enough Republicans join Democrats in a vote to support a Special Counsel, their request would go to the Attorney General, who has the option of refusing saying no.  Do we assume that Jeff Sessions stays recused and punts the request to the Deputy AG?  And who might that be after the dust settles from this hypothetical Mueller firing?  Wouldn’t this scenario simply launch another round of Saturday Night Massacres?

Or maybe a majority of the House will support articles of impeachment.  I’m not holding my breath for that, at least unless the 2018 elections give us a Democratic majority in the House.  But it could theoretically happen.

Josh Marshall again:  “The US has already entered a slow motion constitutional crisis.  How quickly it accelerates, whether Trump defeats the constitution or vice versa, is really the only question.”  I agree that we’re in a crisis, but I think things are moving much faster that Marshall suggests.  We’re speeding towards the edge of a cliff, and the party in the driver's seat appears to be suicidal.

The reason I’m still optimistic is that we don’t have to rely on Congress for justice.  It’s early days yet, but the Attorneys General of Maryland and the District of Columbia have sued Donald Trump for violating the emoluments clause.  New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has jurisdiction over Trump’s campaign finances, as well as his family’s financial dealings.  If they laundered Russian money, they’re screwed. 

I remain convinced that one way or another, the truth will come out.  The American intelligence committee is already pissed off at Trump.  He can’t fire all of them, and his lawyers can’t bully them.  Firing Mueller would make them furious. 

And the best part is, they wouldn’t have to leak a single piece of information, because our allies (rapidly becoming former allies) in Europe despise Donald Trump and will be happy to share all the embarrassing and incriminating information they have.  And they have a lot of it.

We shall know the truth, but will the truth make us free?  That will be up to American voters.  That’s when we’ll find out whether the United States is a constitutional democracy or an oligarchy.

MARCHING AS TO WAR

Last Sunday, June 4, I posted an essay arguing that Republicans, and particularly Evangelical Republicans, had a distorted view of the teachings of Jesus.   My friend Nicole responded with historical examples from Roman times to current events that suggested Christian behavior has almost always had very little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus.

In terms of nation-state politics, I will concede the point.  I’m less sure about her assertion that “there has never been a golden age of Christianity where it was having a broader positive impact on any group of people or the planet.”

If there was a golden age of Christianity, it would have been among the original followers of Jesus, well before anyone thought of calling them “Christians.”  Since then, I assume that the broader positive impact of Jesus’ teachings has been largely personal.  Individual lives are made better, and perhaps salvation is attained, though that’s impossible to measure. 

I might offer the Quakers as an example of Christianity’s broader positive impact on largish groups of people.  And I’m sure that over the centuries, there have been thousands of congregations and spiritual communities of various stripes whose faith led them to be better human beings.

But nation-states?  Towards the end of Jesus’ ministry, the Pharisees were following him around, trying to get him to say something that would either contradict Jewish law or annoy the Roman authorities.  One of them asked him (Matthew 36:40): “Master, what is the great commandment of the law?  Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

I can’t think of a country – ancient or modern, with or without an official state religion – that has conducted its affairs according to those two principles.  

That’s my short response to Nicole’s comment.  Naturally, I have other thoughts on the topic.  

It is a truth universally acknowledged that, when a religion expands beyond its initial time and place of origin, it begins to change.  Jesus was a Jewish prophet in ancient Palestine.  During his earthly ministry, he told his disciples (Matthew 10:5-6) not to preach to Gentiles or Samaritans, but rather to focus their efforts on “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  After his resurrection, he changed his instructions (Matthew 29:19-20):  “Go ye therefore and teach all nations … teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.”

One of the early church’s first doctrinal disputes arose over attempts to bridge the inevitable cultural gaps the disciples encountered as they took the gospel to all nations.  It hinged on the meaning of “observe all things.”  Did that mean that Gentile converts had to follow Jewish dietary laws, or undergo circumcision?  Simon Peter, in Acts 10, was told in a vision that this was not necessary, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him to bless the decision. 

Thus began the slow separation of Judaism and what came to be known as Christianity.  When Jesus’ teachings spread from Palestine, they were inevitably understood differently by individuals and cultures unfamiliar with the original context of the teachings.    

As the biblical scholar Bart Ehrman has noted (in Jesus Before the Gospels), “The Gospels we have are not stenographic accounts of the things Jesus said and did. They contain stories that had been passed along by word of mouth decades before anyone wrote them down.”  When they were finally preserved in written form, the language used (for the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament) was Greek.  No doubt Greek accommodated the general import of Jesus’ message, but it’s hard to believe that the change from Jesus’ Aramaic to Greek didn’t result in some subtleties being lost in translation.  And so it went, from Greek into Latin, and centuries later into modern European languages, and finally into over a thousand other languages worldwide. 

As Ehrman also noted (in Misquoting Jesus and other books), ecclesiastical and secular politics also played a role in confusing later generations about what Jesus really said.  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were originally written for different audiences, and tell different, if mostly complementary stories.  There were dozens of other gospels floating around, used in good faith for decades by some churches.  It wasn’t until the 5th century that there was general agreement on which books of the New Testament were official and which were heretical.  Modern Biblical scholarship has even cast doubt on the authorship of several epistles historically attributed to St. Paul (Ephesians, Colossians, 2nd Thessalonians, I & II Timothy, and Titus if you’re keeping score at home), though they remain in the official canon. 

In other words, Christianity is complicated.  I’m sticking with Jesus.

With that as prologue, I have another take on the original question, which is whether the teachings of Jesus – adulterated as they inevitably have been while being assimilated into radically different cultures over time and space – have had “a broader broader positive impact on any group of people or the planet.” 

It occurred to me that one useful way to consider that question would be through the lens of a subgenre of science fiction known as alternate history.  What would the world look like if Jesus had never lived, or if his teachings had died out with his original followers two thousand years ago?  Here are some of the major issues.

What role did Christianity play in the expansion or contraction of the Roman Empire (eastern and western)?  How would it have been different Christianity?  Would the pagan incursions have come earlier, later, or not at all?  Without state supported Christian opposition, would the Huns and/or the Mongols have established large, stable khanates extending into Europe?  Further north and west, would the Vikings have abandoned raiding in favor of colonization in northern Europe and eastern North America?  What would any of those societies have been like? 

If you assume that Muhammad’s visitation from the angel Gabriel and the rise of Islam in the 7th century would have happened even in the absence of Christianity, how far into Europe would the caliphate reached?  Would eastern Islamic expansion have stopped in India, or would it have pressed into Russia and China?     

We know that in medieval times, scientific progress in Islamic countries was superior to that of Christian Europe.  The Islamic golden age ended in the 13th century when the Abbasid Caliphate collapsed in the wake of a series of Mongol invasions, culminating in the Sack of Baghdad in 1258.  If the Caliphate hadn’t also been forced to deal with two centuries of military pressure from Christian crusaders, might it have been able to repel the Mongol invaders and extend the golden age?  Would there have been an Age of Exploration led by Islamic navigators that reached the “New World”?

We know that China had a large ocean-going navy in the early 15th century.  Dynastic instability caused them to pull back from their explorations, leaving the field to European Christians a few decades later.  What might the world have looked like if China had had a chance to regroup and send its treasure fleets out again? 

What would happen to the pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas?  Would they have expanded, or were their borders in 1491 more or less the limits of their sustainability? When would the first contacts with Old World civilizations happen, be they Chinese or Islamic?  And most importantly, would Old World contagions like influenza and smallpox lead to virgin soil epidemics that would decimate indigenous populations just as surely as the ones brought by Christian conquistadors in the 16th century? 

What about Africa?  Would Islam have moved south of the Sahara more rapidly in a world without Christianity?  Can we assume that pagan (or Islamic) Europe would have no interest in colonizing Africa, and that the slave trade as we know it would not have existed? 

And the civilizations of Oceania, from Australia to Rapa Nui – would they have been left alone for a few more decades, or even centuries, in the absence of Christian European expansionism?  Would their cultures have remained stable in relative isolation, or would they have evolved in some way? 

Those are all interesting questions, at least to me.  But the big question is, would the world be a better place in any of these alternate universes?  Maybe someday there’ll be a computer simulation sophisticated enough to predict probable outcomes, and informed opinions will be possible.  For now, here’s what I think. 

Humans are imperfect creatures.  We all know it.  Even those who are born to privilege eventually see themselves and their loved ones getting old, getting sick, and dying.  That sucks. 

And every society, every culture, develops an explanation for why things suck, and how to make things stop sucking, or at least suck a little less.  Those explanations are called religion.  Some of the explanations get really complicated.  They feature elaborate rituals, dietary restrictions, and behaviors tied to the phases of the moon.  Other explanations are simpler – what goes around comes around, so do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Interestingly enough, a lot of “civilized” cultures gravitate towards complicated explanations. 

Sometimes these competing explanations encounter each other.  When that happens, the affected societies rarely slow down and say, “Hmm, that’s interesting.  Maybe those guys have a point.”  Usually they fight instead.  And usually it’s a winner take all game.  “Conversion by the sword” is what they called it when Christians and Muslims were in their rapid expansion phases.

My theory is that if Christianity didn’t exist, some other religion (or religions) would have expanded into the niches left empty by its absence.  Every bad thing that Nicole cites would have been done by someone, somewhere, to somebody in the name of some god. 

But here’s another interesting thing.  To all appearances, most of those competing explanations actually work pretty well for people who believe them.  Muslims are happy being Muslims.  Christians are happy being Christians.  Same for Sikhs, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and so forth.  Maybe it’s all one big placebo effect. 

Still, whatever explanation you prefer, we all eventually get old, get sick, and die.  (You can skip getting old, but the other two are pretty much inevitable.)  What happens after that?  That’s where the theological rubber meets the road. 

Is there really a Christian heaven and hell?  If there is, then Christianity will have helped its believers immeasurably.  The same is true for every religion with an afterlife component.  And the irony is that we won’t know for sure until we die – if then. 

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  For now.  Thanks, Nicole, for giving me the opportunity to think more about these topics.

MAN SMART, WOMAN SMARTER

Good advice for men in this epic tweetstorm from J.K. Rowling in the aftermath of the British election.  I’ve combined her 14 tweets into paragraphs.

“Just unfollowed a man whom I thought was smart and funny, because he called Theresa May a whore.  If you can’t disagree with a woman without reaching for all those filthy old insults, screw you and your politics.”

“I’m sick of ‘liberal’ men whose mask slips every time a woman displeases them, who reach immediately for crude and humiliating words associated with femaleness, act like old-school misogynists and then preen themselves as though they’ve been brave.  When you do this, Mr Liberal Cool Guy, you ally yourself, wittingly or not, with the men who send women violent pornographic images and rape threats, who try by every means possible to intimidate women out of politics and public spaces, both real and digital. ‘Cunt’, ‘whore’ and, naturally, rape. We’re too ugly to rape, or we need raping, or we need raping and killing.”

“Every woman I know who has dared express an opinion publically has endured this kind of abuse at least once, rooted in an apparent determination to humiliate or intimidate her on the basis that she is female.  If you want to know how much fouler it gets if you also happen to be black or gay, ask Diane Abbot or Ruth Davidson.”

“I don’t care whether we’re talking about Theresa May or Nicola Sturgeon or Kate Hooey or Yvette Cooper or Hillary Clinton: femaleness is not a design flaw. If your immediate response to a woman who displeases you is to call her a synonym for her vulva, or compare her to a prostitute, then drop the pretence and own it: you’re not a liberal.”

“You’re a few short steps away from some guy hiding behind a cartoon frog.”

THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH

Here are one man’s highlights from Comey Day on Capitol Hill.

·         Marco Rubio, of all people, scolding James Comey for not doing a better job of standing up to Donald Trump.  Only one Senator would qualify as more hypocritical – Ted Cruz.  Trump called Cruz’s wife ugly and claimed that Cruz’s father helped assassinate President Kennedy.  Of course, Cruz endorsed him anyway.

·         John McCain, confused and confusing.  He once said that the only cure for political ambition is embalming fluid.  As Richard Burr, the Chair of the Committee, said, “the Senator’s time has expired.” 

·         Kamala Harris was clearly relishing a future investigation of Jeff Sessions.

·         Republican senators, arguing that no obstruction of justice could have occurred because Trump said “I hope” rather than “I order.”  Two points on that topic.  When your boss says he hopes you’ll do something, he’s not expressing a hypothetical aspiration; he’s telling you to do it.  Anyone who’s had a boss knows this.  Trump asked Comey to drop the investigation, and fired him when he refused.  Obstruction of justice occurred when Trump fired Comey for not shutting down the investigation.  He even went on television and confirmed the whole sequence of events to NBC’s Lester Holt.  This is not hard.   

·         Remarkably, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee made no effort to poke holes in Comey’s story.  They basically conceded that Trump was a liar.  Their fallback position was simply to shrug and say it didn’t matter.

·         Paul Ryan, echoing a major Republican talking point, claims that Trump’s attempts to suborn Comey were innocent because he’s new at the job.  Sure.  All new presidents obstruct justice at least once in their first hundred days in office,  right?  Or maybe Trump is just a bad president. 

·         To cap the morning off, Trump’s lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, issued a press release simultaneously claiming that Comey was not a credible witness, and that his testimony completely exonerated the president.  It starts off with a great typo referring to “Predisent” Trump.

What does it all add up to?  Today is the day when Donald Trump became Predisent.

STILL WATERS RUN DEEP

STILL WATERS RUN DEEP:  As I expected, Wednesday’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee didn’t provide many fireworks.  Senators of both parties were frustrated by the bland non-answers from Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers.  It would have been easy for both men to say, “No, there was no attempt to obstruct justice.”  It would also have been easy for both men to say “Yes, there was an attempt to obstruct justice.”   Both sides can now spin the non-responses as proof that they were right all along.

Until events prove me wrong, I will continue to believe that both senior members of the intelligence community are holding their cards close to their vest, saving their secrets for either closed door hearings (in which case we’ll soon see leaks), or for Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation (in which case we’ll just have to wait). 

One thing to keep in mind.  The American intelligence community knows that they are prime targets in whenTrump attempts to scapegoat “the deep state.” They will bend over backwards to avoid the appearance of anti-Trump bias.  

On the other hand, they say there’s no such thing as an ex-spy.  Dan Coats’ predecessor, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was remarkably blunt when he spoke earlier this week to Australia’s National Press Club.  Clapper, who resigned on January 20, said that the Watergate scandal “pales in comparison” to the Russian’s successful attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election. 

Fortunately for those who wanted to see some headlines on Wednesday, former FBI Director James Comey released a transcript of his opening statement to the Senate Intelligence Committee.  It too can be spun in different ways.  It appears to confirm that Comey did, in fact, tell Trump that he was not at that time the subject of a counter-intelligence operation.  That will be enough for Republicans to celebrate – at least temporarily. 

But Comey is a careful man.  Responding very specifically to Trump’s literal question, he did not appear to rule out the possibility that Trump was the subject of a separate criminal investigation.  Comey also made a point of noting that the counter-intelligence investigation could implicate Trump at at some future point.  Comey was fired on May 9, almost a month ago.  Who knows what investigators have learned in the past four weeks?

There was little comfort for Trump and his Republican enablers in the rest of Comey’s prepared testimony.  Whether Trump crossed a legally actionable line or not, reasonable observers would conclude that he attempted to persuade Comey to shut down the investigation into Mike Flynn. 

Similarly, Trump’s repeated insistence on personal loyalty from the FBI Director is obviously inappropriate.  When government officials take their oath of office, they swear to support and defend the Constitution, not the President du jour.

Two other points worth noting.  For some comic relief, Comey made a point of noting that Trump kept bringing up the infamous (and possibly apocryphal) pee tape kompromat that nobody really believes in but that everybody wishes were true.  Finally, Comey wrote that Trump seemed quite willing to throw his “satellite” minions under the bus, if the FBI had the dead to rights.  Typically, all he cared about was his own personal reputation.  I wonder how many of those satellites are having serious talks with their lawyers today.

Now we know Comey's opening salvo.  We'll see what else he chooses to say when Senators begin asking questions.

ROLL OUT THE BARREL, WE'LL HAVE A BARREL OF FUN

Soon it will be Donald Trump’s time in the barrel.  He knows it, and he’s panicking.  June is the beginning of a summer of drama the likes of which we haven’t seen since the denouement of the Watergate scandal 1974.

Act I happened last week.  With Steve Bannon whispering in his ear, he sought revenge against the NATO members who snickered at him by refusing to endorse Article 5, the “all for one and one for all” provision that’s at the heart of the treaty.  French President Macron had the temerity to squeeze his hand too hard, so Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, apparently in the mistaken belief that because the treaty was signed in Paris, it advantages France in some way. 

Act II was a string of defiant tweets about his failed travel ban, which basically prove the ACLU’s point that the intent of the ban is to discriminate on the basis of religion.  You have to wonder if Trump has made up his mind to tell the Supreme Court to go to hell if it renders a verdict he doesn’t like.  History has not looked kindly upon Andrew Jackson’s defiance of the Supreme Court in 1832, and it’s not likely to be more sympathetic to Trump’s extra-legal Muslim ban, should he defy a decision from the Court.

Act III has been to insult American allies, starting wwith the Mayor of London, who didin’t panic in the wake of a terrorist incident.  Then came the bizarre finger pointing at Qatar, as Trump inserted America into a regional diplomatic crisis, accusing Qatar of sponsoring terrorism.  Why couldn’t they be more like his pals in Saudi Arabia, home to the extreme Wahhabist sect, and from whence 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers were from?  Not to mention a cool glowing orb!  It’s a good thing the U.S. doesn’t have any military bases in Qatar, right?  Oh, wait.  We do.  In fact, it’s the largest American base in the Middle East.  Well, I’m sure the Qatari will be good sports about everything.  

Incredibly, all that is only a prologue to the week’s genuine drama, when the Senate Intelligence Committee will hear from several men who know most of Donald Trump’s secrets.  Act IV opens on Wednesday, the agenda is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, starring Director of National Intelligence, Daniel Coats; Acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Andrew McCabe; National Security Agency Director, Admiral Mike Rogers; and the Department of Justice Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. 

Republicans on the committee will almost certainly try to change the subject by spending all their time asking about leaks and unmasking.  I hope Democrats can avoid the temptation to head down that rabbit hole.  Please, gentlemen, use your time wisely.

Act V takes place on Thursday morning, when former FBI Director James Comey will finally have an opportunity to talk about his tenure under Donald Trump.  Much as I’d love to hear him call Trump out for treason and obstruction of justice, I’m not counting on it.  Comey is trained to be circumspect, especially in public testimony – as, for that matter, are his colleagues who are to testify Wednesday.  These are careful men, who know what the stakes are.

Odds are, none of their testimony will reflect well on Trump, but it’s not clear how much they’ll feel free to say in public session.  They’ll have been debriefed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and they won’t say anything that will make his work more difficult.  That’s fine with me.  Measure twice, cut once. 

And while all this is going on, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Donald Trump himself is sinking ever more rapidly into dementia.  We can’t count on him to behave rationally.  We can’t count on Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell to put America’s interests ahead of their own very short term political agenda.  We can’t count on Trump’s family to intervene, even to spare the patriarch of the clan lasting humiliation.  The co-conspirators have their own problems to worry about.  The Bannon types probably believe that they’ll land on their feet no matter what happens to Trump.  And the dim bulbs, the Carsons and Perrys in the Cabinet, will be content to collect their paychecks.

But what are the so-called grownups in the room thinking – people like Mattis, Kelly, and McMaster, who presumably aren’t complicit in #TrumpRussia?  Surely they  see the train wreck unfolding.  What’s their endgame? 

We're approaching the 50th anniversary of the terrible "long hot summer" of 1967, when riots erupted in 159 American cities.  We're about to find out what the summer of 2017 has in store for us.

WHEN I WAS YOUNG, PEOPLE SPOKE OF IMMORALITY

Republicans have a weird view of God.  Republican Tim Walberg, who represents Michigan’s 7th Congressional district, told a town hall meeting recently that he wasn’t worried about climate change, because God could take care of it – if he wanted to.  He added that, “As a Christian, I believe that there is a creator in God who is much bigger than us. And I'm confident that, if there's a real problem, he can take care of it."

If Walberg really believes that, why does he bother with politics?  God knows what the issues are, and he’ll either choose to address them or not.  If God wants rich people to get richer, he can just add a few more zeros to their bank account, or cause hundred dollar bills to drop from the sky into their backyards.  If he doesn’t choose do that, is it not sacrilegious for Republicans in Congress to defy God’s will by pushing for tax cuts? 

It’s the same with every other piece of the Republican agenda.  If God thought ISIS was a problem, he’d destroy them himself, like he did with Sodom and Gomorrah, right?  If God wanted Obamacare repealed, he could do it instantly.  Since he hasn’t done it, maybe God likes Obamacare.  If Trump is having trouble getting that wall built along our southern border, could it be that God likes immigrants?

One contemporary issue on which God made his position clear in the Bible is environmentalism.  In The Book of the Revelation (11:18), John of Patmos speaks of the judgment day as a time for “destroying the destroyers of the earth.”  So you’d think that good Christians would support efforts to slow or reverse man-made climate change – like for instance the Paris Climate Agreement.  But not Trump supporters who claim to be Christian.  They cherry pick Bible verses to suit their political beliefs.  In every civilized country in the world, whatever its political system or religion, climate change is understood to be real.  Except in America, where Republicans have made it part of their culture war.  They’re willing to sacrifice their children’s and grandchildren’s future to keep their base riled up.

Consider the case of Paul Ryan, who is a nominal Catholic despite the fact that he doesn’t agree with the Pope about much of anything.  Ryan’s twin passions are cutting taxes for rich people and cutting health care for poor people.  On the issue of helping the rich get richer, Jesus said (Matthew 19:24), “And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”  On the issue of health care, Jesus spent most of his ministry healing the sick; nowhere does the Bible say that he charged for his services.

In 2016, 81% of white Evangelicals voted for Donald Trump.  Trump has claimed to be a Presbyterian, but apparently he has no idea what a Presbyterian is.  CNN reports that in a post-election conversation between Trump and two Presbyterian ministers, Trump boasted about his support among Evangelicals.  When the two ministers told him that Presbyterians weren’t Evangelicals, and Trump asked them to confirm that they were, in fact, Christians.

Some of that confusion was certainly due to Trump’s invincible ignorance, but it’s also true that, in America, at least, the term “Christian” seems to have increasingly little to do with the actual teachings of Jesus.  In 2012, a Christian polling firm surveyed Evangelical Christians about their personal attitudes and actions.  Ironically, they found that the views of those Evangelicals tended to align less with the teachings of Jesus than with the attitudes of his enemies, the Pharisees.  (See the link below for the findings.)

Last year, someone asked Trump about his favorite Bible verse.  His answer was “an eye for an eye.”  Jesus, of course, disagreed.  He said (Matthew 5:38-39): “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:  But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

What do Evangelicals admire about Donald Trump?  In terms of his personal conduct, Trump is pretty much the opposite of Jesus.  His whole life has been dedicated to breaking as many commandments as possible.  He’s a chronic liar and adulterer who has stiffed virtually every business partner who’s had the misfortune of working with him.  As far as I know, he hasn’t personally killed anyone yet, but his policies will soon move that commandment into the “Broken” column.

Of course as St. Paul noted (Romans 3:23), “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,” and fortunately Christians have a path to forgiveness.  John the Evangelist wrote (1 John 1:9), “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us [our] sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 

But confessing his sins isn’t Donald Trump’s thing.  Trump proudly says he’s never asked God for forgiveness.  He doesn’t make that many mistakes, and he’ll correct those few on his own.  “I don't bring God into that picture. I don't." 

Three thousand years ago, King Solomon (Proverbs 16:18), described Donald Trump perfectly: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”

https://www.barna.com/research/christians-more-like-jesus-or-pharisees/

WITH EVERY MOVE HE MAKES, ANOTHER CHANCE HE TAKES

Some progressive voices insist that investigations into Trump’s collusion with Russia are a distraction.  Stop talking about impeachment, they insist, because no matter how strong the evidence, Congressional Republicans will never vote to impeach Donald Trump.  Far better, they say, to focus on the very real damage Trump and his Republican enablers are doing to America every single day.  Devote your energy to fighting that.

If you’ve read much of what I’ve written over the past couple of months, you can guess that I disagree with that position.  They are entirely correct about the need to resist the daily Republican assault on American values.  But Trump’s collusion with Russia to sabotage the 2016 presidential election is as much an assault on American values as gutting health care, ruining the environment, or [pick any additional example out of the dozens available].

Russian interference in the election is what put Trump in a position to take a wrecking ball to American values in the first place.  Without free and fair elections, Trumpism can perpetuate itself forever.  Not to mention the fact that if we avoid issues that Republican Congressional majorities can simply stonewall, it doesn’t leave us much to do in the political arena. 

Honestly, six months ago I expected things to be much worse.  I’m impressed by what anti-Trump forces have accomplished so far.  Since January 20, we’ve found that the Trump juggernaut we feared is actually a clown car filled with bumbling idiots.  Destructive idiots, to be sure, but still idiots.

We’ve learned that we have allies in the press who will listen when we speak, and who will challenge Trump’s disinformation.  We’ve learned that we can use mass rallies effectively; that Congressional Democrats have the discipline to form a united opposition; and that keeping the pressure on Republicans in swing districts is an effective strategy.  Of course, those tactics don’t work every time, but our job is to celebrate the wins, take the losses in stride, and keep on keeping on. 

We’ve also learned that the arrogance of Trump and his cronies has exposed them to serious legal consequences.  And that makes the #TrumpRussia scandal different from something like withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement.  Impeachment is a political matter, and it’s the hands of the Republican Party (at least until we can elect a Democratic congressional majority in 2018).  By all means, maintain a healthy skepticism about the integrity of congressional watchdog committees as long as they’re controlled by Republicans. 

But luckily, the comical incompetence of Jeff Sessions, Devin Nunes, and Jason Chaffetz cost Republicans control of the investigation.  Now the man to watch is Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is, by reputation, competent and relentless.  The entire alphabet soup of American intelligence agencies – CIA, FBI, NSA, DNI – is on the case.  So are their European counterparts, who are furious at Trump and Putin.  Team Trump’s secrets won’t stay secret very long. 

The truth is, we don’t have to choose between paying attention to the Russia scandal and paying attention to health care (and the rest of the daily Republican atrocities).  Each of us will naturally gravitate to the issues that concern us most, but everybody doesn’t have to do everything.  Collectively we’ll cover all the bases.  And the exposure of Donald Trump’s treason will be the cherry on top. 

If you can’t tell the players without a scorecard, here’s an awesome article from Mother Jones that lays it all out – good guys, bad guys, Americans and Russians, the works. 

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/06/russia-trump-putin-scandal-key-players-dossiers

THEY WERE CARELESS PEOPLE

Every time I think I’ve come up with a clever way to describe Donald Trump and his family, I run into someone who has done it so much better.  Here is F. Scott Fitzgerald, in The Great Gatsby.  Bonus points for having written it in 1925. 

“They were careless people. They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Tip of the hat to Rebecca Solnit for connecting that famous quote to Donald Trump, in an article that clarifies the connection between narcissism and loneliness.  It’s well worth your time.  Here are a couple of quotes from the article to whet your appetite. 

“A hungry ghost always wants the next thing, not the last thing.” 

“One way or another, he knows he has stepped off a cliff, pronounced himself king of the air, and is in freefall.”

 http://lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-the-loneliness-of-donald-trump/

SUMMER RE-RUNS

This is a revision of something I posted in mid-November about Trump’s rhetoric of disinformation.  In recent days, both Matthew Yglesias in Vox and David Leonhardt in a May 31 New York Times editorial have published articles which frame Trump’s rhetorical style in terms of lies vs. bullshit. 

Both men build on a distinction made originally by Princeton Professor Harry Frankfurt in 2005 in an essay entitled “On Bullshit” (link below).  Frankfurt says that the Liar is genuinely trying to deceive you, while the Bullshitter is trying to dominate you.  The Bullshitter says, in effect, “Who are you going to believe – me or your lying eyes?”  A great example of Trump as Bullshitter happened within 24 hours of his inauguration, when he claimed that his inaugural crowd was bigger than Obama’s, despite photographs that clearly show otherwise.

Accepting Trump’s bullshit becomes a test of loyalty.  It’s why Trump demands that his spokesmen aggressively defend every statement he makes, no matter how ridiculous.  It also functions as a rite of passage, an initiation into the cult of true believers.  It’s a way to drink the Kool Aid without actually dying.  Or without dying physically, at least.  Your spirit dies pretty quickly, as Sean Spicer can attest.

This model also helps explain why there’s no point in arguing with hardcore Trumpers.  They don’t care about facts.  If you disagree with them, you’re threatening their status in the cult.  If they admit they’re wrong, their entire world view collapses.

With that as an introduction, here is an updated version of what I wrote last November 16, eight days after the election.

AGAINST MY BETTER JUDGMENT, I recently entered into a brief dialog with a Trump fan.  He made an assertion, which I quickly found evidence to refute, and his response was to say my evidence didn’t matter.  The topic of our short debate isn’t important, since the outcome would have been similar no matter what we were arguing about. 

That exchange reminded me of something I’d been thinking since summer.  There are many valid ways we could describe the gap between Trump people and anti-Trump people.  It is certainly based in part on race and ethnicity.  It is based in part on gender issues, on generational divisions, on differences in education, and so forth.  All of those factors, and more, are important. 

But I’m beginning to believe that the most dangerous gap between us and them is a reality gap.  Trump supporters and Trump foes live in separate realities. We look at the same phenomena and see vastly different things. We struggle to debate or negotiate because even though we’re using the same words, we aren’t speaking the same language.

There’s a multi-billion dollar Republican disinformation industry led by Fox News, talk radio, etc., which promote rumors and innuendo they know to be false.  Winston Churchill said it:  "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."  And by that time, there’s a new lie out the door and into the world. 

We can describe that process, document it extensively, and call out the liars.  But that’s not the point.  That’s like bringing fact checkers to a knife fight.

What I want everyone to understand is that this is a deliberate strategy on the part of Donald Trump and his henchmen.  They use incoherence as a weapon.  They are trying to confuse people.  And not just their enemies.  When people are confused, they’ll stop thinking and revert to trusting in their strong leader.  “We may be confused, but Donald J. Trump isn’t confused.  Donald J. Trump will fix it.  Just get out of the way and let him make America great again.” 

One term to describe this process is “gaslighting.”  It’s a tactic that is well known to those who treat victims of abuse, and it’s no accident that Trump and some of his cronies have abusive personalities.  They will keep lying to you until you begin to wonder if maybe you’re the one that’s crazy.  You are NOT crazy.  Please keep that in mind.

I’M POSTING THIS UPDATE on June 1.  Six months into the Trump regime, there’s good news.  First, everyone took my advice.  Trump’s gaslighting hasn’t worked.  We know that Trump is crazy, not us.  

What’s more, the press has also figured this out.  Calling Trump a Bullshitter (or B.S.er as they put it) would have been unthinkable for the New York Times six months ago.  Now the Times and other major print and cable news organizations routinely point out Trump’s contradictions, unsubstantiated assertions, and flat out lies.  

At a party this weekend, a friend remarked that this summer was going to be a lot like the summer of 1974, when we watched Richard Nixon’s presidency come apart as the Watergate scandal unraveled.  The process began slowly, as Nixon’s defenders circled the wagons.  But the revelations kept coming, and the defenders had to retreat to a new and shakier fallback position every week.  Finally, the house of cards collapsed.

Because Trump is basically a one trick pony, his only response to the #TrumpRussia investigations that are closing in on him is to double down on bullshit.  He’ll blame his troubles on fake news and Deep State sabotage.  It won’t work.  Our national bullshit detector has passed its test, and we’re past the point of no return. 

I don’t know what the endgame will be.  I’m still not optimistic about impeachment, because that would require the corrupt Republican Party to act in the national interest.  But Jesus said (John 8:32), “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  I’m confident that we’ll come out of this process with the truth about #TrumpRussia.  What we do with that truth is up to us. 

https://www.stoa.org.uk/topics/bullshit/pdf/on-bullshit.pdf

MISTY WATERCOLORED MEMORIES OF THE WAY WE WERE

When I was a kid, my father called this holiday Decoration Day.  It began in 1868 as a way to honor Union soldiers who died in the Civil War by decorating their graves with flowers.  Southerners, of course, demanded equal time, and began their own traditions, state by state, to honor dead Confederate soldiers.  After World War I, the holiday was expanded to commemorate the dead of the Great War and all other U.S. military actions.  After World War II, people began calling it Memorial Day, but my father was old school.

It’s ironic that on Memorial Day, 2017, much of what our ancestors fought and died for in battles from Valley Forge to Gettysburg to Iwo Jima is now being flushed down the toilet by a corrupt and foolish President who needed clandestine assistance from Vladimir Putin to eke out a win in the Electoral College.   

Since the end of World War II, twelve American presidents (six Republicans and six Democrats) have worked hard to make NATO a firewall against the ambitions of the Soviet Union and its successor nation, Russia.  Conversely, the goal of every Soviet Premier and Russian President from Joseph Stalin to Vladimir Putin has been to destabilize NATO, and particularly to drive a wedge between Germany and the United States.

Putin and Trump have managed to undo seven decades of American strategic alliance building in less than six months.  NATO is coming apart at the seams, and America is as demoralized as it’s been since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Trump has given Russia everything it has wanted, and there’s nothing accidental or coincidental about it.  He was pro-Russia during the campaign, and he’s been pro-Russia since his first day in office.  This from a guy who barely remembers his campaign promises, and doesn’t care if he keeps them.  On most issues, he tends to adopt the position of whoever spoke with him most recently.  He’s been all over the map on every issue.  Except one.  Trump has never wavered in his pro-Russia, pro-Putin stance. 

Maybe he’s in debt to the Russian mafiya.  Maybe the rumors about Russian prostitutes are true, and he’s being blackmailed.  The leaders he admires most are brutal dictators like Duterte, Erdogan, and of course his BFF Vladimir Putin, so maybe he yearns to be like them – able to silence unfriendly reporters, shut down hostile newspapers, and murder his political opponents.  And grab women by the pussy, of course. 

But whatever the reason, Trump is surrounded by a motley collection of senior staff who are, like him, deeply entangled with Russia.  He’s been willing to ignore criminal activity on the part of some of those staffers, he has revealed highly sensitive intelligence to Russian agents, and he’s even engaged in obvious obstruction of justice to protect those staffers, whatever the cost to his credibility.  He’s been more loyal to Russia than he’s ever been to any of his wives.

Unfortunately, his behavior is a reflection on America and its citizens.  Of course, our hands aren’t exactly clean.  In the years since World War II, presidents of both parties have tinkered with so-called third world countries as though they were pawns on a chessboard, assuming that either the local populace would never find out what we’d done, or that if they did realize what was happening, they’d have no alternative than to submit meekly to our invincible military might. 

Except that many of them did not submit meekly.  And in Cuba, Vietnam, Iran, and Iraq, our military might turned out to be quite vincible.  We win all the battles, but lose all the wars.  The truth is, we’ve never been quite as smart or as powerful as we thought we were.

What goes around comes around, and for the United States, it came around in 2016.  Russia treated us like we’d treated those small, allegedly weak countries, brazenly interfering in our domestic politics.  They succeeded in installing a puppet regime sympathetic to their interests rather than to our own, or the interests of our historic allies.  And they did it without having to fire a single shot.

The President of the United States used to be known as the leader of the free world.  It took Trump less than five months to forfeit that title.   German chancellor Angela Merkel has seen the writing on the wall.  “We Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands,” she said.  “The times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over, as I have experienced in the past few days.” 

Angela Merkel is now the leader of the free world.  I don’t think of myself as particularly chauvinistic, but I’ll admit that I hope America can reclaim the title at some point.  In the meantime, though, we should contemplate how fragile our democracy has turned out to be.  If we find ourselves in a position of leadership again, I hope we can display more restraint and humility, and less arrogance and bluster.   

 

I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS

Evan McMullin, Republican and former CIA agent, observes the following patterns in the relationship between Trump and Russia:  Extensive connections between Team Trump and a whole lot of Russians; attempts to conceal those connections; attempts to obstruct investigations into those connections, including dismissing people (Comey, Yates, Bharara) who were conducting those investigations; and despite all the negative publicity, continuing to cultivate relationships with Russia.

Earlier this week, former CIA Director John Brennan shot down the Republican argument that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia by saying that there were indeed “contacts and interactions” between the two.  He also shot down the argument that those contacts were trivial when he added that “frequently, individuals who go along a treasonous path do not even realize they’re along that path until it gets to be a bit too late.”  “Treasonous” is a pretty strong word; it’s much more serious than a charge of perjury, failing to register as a foreign agent, money laundering, or even obstruction of justice.  It sounded like a warning shot for someone.   

Trump’s claim that he only hires the best people is ridiculous, but there’s one thing that most of his staff are really good at:  leaking.  Lately, they’ve redoubled their efforts.  Last week we learned that Trump asked not only to FBI Director James Comey, but also the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of the National Security Agency for help in shutting down the investigation of Mike Flynn.  All three men declined the opportunity to become accomplices in the obstruction of justice.  The New York Times and the Washington Post smell blood in the water, and nearly every day brings new revelations – many of which confirm the “preposterous” conspiracy theories of citizen journalists.

On that front, here are a couple of new developments.  Time will tell how preposterous they are.

First, NBC and the Washington Post have legitimized a charge that was a crazy conspiracy theory two weeks ago – that the FBI is investigating Jared Kushner, whom they believe has “significant information” relevant to the collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.  The Post offered details of Kushner’s meetings with Russians in New York last December – meetings that Kushner failed to mention when he submitted his security clearance.  That, in itself, is a felony.  It’s a remarkable coincidence that Kushner, Mike Flynn, and Jeff Sessions all developed amnesia about their fairly extensive contacts with Russia, and failed to mention them to the proper authorities. 

NBC and the Post were both careful not to say that Kushner was a “target” (a suspect, in other words), but each day’s news seems to make things worse for Trump’s son-in-law.   Score one for the citizen journalists who reported this back in March.

The story took an odd turn on Friday when the Post and the New York Times published different accounts of Kushner’s clandestine meetings with members of Russian intelligence in December.  The Times story says that Kushner was trying to talk to Russia about strategy in Syria.  It doesn’t explain why those conversations couldn’t have waited a few weeks until Trump was sworn in, or why Kushner asked to use Russia’s secure diplomatic communication channel.  Whatever he wanted to talk about, Kushner was definitely anxious to hide it from American intelligence agencies. 

The Post’s account makes more sense.  Kushner, they say, needed money, and lots of it, by January.  Loan fees on one of his properties (the aptly named 666 Fifth Avenue – really, you couldn’t make these things up) were due to rise sharply in 2017.   And sure enough, the Russian ambassador introduced him to the CEO of a major Russian bank.  Was Kushner trying to barter an end to Obama’s sanctions on Russia in exchange for a friendly loan?  Or did Trump’s son in law suddenly develop an inexplicable interest in Syria that vanished almost immediately?  Perhaps we’ll find out.  There was, after all, one American eyewitness to the initial meeting – good ol’ Mike Flynn.  More on him below. 

What is not in dispute is that Kushner violated the Logan Act as a civilian negotiating with a foreign government (Russia); that he committed a felony when he failed to reveal these meetings on his SF86 security clearance application; and that he and others speaking for him attempted to cover up the fact that the meetings and phone contacts took place.  What’s the innocent explanation for any of this?

Moving on, multiple sources in the mainstream media have confirmed that Donald Trump texted “Stay strong” to his disgraced pal, former Lieutenant General, former National Security Advisor, and former Russian spy Mike Flynn.  But “stay strong” can be interpreted either as encouragement (“I’ve got your back,” and maybe even “I’ll pardon you if necessary”) or as a threat (“Keep your mouth shut, or you’ll sleep with the fishes”).  It appears that Flynn was sufficiently concerned about the latter possibility to decide that discretion was the better part of valor. 

Although Flynn is, for the moment, pleading the Fifth to Congress, word on the street is that he’s singing like a canary to the FBI.  Congress can threaten him with contempt (and he is indeed contemptible), but that’s small potatoes.  Federal prosecutors are said to be considering more serious charges, up to and including espionage.  Flynn is suspected of coordinating with Russia to influence the American election, and also working with far right parties in the UK, France, and Austria to assist Putin’s allies in those countries.  Perhaps Brennan was talking about Flynn when he mentioned the slippery slope to treason.

Flynn is a fairly big fish, and it looks like the FBI has him dead to rights.  The only reason prosecutors would consider offering him a deal is if he could help them build a case against someone higher up.  Who might that be?  There are plenty of scuzzy people in the Trump administration, but not many who would constitute a bigger catch than the former National Security Advisor.  I’d say there are only three men who might qualify:  Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Vice President Mike Pence, and of course, Donald Trump himself.  Maybe we’ll get lucky and Flynn can implicate all three of them – with Kushner as the cherry on top.

But even if Flynn keeps the code of omerta and opts to spend the rest of his life in prison, it’s beginning to look as though Trump is still in trouble.  Another mainstream news outlet, The Observer (link below), reports that Admiral Mike Rogers, Director of the National Security Agency, confirmed to his staff that Trump did indeed seek his help in stopping the FBI investigation into Mike Flynn – in other words, in obstructing justice. 

The Observer quotes Rogers as saying:  “There is no question that we [NSA] have evidence of election involvement and questionable contacts with the Russians.”  The article goes on to say that Rogers “was obviously referring to a series of SIGINT reports [Signals Intelligence] from 2016 based on intercepts of communications between known Russian intelligence officials and key members of Trump’s campaign, in which they discussed methods of damaging Hillary Clinton.”

Republican #NeverTrumper Rick Wilson puts it more succinctly.  “Trump has a pair of twos.  The intelligence agencies are holding a royal flush.” 

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating.  Trump and his team are evil, but they’re stupid.  We need to drive a stake through the heart of Trumpist treason before someone smarter plays the game better.  

http://observer.com/2017/05/mike-rogers-nsa-chief-admits-trump-colluded-with-russia/

MADMAN ACROSS THE WATER

When I was a kid, we used to sing a song that began, “My country’s tired of me, I’m going to Germany.”  Most of America is tired of Donald Trump, but he wouldn’t dare go to Germany.  Barack Obama was in Berlin yesterday, where he was given a hero’s welcome by a crowd estimated at 70,000 (including the new leader of the free world, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was all smiles).  The only way Trump could draw a crowd that size would be if they were carrying torches and pitchforks.  Nah, just kidding.  Germans would certainly protest, but they’d do it politely.   

While Obama was being cheered at the Brandenburg Gate, Trump was in Brussels at the NATO summit, insulting Germany.  “The Germans are bad, very bad,” he said, citing the “millions of cars they are selling to the U.S. Terrible. We will stop this.”  Someone forgot to tell him that Mercedes Benz manufactures some of its cars in Alabama and South Carolina; that BMW also has a large plant in South Carolina; and Volkswagen makes cars in Tennessee.  Those three states all voted rather enthusiastically for Donald Trump last November.  Surely Trump wouldn’t do anything to harm his ardent supporters, right? 

Wrong.  Both Trump’s proposed budget and the Republican health care bill are bad for almost everyone, but Red States will suffer disproportionately if either proposal becomes law.  Oh, and that promise to bring coal jobs back in West Virginia?  Yesterday Trump’s chief economic advisor Gary Cohn said that coal “doesn’t make that much sense anymore.”  Which is true, but it’s not what he was telling folks in Appalachia when he was courting their votes.

I doubt that Trump even sees a disconnect between his promises and his policies.  He seems to live in a twilight world where whatever he wishes to believe is true.  You might describe someone like that by saying “He was crazy.  A real nut job.”  The most accurate commentary on Donald Trump comes from Trump himself, when he criticizes other people.  He projects like mad.

Many Trump supporters knew exactly what they were doing when they voted for him in November, and they’ll get what they deserve.  But millions of others were suckered by false promises.  Trump has made a living on the backs of suckers like that, from students who enrolled in Trump University to the myriad contractors he stiffed once they’d completed their work. 

Defrauded students and business partners can sue.  Voters can’t.  All they can do is vote for someone else next time.      

AND PLEASE SAY TO ME, YOU'LL LET ME HOLD YOUR HAND

AND PLEASE SAY TO ME, YOU’LL LET ME HOLD YOUR HAND:  Over the weekend, Donald Trump joined leaders of the two countries that produced 16 of the 19 September 11 terrorists in an occult-looking ceremony with a giant crystal ball.  The next day, the pit of hell opens in front of his Mar a Lago getaway.  Coincidence?  I think not.

I have to assume the Saudis were trolling Trump – making him kneel before the king, suppressing laughter as it became clear that he didn’t have the nerve to say “radical Islamic terrorism,” and putting his face on billboards and buildings all over Riyadh (overkill that anyone but a total narcissist would recognize as comical).  And then the photo op with the crystal ball, which was truly worthy of a National Enquirer cover.  

Reporters traveling with the President say he’s already exhausted.  Surrogates have already stepped in to give speeches he was scheduled to deliver.  Strange, it was supposed to be Hillary Clinton who lacked stamina.  As Secretary of State, she visited 112 countries in four years, racking up nearly a million air miles of travel.  But if Donald Trump is forced to fly further than Florida, he has to take to his bed.  Sad!  

But Tump stayed awake, if not alert, long enough to commit his daily quota of faux pas.  In Israel, he said he’d just got back from the Middle East.  Maybe he thinks Israel is in South America?  Then he complained that he’d never mentioned Israel when he gave away Israeli intelligence to the Russians in the White House.  Oops.  That was a piece of information that the press knew, but hadn’t – at the request of American intelligence agencies – published.  And just like that, Trump accidentally spills more top secret information.  Oh well, it’s not as though Israel was an ally or anything.

Even routine photo ops have turned awkward.  After landing in Israel, he reached for Melania’s hand, and she slapped it away.  And today, the White House Press Office issued a memo outlining the goals of their visit to Israel.  One of the bullet points was “Promote the possibility of lasting peach.” 

Peach is fine, but impeach is better.  Let’s promote lasting impeachment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suDNHwtqoiU

BEEN AROUND FOR A LONG, LONG YEAR

On December 13, 1963, Bob Dylan offered some unscripted remarks on the occasion of receiving the Tom Paine Award from the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee. Remember that this was barely three weeks after President Kennedy was assassinated.  Everyone was still in a state of shock.  In his impromptu speech, Dylan spoke of feeling empathy for Lee Harvey Oswald:  “I got to admit that I, too - saw something of myself in him.”  This did not go over well with his posh audience.  Nor did something else Dylan said that evening:  “There’s no black and white, left and right to me anymore; there’s only up and down and down is very close to the ground.  And I’m trying to go up without thinking of anything trivial such as politics.”  

I understand why, in the immediate aftermath of the Kennedy assassination, Dylan felt that politics was trivial.  Nothing in our civics classes had prepared my generation for the shock of a presidential assassination (and then the assassination of the assassin, followed by an investigation that looked more like a whitewash than a search for facts).  The Kennedy assassination happened outside of politics as we understood politics then, and it changed the way my generation thought about politics forever.

Well, maybe not quite forever.  Fast forward to May, 2016.  Having lived through more assassinations (Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy) and attempted assassinations (George Wallace and Ronald Reagan), not to mention Watergate, the 9/11 terrorist attack, and two misbegotten wars (Viet Nam and Iraq), I thought I’d seen it all.  Maybe we’d elect a good president in 2016 (I was a Bernie guy in the beginning, but I was willing to settle for Hillary), or maybe we’d elect a bad one (someone like Jeb Bush, with Ted Cruz as my worst case scenario).  But life as we know it would go on.

American democracy was supposed to be immune to demagogues, particularly one as blatantly immoral, ignorant, and unqualified as Donald Trump.  His victory in the Electoral College (albeit with a minority of the popular vote) was the electoral equivalent of a presidential assassination.  Life as we knew it was gone, as irrevocably as the JFK assassination ended the post-war normalcy of the Eisenhower Fifties and gave birth to the chaotic Sixties.

Six months later, the shock has worn off, but I still feel a sense of urgency about saving as much as possible of pre-Trump civilization.  That’s why, to apply Bob Dylan’s “up and down” paradigm to 2017, thinking about politics does NOT seem trivial.  Responsible citizenship strikes me as the best way to “go up,” as Dylan put it.  To withdraw from the political arena would be to leave vulnerable populations to the tender mercies of Donald Trump’s band of racist oligarchs.  

In the next few weeks and months, we’re going to find out what kind of country we live in.  I’m cautiously optimistic, but as the aforementioned Bob Dylan wrote shortly before the Kennedy assassination rocked his world, “don’t speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin.”

Today, I’m going to try to step back and take a longer view.  In my lifetime, I’ve seen the Party of Lincoln morph into the Party of Trump, and lately I’ve been thinking about how that happened, and what might happen next.  In journalism, that sort of essay is known as a thumb-sucker.  You’ve been warned.

Conventional wisdom says that the bright line distinction between liberalism and conservatism in America can be summarized as a choice between big government vs. small government.  According to this model, liberals believe that government – especially the federal government – plays an important role in solving society’s problems.  Conservatives disagee.  They are fond of quoting Henry David Thoreau: “That government is best which governs least.”  They claim to believe in individual liberty, personal responsibility, and small government. 

As recently as the mid-20th century, there were liberals and conservatives in both parties.  The white racist South belonged to Democrats, and the Manhattan liberal elite tended to vote Republican.  But in 1964, Barry Goldwater and his followers began the purge of liberals from Republican ranks.  They lost the presidential election that year, and badly, but they were onto something.  Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan continued their work, recruiting racists in the South and Mountain West away from the Democrats.  It was an effective strategy, but it came with a price.  The more Republicans came to depend on Southern white voters, the more racism became an important, if usually unspoken, component of Republican philosophy. 

For fifty years, Republicans used code words like “law and order” and “welfare queens” as dog whistle appeals to racist votes.  But Donald Trump is incapable of even that level of subtlety, and in 2016, he and his surrogates ran an openly racist, xenophobic campaign.  They gambled that they’d win more votes than they’d lose with that message.  Thanks to the Electoral College, where a vote in Wyoming counts 3.6 times as much as a vote in California, they hit the jackpot.  Now the Party of Lincoln is a place where Nazis and Klan members feel perfectly at home.

In the process, Republicans have co-opted the word conservative, so that “Republicans” and “conservatives” are now pretty much synonymous terms.  I’ll use them interchangeably in this post.

It’s easy to refute the claim that Republicans prefer small government.  All you have to do is look at debates about the defense budget, where they’ve always argued that more is better.  And it’s not enough just to build an enormous military.  No, they can’t wait to deploy those assets:  a little destabilization here, a sponsored coup there, and a shooting war every once in a while just to remind the rest of the world not to piss us off. 

And then they’re invariably surprised and resentful when the rest of the world doesn’t take kindly to our interference in their affairs (e.g. Iran, Chile, Vietnam, Iraq, ad nauseum).  This happened so consistently that Republicans soon developed an all purpose explanation for the world’s ingratitude.  The problem was always that we just weren’t tough enough.  We should have killed more of them and take their oil.  Then they’d  have loved us.

It’s hard to claim you’re in favor of small government when you’re constantly pushing for larger defense budgets and starting unnecessary wars, but conservatives do it anyway.  The George W. Bush administration introduced a new innovation in the attempt to resolve that contradiction.  They simply ignored the costs associated with the war in Iraq in his budgets.  Deficit?  What deficit? 

Tax cuts became the Republican solution to everything.  Are we in a period of peace and stability?  Cut taxes.  Are we at war?  Cut taxes.  Is the economy robust?  Cut taxes.  Are we in a recession?  Cut taxes.  You don’t have to think too much about economic policy if you’re a Republican.  Just cut taxes. 

If you look closely at the other alleged cornerstones of conservative philosophy, you discover that the alleged Republican enthusiasm for individual liberty and personal responsibility can’t be taken literally either.  The only way to make sense of it is to understand that, for Republicans, individual liberty applies mainly to white people.  For wealthy white conservatives, it means “don’t tax my income, don’t tax my inheritance, and don’t regulate my business.”  For less wealthy white conservatives, it means “don’t take my guns.”  For conservatives at every income level, it means, “don’t stop me from discriminating against people who are different than me.”

Conservatives only hate big government when it’s used to protect people they don’t like.  They’ll happily use big government to impose their personal values on other people.  “Individual freedom” means that you’re free to believe what Republicans believe and do what Republicans do. 

That’s why the Republican version of individual liberty doesn’t extend to your choice of religion, where your options are limited to being Jewish or Christian.  Your choice of intoxicants is limited to various forms of alcohol; everything else is forbidden.  Women who want to control their own reproductive systems have the freedom to choose abstinence; other options, while not yet illegal, are frowned upon.  Minorities (racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual) are free to keep a low profile and hope that straight white Christians leave them alone.  For Republicans, freedom’s just another word for sit down and shut up.

But if minorities get the short end of the stick when it comes to individual liberty, Republicans make up for it by giving them an extra dose of personal responsibility.  In fact, Republicans talk as if personal responsibility is something that mainly applies to minorities.  Every problem that minorities have is due to a lack of personal responsibility.  Poverty, discrimination, lack of opportunity?  Take a look in the mirror, buddy.  The buck stops there.

When Republicans talk about getting tough on crime, they’re talking about getting tough on minorities.  White collar crime isn’t even on their radar screen.  Ten years ago, they willingly turned a blind eye to the machinations of Enron, Worldcom, and the banks responsible for the housing bubble.  But even as their negligence was wrecking the American economy, they remained vigilant against minorities who shoplifted, or who looked like they might possibly be shoplifting, or who were just hanging out in a store looking Black or Latino.  Petty distinctions like that don’t matter much to Republicans.  Where minorities are concerned, their philosophy is “shoot first and ask questions later.” 

Republicans talk endlessly about family values, but when one of their own – Donald Trump or Bill O’Reilly, for instance – turns out to be a serial harasser, they find a way to rationalize their continued support.  When heroin use was largely confined to minority communities, the conservative solution to the problem was jail time, and lots of it.  Now that opioids are crippling white communities, they want a more compassionate solution.  Their churches haven’t been able to put a dent in the problem, so they’re turning to – guess who? – the government for help.  

If you ignore what Republicans preach and look at what they actually practice, it’s clear that their core philosophy is basically this: “People like us are good.  People different from us are bad.  Government exists to help people like us at the expense of everyone else.”

So what’s the future of the Republican Party?  According to Rush Limbaugh (quoted in an article in the failing New York Times, link below), it’s time for the GOP to let go of conservatism, at least in its classic form.  The new goal of the Republican Party is now simply to piss off liberals.

That explains everything, doesn’t it?  Liberals don’t like racism?  Fine, we’ll double down on racism.  And science denial, and the persecution of Muslims and immigrants, and tax cuts for millionaires, and all the rest.  If it makes Democrats mad, we’re for it. 

Donald Trump instinctively understood what Republicans really believe, and he said out loud what millions of them were thinking.  His candidacy gave the Republican Party the opportunity to jettison the veneer of civility they’d been clinging to and embraced their dark side.  They won an electoral majority.  And then they quickly ran into a problem.

Even before the Goldwater years, there has been a strong tinge of paranoia in the conservative movement.  Their world view is based on resentment and suspicion.  That may be an asset for an opposition party, but it’s a liability if you’re trying to govern a nation where amajority of voters supported your opponent.  What Republicans do best is blame Democrats for everything.  When you’ve demonized the other party, how do you turn around and work with them on legislation?  They can’t.  They’re boxed in by their rhetoric.  They may be good at making liberals mad, but Republicans simply aren’t good at governing. 

The good news is, the American people have noticed.  Republican policies, and even some Republican politicians (including the current Republican president), are in trouble in the polls.  Assuming Trump is still president in 2018, or God forbid, 2020, he’ll have been exposed as a one trick pony.  He figured out how to win what turned out to be a change election, and immediately began proving that he had no idea what to do with his victory.  That means the next change election will be about him.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/opinion/sunday/if-liberals-hate-him-then-trump-must-be-doing-something-right.html

SHIP OF FOOLS

In Plato’s Republic, there’s a story about a ship with a captain and crew so dysfunctional that they prize loyalty above all else, and are suspicious of anyone who exhibits signs of competence. Donald Trump, who famously doesn’t read, has certainly never read Plato, and may not even have heard of him, but his presidency has been little more than a re-enactment of Plato’s scenario.

Here are some miscellaneous observations as we head into the weekend.

A couple of weeks ago, Trump gave an interview in which he was asked if he stood by his claim that President Obama wire tapped him during the campaign. Trump replied, "I don't stand by anything." Ironically, that’s the best one sentence summary of Trump’s presidency I’ve ever read.

Then in May, Trump ratcheted up the crazy. He has taken credit for coining the phrase “priming the pump.” He ranted about the Navy using digital catapults on its aircraft carriers, insisting that they return to using steam. He told Time Magazine that “in a short period of time I understood everything there was to know about health care.”

Last winter, I thought Trump’s word salad was a rhetorical strategy designed to throw his opponents and the press off balance. It certainly functioned that way during the Republican primaries and the general election. But now it just seems like he’s out of control. Republican consultant Rick Wilson wrote on Twitter that Trump’s recent interviews “sound like evidence submitted in an involuntary commitment hearing to a mental institution.”

Nearly every day, Trump voluntarily offers new reasons to believe that he’s guilty of obstruction of justice. Yesterday, he held a press conference in which he said, “I can always speak for myself and the Russians.” It’s being reported as “I can only speak,” but he said “always.” Freudian slip?

Karl Marx wrote that history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, then as farce.” Today we can add another example of the truth of that adage. On July 22, 1973, the Washington Post published a story by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein with the headline “Nixon Sees ‘Witch-Hunt,’ Insiders Say.” Yesterday (May 18), Donald Trump began the day with a tweet claiming that he was the victim of “the single greatest witch hunt ever.” At his press conference later in the day, he doubled down: “The entire thing has been a witch hunt.” This from a guy whose mentor was Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy's right hand man in the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s.

Today, the New York Times reports that Trump told his Russian pals on May 10 that: “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” Then he offered them some top secret information, blowing the cover of an Israeli asset embedded in ISIS. Little man, you’ve had a busy day.

Not to be outdone by the Times, the Washington Post revealed today that the criminal investigation into ties between Trump and Russia has identified a “senior White House advisor” as “a significant person of interest.” Gosh, I wonder who that could be! I really wish it was Jeff Sessions or Mike Pence, but Jared Kushner might be a more reasonable guess. What the heck, they’re all scoundrels. We’ll find out in the fullness of time.

In the meantime, it’s fun to watch Trump’s defenders build successive fallback positions, only to see them crumble into dust within days, if not hours. First they called the whole story was fake news. Then they said if there’s a problem, it involved two people at most, Paul Manafort and Mike Flynn, who are long gone anyway. When the investigation widened, they said at least nobody close to the president was involved. I eagerly await the next dispatch from the Fuhrerbunker.

I’ll close with a quote from Hunter S. Thompson: “The slow-rising central horror of Watergate is not that it might grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow fail to learn something from it.”

GEE, OUR OLD LaSALLE RAN GREAT

Trader Joe’s sells a beer called Simpler Times.  It’s kind of meh.  But it’s cheap, and it’s obviously branded to appeal to buyers who have at least one eye fixed on life’s rear view mirror.  I can empathize with the sentiment.  Sometimes I think it would be great to be a kid again, reading comic books, discovering rock & roll, and watching Maverick on Sunday nights.  I was blissfully ignorant of the political crises, social injustice, and economic stresses of the 1950s.  Whatever worries my parents had, and there must have been some, they kept to themselves. 

The essence of nostalgia is a yearning for a time when you had more certainties, fewer responsibilities, and you were still discovering cool new stuff.  Of course, not everyone was lucky enough to enjoy a life like that.  Nostalgia probably doesn’t have much appeal for people who grew up in a culture of abuse, dire poverty, or racial oppression.

When I was growing up back in the ‘50s, the social hierarchy was clear.  White people were on top.  We were normal, and non-whites were outliers.  Likewise with gender roles – it was a man’s world, and a woman’s place was in the home, or possibly in a service profession like teaching or nursing.  That was normal, and other choices were apt to carry a stigma.  Heterosexual was normal, and if you were gay or lesbian, you didn’t talk about it.  Christianity was normal, Jews were tolerated (for the most part), and unless you lived in a coastal metropolis, you weren’t likely to run into a member of any other religion.  

If you were white, and especially if you were a straight white Christian male, you had a head start on everyone else.  That’s what privilege is.  And as the saying goes, once you become accustomed to privilege, equality can feel like oppression. 

These ruminations were sparked by a recent Ana Marie Cox podcast, “With Friends Like These” (the May 9 episode, entitled “More of a Fetish Than a Mission”).  She notes that there’s a non-trivial segment of Trump voters who heard Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and instinctively thought of their own childhoods.  Of course, those folks are white, and although they’re not racist in the classic sense, they’ve been the beneficiaries of white privilege so pervasive that it’s like water to a fish.  The social changes of the 21st century have left them flopping around and gasping for air.

Most of them think of themselves as nice, everyday people who’d just like to turn back the clock to a time when things were better for folks like them.  Most are probably unaware, at least on a conscious level, that the simpler times they yearn for were pretty awful for a non-trivial segment of the American population.  And as Ms. Cox notes, that makes them a little less nice than they think they are.  

The podcast “With Friends Like These” is part of the Crooked Media empire, and it’s available as a free download on iTunes, or you can find it on various web platforms via Google.

HA! HA! SAID THE CLOWN, HAS THE KING LOST HIS CROWN?

My favorite conspiracy theorists are looking better every day. Just sayin’.

Meanwhile, the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy are apparently preparing for careers in standup comedy when the poop hits the propeller.

On June 15 last year, a month before the Republican Convention, Ryan and McCarthy met with Ukrainian Prime Minister Vladi¬mir Groysman, who told them how Russia financed “populist” politicians in order to undermine European democracies. Later that day, Ryan and McCarthy were discussing that topic in what they thought was a secret meeting with other Republican leaders.

At one point, McCarthy said “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” When some Republicans laughed, McCarthy replied, “Swear to God.” Ryan immediately aborted the conversation and swore everyone to secrecy.

But someone recorded that meeting, and somehow the recording wound up in the hands of the Washington Post this week. The Post asked Ryan’s spokesman Brendan Buck for a comment, and he said “That never happened.” Then the Post dropped the bombshell – dude, we have a recording. Oh. Well, in that case, it was “clearly an attempt at humor.” Yeah, a joke, that’s the ticket.

I wonder how the Post came by this particular recording. Two months ago (March 21), I wrote this: “I’ve read speculation that Trump will fire FBI Director Comey in the near future. That would be really stupid, but really stupid is always in play where Donald Trump is concerned. It’s hard to imagine a more counterproductive course of action, though. It would trigger comparisons to Watergate’s Saturday Night Massacre; it would be read as a tacit admission that Trump was afraid of what an investigation might reveal; and perhaps most seriously, it would really piss off the FBI.”

Maybe the FBI took an interest in Ryan’s and McCarthy’s meeting with the Ukrainian Prime Minister and decided to eavesdrop. But the Russians and Ukrainians would also have been interested. The Post story is datelined Kiev, which is kind of interesting.

But the real question is how – apart from embarrassing Congressional Republican leadership, which is a worthy goal all by itself – this story fits into the greater scandal. At the very least, it proves that well before their convention, House Republican leadership had been warned that Russia would try to influence the election, and that there was reason to believe that Trump was Putin’s candidate. Rather than telling the public what they knew and/or suspected, man of principle Paul Ryan told everyone to just shut up.

If you’re partial to conspiracy theories, you’d suspect that there are other tapes out there with embarrassing – or maybe incriminating – information about prominent Republicans. I have a feeling we’ll find out soon.

IT ISN'T VERY PRETTY WHAT A TOWN WITHOUT PITY

Speaking at the Coast Guard Academy commencement today, Donald Trump said, “No politician in history has been treated worse or more unfairly." 

Let’s think about that for a minute.  Trump thinks he’s been treated worse than Abraham Lincoln, who was murdered?  As were James Garfield, William McKinley, and John Kennedy.  Assassination is pretty harsh.  Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan were both wounded in assassination attempts. 

And those are just American presidents.  Trump said “no politician in history.”  “History” covers a lot of territory.  We could point to victims of political violence all the way back to Julius Caesar (and 25 Roman emperors who were murdered while in office) and all the way up to Arizona’s Gabby Giffords.  How about Gandhi and Nelson Mandela?  And if Trump wants to see a textbook case of politician who’s been treated unfairly, he doesn’t have to look further than the woman who beat him by 3 million popular votes last November.

The job is harder than you think, Donald.  You could do worse than to take your predecessor as a role model.  He was unfairly and irrationally demonized (by you and your friends at Fox and in Congress) for eight years.  He kept calm and carried on.  He never blamed his subordinates for mistakes, even when they made them.  He bore the abuse you gave him with dignity and decorum. 

Pundits have interpreted Trump’s remarks as a signal that he’s determined to fight his critics, rather than resign.  I say, bring it on.  Trump is his own worst enemy.  He has driven his staff to despair.  Congressional Republicans are finally beginning to realize that Trump’s daily diet of scandal is keeping them from implementing their agenda.  I’ll take all of that I can get.  Hang in there, Donald, until you’ve so thoroughly discredited the Republican Party that you take them down with you.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  Everything Trump touches turns to shit. 

And just now comes the news that former FBI Director Robert Mueller has been appointed as “special counsel” to oversee the investigations into Russiagate, thereby eliminating the possibility that the new Trump/Sessions FBI Director can derail the process.  Good news, and big trouble for guilty parties.