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Oy
Back in the days when I wrote about conspiracy theory, "lodestar" would have kept me going for days. Sort of like, I don't know, scouring Albert Pike and the Scottish Rite Masons for Luciferian references.
If the person who wrote that NY Times op ed is really as big a traditional small-government Republican patriot as they say they are, then they should resign and make a public statement. Secret (and selective) usurpation is not how democracies get saved; it's how hopelessly corrupt and broken Republican administrations survive to do even more harm than they are already.
Trump to Bob Woodward, when Woodward assured him his book would be accurate: "Well, accurate is that nobody’s ever done a better job than I’m doing as president. That I can tell you. So that’s . . . And that’s the way a lot of people feel that know what’s going on, and you’ll see that over the years. But a lot of people feel that, Bob."
There really are two separate problems afflicting this great nation. The first and the biggest is the Republicans who are nominally sane and smart, who are systematically dismantling the administrative state and doing their damnedest to ethnically cleanse it. The second is the delusional moron they pretend is leading them.
It's actually possible to not like McCain in a principled way. As a staunch Reagan Republican, he was an ardent hawk and a good friend of pro-US authoritarians abroad; he elevated Sarah Palin to a risible height (arguably paving the way for Trump); and in general, was much less of a maverick than the media that he flattered so assiduously gave him credit for. But Trump isn't principled. He's as petty as a 15-year-old mean girl. If McCain had said "nice" things about him once ...in a while (instead of just voting for all of his policies but healthcare that one very dramatic and memorable time), Trump would be happy to jump on the grief bandwagon too.
I still believe that this is a terrible world, but that it is filled with decent people. Am I wrong? Do enough Americans resonate with Trump's shallowness, stupidity, mean-spiritedness, ignorance, and racism to keep him in power? Can the Democrats, as divided and wishy-washy and compromised as they are, turn out enough voters to overcome the Republican firewall of gerrymandering and voter suppression this fall?
Trump is so vindictive and so impulsive that he can't even put on a sad face for McCain's death for 24 hours. Can he possibly get through the next two months without firing Mueller, pardoning Manafort, and perpetrating some new horror on the world? And will those things hurt him or help him? I honestly don't know. Trumpism has made me rethink just about everything I thought I knew about politics.
Once I would have felt compelled to write about QAnon. Now I'm like, whatever.
Let's remember who the real radicals are. And let's also recall that some of these leftists' "outrageous stances" (like single payer insurance, and tuition-free public colleges) don't seem even a little bit outrageous to people who came of age before Reagan or after Bill Clinton. Yes, some of these young Democrats are pro-BDS--but I don't think that's going to drive much of a wedge between Democrats and Jews who aren't already Republicans. As Peter Beinart wrote, Netanyahu has forced progressive Diaspora Jews to choose between their Zionism and their progressivism. Most have opted for progressivism.
I'm of two minds about stories like this. On the one hand, I find it deeply reassuring to think that the country isn't as neatly polarized as it sometimes seems, with a still-decisive minority of us living in a malign racist fantasy-land. On the other hand, I think it's better if the reality-based population is maximally terrified and angry going into the fall elections.
They are winning; they have won. The country and the world are changed irrevocably, and they've hardly even begun. We can't afford an ounce of complacency.
Funny thing, I was just looking at collections of Ronald Reagan quotes. They're banal as hell, and you can tell which were written by speech-writers and which were said off the cuff. For example, "If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen" was definitely a speechwriter. And then there's "unemployment insurance is a prepaid vacation for freeloaders." That one came from his heart. But most of Reagan's quotable quotes, authentic or concocted, pay lip service to ...freedom, self-determination, independence, dignity and patriotism. "Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom."
For all his flag-hugging, Trump doesn't think much about those things. His agenda for America is "I alone." He alone can make the world a better place, because only he can have the greatest relationships with the best people. America is good because it has white people in it for sure, but mostly because it has Trump. His election was the not just the happy ending but the beginning and the middle of the story too: America vindicated him and anointed him. He beat Hillary, Obama, and Angela Merkel, and they can all kiss his ass. So can Mike Pompeo, for that matter. And John Bolton. And certainly John Kelly. If Putin helped him win, then that reflects well on Putin. There is literally no room in his brain for anything else.
"No colusion!" is from Trump's heart. So is "President Putin was extremely strong and powerful." Everything else is just womp womp, to borrow a phrase from Cory Lewandowski.
Oh, so that's alright then.
And General Kelly was just mad about his breakfast when he was scowling in Brussels the other day. And Brett Kavanaugh (remember him?) is a really big baseball fan.
Will Trump's enablers buy this latest lie? They will, because the truth implicates them. What else are they going to do? Impeach themselves?
...Will his voters? Many will, because they drank the Kool Aid already. Sunk costs and all.
Amid the total horror of this weeks-long meltdown we've been living through, I see one glimmer of hope: that it's becoming harder and harder for people with even a modicum of sense to deny that he's 1) Completely evil, 2) Totally stupid, and 3) Utterly nuts. Surely some of his allies can think past their racism and greed and allow that he's a clear and present danger. If there is a Deep State (and we all know that there is), maybe it will decide that he's more trouble than he's worth.
His relative poverty (his $2.2 million house notwithstanding, he has only about a tenth the assets of any of the other judges on the court) is attributed to his lifetime in the public sector, where he's been struggling to get by on $225,000 per year for the last decade. And who among us hasn't dropped tens or maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars on baseball tickets for our friends?
I am amazed that this story isn't getting more traction. if he was a Democrat, people would say that he has a drug or gambling problem or a mistress. Since the 1 percent is hiring him to watch over their financial interests, shouldn't they be worried that he doesn't handle his money a little better than he does?
