American politics long ago became one continuous campaign. The lines separating election cycles began to dim in earnest with the advent of PACs and now it has become one long slog, with newly elected members attending fund raising dinners the very day they are sworn into office. That staying elected has surpassed governance as a priority for so many lawmakers clarifies a system more concerned with personal ambition and special interests than the national well being. Tribal allegiances now hold sway over even the most benign efforts at bipartisan cooperation. When it all becomes one long day at the track, merely picking and choosing winners and losers, the quality of what is produced at every level, from State Houses to the White House, suffers greatly. And now the system’s worst creation threatens its very existence.
It seems a certainty the new year will usher in a resumption of Trump rallies. The President will want to keep his wretched core close, lest he not feel fully validated when doing battle with Robert Mueller and his deep state collaborators. Every indication portends the Special Counsel is about to go all in with a hand that will rock Trump’s world, taking him to task on a number of fronts, backed by sworn testimony from a long list of minions who learned the hard way loyalty to the Donald is a one-way concept. Trump is vulnerable to charges ranging from collusion to obstruction of justice to graft and good old fashioned racketeering. The bumbling incompetence of his legal team, headed by Rudy Giuliani, who appears close to senility, surely isn’t lost on the President; so he’ll be playing the cards that brung him… his true believers and Fox/AM.
That Trump will bring America to a full blown systemic crisis as the noose tightens is a foregone conclusion. The rallies will serve that purpose. It’s a sure bet, as the details of his ruination become filled in, Trump will hit the road with a message seeped in seditious division. No doubt any and all of his persecutors will be villanized to the hilt, his reckless gibberish no longer limited by any pretense of responsibility. And Fox/AM will spin whatever spews forth, embellishing a narrative that begins and ends with Trump’s paranoid narcissism. Freedom caucus lackeys and other Trump supplicants will join the crusade, providing any legitimacy they can. What emerges will be a call to arms that equates Trump’s political and legal survival with that of the nation, a 24/7 road to insurrection if their champion is messed with. All paid for by American tax dollars.
Whatever Mueller reveals, however comprehensive and damning to Trump, his family, and his Presidency, we can be sure most of the Republican Party will either ignore or attack it. Trump’s Attorney General nominee, William Barr, appears ready to provide the institutional luster of the DOJ in service to the White House, his pro-Trump inclinations being strategically leaked throughout his pre-selection process. How that plays out is anybody’s guess. For now everybody seems satisfied the ghastly Whitaker is being replaced; oh, the ruinous impact of bottom-level expectations… the only tier this Administration functions on.
As I’ve noted before, the gist of our pluralist governance is the honor of our officials. We simply haven’t had a Chief Executive who never wanted the job, but once ensconced in the White House felt liberated to be as lazy, uninspired and corrupt as he pleased. We’ve never had a President with zero concern for the fate of a nation he swore to protect, and in fact has no reservations about rocking its foundations to the stilts if his noxious self-preservation requires it. We never experienced a cabal of Congressmen and Senators explicitly dedicated to self and party over country and the world. Our institutions that serve our constitution seem, at the time we will surely need them most, subservient to, if not the best qualities of their executors, at least some absence of their worst inclinations. It is all uncharted. Nothing is certain. And so we steer warily into a season of discontent, addled by a corrupt nihilist determined to secure support against the chickens his own indecency is bringing home to roost.
Two, three times a week? We know he has nothing else to do… except tweet. Decades from now historians will assess the coming days and marvel how such an ignorant and unprepared man could have so preoccupied the world’s most powerful nation…. or ruined it. We shall see. BC
Excellent. Scary. Depressing.
The Trump descriptor in your article that most jumps out at me is “reckless”. We have an unbelievably complex and effective system in place in our country to insure that the people that make it to the top of management in certain organizations are smart, experienced, vetted, honorable and careful. For instance, nuclear submarine commanders. There’s no way that a reckless bozo would ever make it into that leadership position. Too many honorable men and women are working too hard to make sure that never happens, because they know that the fate of the world depends on it.
Yet somehow we let one become commander in chief. A reckless bozo.
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Also: December 12 is coming fast, Cohen. Did you dig that last best secret file out of it’s hiding place and hand it over yet? Better hurry. You don’t want to die in prison 10 years from now.