A lot of us anticipated the bad horror movie the Trump presidency would be. It wasn’t exactly rocket science.
Trump was a fraud who was given the maximum benefit of the doubt by a press both in love with Trump’s fraudulent audacity and in fear of his retribution. Their inability to cover this story – from Trump’s overt racism (FFS, they still want to debate whether or not he even IS a racist) to his overt treason (they still want to go along with Bill Barr’s lie that the only thing in the Mueller Report are empty pages) should be a warning to us. We see, hear and feel our country literally shrinking.
Trump has never run anything bigger or more complex than a Mom ‘n Pop Money Laundering Shop for the Russian mob. There’s a reason Trump keeps everything crime family close.
Fusion GPS noticed this fact while doing their due diligence after The Washington Free Beacon hired them to do oppo research on Trump (the Free Beacon’s owner liked Jeb Bush). Fusion’s Glenn Simpson testified before Congress that what they uncovered about Trump – getting ahold of books, magazines, newspapers videos from everyplace thy could including the public library – motivated them to hire Christopher Steele, former head of the MI6’s Russia desk.
I remember not so long ago when our constant harping about Russia got annoyed looks even from friends. It’s hard to get one’s mind around the enormity of this crime.
I bet the folks living at Pearl Harbor felt kinda the same way as bombs exploded all around them. How do you get your mind around being the unfortunate place where the spear tip punctures the body? They went to sleep at peace, woke up at war.
Even now – with a shitload of solid evidence staring at us, we STILL refuse to call Trump the traitor he is. Our news media will give him the benefit of the doubt till there’s no more left to give. Then they’ll wonder which Democrat is the most “electable” against him. FFS – a bucket of vomit with a D sharpie’d onto its side could beat Donald Trump. The problem is, it’s Russia they’re running against. Take Russia out of the 2016 equation and Trump never makes it past the primaries.
But Russia did make Trump the winner in 2016. They made a lot of Republicans winners, too. Those Republicans took a sledgehammer to the Rule Of Law. That was my blind spot – the degree to which the whole GOP was well and truly complicit. The Republican Party saw demographic extinction ahead of them. They’ve had to steal the last two republican presidencies (W’s and Trump’s). Without gerrymandering, the Republicans would lose the Congress, too. The only co-equal branch available to them? The judiciary. Provided they stole it.
Which (Merrick Garland anyone?) Moscow Mitch McConnell absolutely did. All those highly rated Obama judges held up and denied hearings, all those Trump Judges shoved down America’s throat.
The result has been chaotic – of course. But even chaos has advantages over what we’re being forced to endure. I never saw children in cages coming. I never saw such blatant lying to Congress coming. I never saw the love of depravity coming.
I never saw the attrition coming – the way Trump’s constant lying (now compounded because EVERY Republican now lies) would wear us all down – and undermine our collective will. Living in Trumpian times is exhausting.
I never saw that coming either.