Trump…
Horrific? Yes. Out of control? Yes. Guilty of crimes beyond impeachable? Yes. The singular sole source of this evil? NO. Not even close.
Donald Trump and Bill Barr may seem like an evil comedy routine to some: the Laurel and Hardy of politics, only Hardy, played by Barr, was never that smart and duplicitous legally, therefore so evil. Laurel was funny in his cluelessness, never like a spoiled, arrogant brat who must have everything HIS way.
Barr is probably the ‘best’ hire Trump has done in his pathetic, self centered life: when it comes to letting political criminals escape consequences Barr has experience plus. But Barr, Trump and Republicans couldn’t have become this wrecking ball without all that went before.
How dare I type any of that?
This is not all that new. Did you forget? We all have heard of the concentration camps (“Don’t call them THAT,” the politically correct cry: snowflakes trying to defend the indefensible twisting their frail little panties.) But what about previous camps housing those suspected of having some connection: no matter how slight, if any, with terrorists or terrorism? The sick games played on them? One citizen arrested and turned into a vegetable in an attempt to force him to confess to… something… anything.
We know about children separated from parents, children and parents dying, inhumane conditions; their plight used to enrich contractors and appeal the truly deplorable in his base. Can you say “Iraq?” “Afghanistan?”
”But what about the recent attempts to harass and destroy the lives of journalists who don’t obey and only spread pro-Trump propaganda? The elevating of FOX, Breitbart and how all the rest of the media offers ‘fake news?'” …you might ask.
Not all that new either. How could we forget Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame? How the assets Valerie was working with burned: disappeared or murdered because it was more important to go after Joe for telling the truth? How about when journalists first got to the front ‘somehow’ had their hotel targeted after the first non-glowing report was published? Embedding journalist so deeply reporting anything negative was like saying, “Frag me please?”
Have you noticed that bad has led to worse when it comes to legally distracting from justice and truth? Exemplified by the Bush, Junior service record. It was pretty obvious he had been let go for basically going AWOL, running from responsibility. What became the point? Not the secretary who said the CONTENT of the letter of dismissal was the same. It was because it wasn’t exactly the same font, the same piece of paper: not unusual in an increasingly digital era over the years. THAT was suppose to ‘prove’ the whole thing was bogus. Of course not, but it’s easy to see how poor misdirection, at best, like that can lead to an army of shills defending the indefensible. Packing the courts makes this truly a frightening prediction where justice becomes whatever Trump and the Republican Party wants.
No wonder he wanted to talk to the Taliban, despite criticizing Obama for dealing with them at all. He wants our nation to be MORE like it’s run by Taliban-like ‘justice.’
The charges that Trump keeps jerking us around with lies, asinine statements, suggesting he won’t leave the presidency, promoting his own hotels in an attempt to use government finds as his personal piggybank, could be framed as merely a whacked out magnification of what has been a trend. Remember the weird terrorist warning system that jerked us around at crucial moments, used when political advantageous, and of course Iraq and Afghanistan being big piggybanks for Cheney’s Halliburton? Soldiers electrocuted in faulty KBR/Halliburton showers? Soldiers dying trying to protect employees more clueless than military recruit nuggets on their first day in Nam? The low water supplies in a desert? How about Iraqi prisoners dying in trailers under broiling desert conditions?
If we want to go as far back as the beginnings of the nation there has always been a push for ultimate, almost dictatorial, presidential powers. That historical icon, Abe, was considered a tyrant by some. Hence what led up to…
”Sic semper tyannis.”
He was so hated the massive grief after must have seemed very hypocritical to some.
But let’s take our time traveling Yugo go even further back in time. “Yugo” because most of the time we tend to do such trips poorly, breaking down at politically convenient times, skipping the inconvenient.
Adams, the first, started off by putting in jail a bar patron who merely called him old, toothless and quarrelsome. It got worse after that with a Trump-like focus on oppressing the media despite the Constitution. Only Adams had it put into law.
It’s as if as soon as we were free of the yoke there were far too many of us all too willing to put it back on and tighten it into dictatorship. Lincoln at least had a huge internal rebellion as an excuse. Roosevelt had one of the longest, most severe, economic downturns in our history. In comparison, if you ignore partisan purists, Trump (marginally) moved to that famous “dump” called Pennsylvania Ave during good times. And as bad as the downturn was at the end of Bush, the sequel, one could argue Obama did too. Once again: in comparison.
My point being that the Bush administration, and so much that went before, were natural lead-ins into this, and I wouldn’t put it past Bolton or even Trump to find some way to 9/11 us into another term and beyond. Hey, it worked so well before.
Blame Trump if you wish, but this is ‘merely’ an insane amplification of what came before.
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Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 40 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks, and into the unseen cracks and crevasses, that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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