Dear America,
When Donald Trump became president I was disappointed. He seemed so obviously unqualified intellectually, and his sophomoric, egotistical aggressions were, to use his favorite word, a disgrace. But I assumed that once he showed his true colors for long enough that people got to know him the way I did just watching the news in the New York City metropolitan area a few times a year when I went to visit my family of origin, he would be relegated to the status of an unfortunate accident. After four years, I thought--he's so erratic, egotistically peremptory and his ideas are so deracinated from truth and reality that I even thought it likely that he would be gone in just two or three...damn...almost--we would get a real president. And maybe that is still the case, but the way the Democrats are conducting themselves, my confidence is seriously shaken.
First, there was the failure of the Democratically controlled House to include an impeachment count for the well established attempts at obstruction in which Trump attempted to suborn the removal of Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor investigating Russian election interference, and thus thwart the intended purpose of the investigation. The irony of that failure is that Trump's attempted intervention was as gratuitous as Nixon's attempt to cover up the Watergate burglary in which he had played no role at all. Like Nixon, the villain of the piece in the Russia investigation regarding the attempts to collude with the Russians were focused on others, not the president. And also like Nixon, Trump refused to take "no, it's not you" for an answer. But he tried to interfere with the investigation anyway, and that seems to me to have been an offence for which impeachment should lay; an opportunity lost.
Now there are the debates among the Democratic candidates for the opportunity to succeed Trump, and what a feckless group they are. Bernie Sanders is irascible far past what we tolerate in our grandfathers. Joe Biden seems effete and lacking in everything presidential but his resume and his charm. Michael Bloomberg is...well, he's Michael Bloomberg. And the others seem to have been also-rans right from the beginning. Elizabeth Warren keeps trying to feign gravitas but it keeps coming out as stentorian stridency and Pete Buttigieg demonstrates only a pale imitation of substance. As to Klobuchar and Steir, I can barely remember their names much less what distinguishes them from the average man or woman on the street. Yet, dubious as each of their chances of nomination are, each of them presumes him- or her-self to be a viable candidate to beat Trump, and thus will say anything to diminish the others even though the net effect is to give our demon-in-chief more confidence in his impunity than he already had, and more simulated justification among "his base" to vote for him again. But s Will Rogers used to say, "I'm not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat." If our party members don't form a circular firing squad at election time, I can't help but think that something is wrong. It's all just standard politics.
But the firing of the DNI (Director of National Intelligence) because one of his subordinates informed the House Intelligence Committee that the Russians are still at it--trying to get Trump elected...again--that was cause for sheer consternation. It's not that Trump was indignant about the claim made by our intelligence community en masse. It's the reason for his indignation. He doesn't want anyone to believe that he needs any help getting reelected. It was his ego that made him fire the man who fills an office created in order to prevent another 9/11 on account of the failure of our intelligence community to work together instead of protecting turf and thwarting each other. The firing is thus consequential for two reasons. First, it undermines our national security by putting us back where we were in 2001 when Islamic extremists saw us as fair game...and they turned out to be right. Former DNI Maguire's replacement is a political shill who knows nothing about national intelligence gathering. He is an obsequious sycophant who is already setting up the DNI's office to tell Trump only what he wants to hear. That is dangerous.
But add to that Trump's apparent desire to pander to Vladimir Putin by discrediting those who reveal what he is actually doing. Add Trump's claim that R.T. Ergogan is a "good friend" of his, and that he has had a "bromance" with Kim Jong Un, and you get a clear picture of Trump's aspirations. He wants to be one of them: an autocrat who keeps getting reelected as if he is stellar rather than feared...as if he is a saint rather than a sinner. Combine Trump's moral vacuity with his political ambition to be a political legend like the other, even if it's only in their own minds, and you have a real potential anti-democratic phenomenon. That's what keeps me up at night. It's not just we who are in jeopardy. It's our way of life too.
Your friend,
Mike
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