Like many of you, I watched the unfolding reports of the possible Jeff Sessions political fire sale to Sergei Kislyak last night with a combination of revulsion and resignation. An increasingly common thread here, both from diarists as well as their commentators below, and from network anchors and commentators is that we have become numb to the outrages of Trump. I will freely admit to having written in several diaries and the resultant comments that nothing that happens can really “shock” me anymore. And as I watched it, it didn’t.
It was after “The 11th Hour” was over, when I was in that quiet time as I was firing up the X-Box 360 to play LA Noire that I found that I still could be shocked. It wasn’t the act itself that shocked me. For a while now, most of us have been expecting this, not only the the apparent confirmation of Sessions loose lips with Kislyak back in April, positing Trump’s Russia credentials like a kid in a job interview, but in June, with Veselnitskaya’s Trump tower meeting with Putin’s fledgling “useful idiot lite”, offering dirt on Hillary to grease the skids for the tangelo topped fool.It wasn’t the fact that we have finally found the collusion that we have all been looking for, it was the numb, subservient submission to the breaching of the inviolable political wall.
Look, we all know that politicians are shits. They’re small, petty, greedy little power hungry bastards. We tolerate politicians because somebody has to spend all of that tax money, and besides, we don’t have good enough hair for the campaign posters. But in return for all of that power and on camera face time, we do expect a couple of things from them. One of them is safety and security. We expect them to clearly identify our enemies, not to negotiate with them on how the insurance payment will be split after the robbery.
When Donnie redux told Rob Goldstone, “I love it” he was basically telling Vladimir Putin, “I’ll see your Ukraine, and raise you a Latvia”. Sessions not only told Kislyak that the family was going to be out of town at Disneyland, he even told them which flowerpot the front door key was under. If these latest reports turn out to be true, people like Jill Wine-Banks and Paul Butler on MSNBC will be somberly talking about how they think that Sessions could actually be brought up on treason charges for “giving aid and comfort to the enemy”.
Where are the pitchforks and torches? This is not “politics as usual”, this is the abdication of the government of the United States of America to uphold its constitutional duties in return for the power to abdicate it. I’m sick of the Democrats solemnly proclaiming how “serious and disturbing these events are”. It’s time to stop pussyfooting around out of political correctness, we are talking about a life or death threat to our entire electoral system and way of governance. Do reid and Pelosi honestly believe that Ryan and McConnell wouldn’t be wrapping table legs with sheets and dousing them in gasoline right now if the situations were reversed.
I heard an analysis yesterday that made me sick to my stomach. The panel guest stated that there is no tangible reason for the GOP to turn on Trump right now, because his base is still at 30%, and any Democrats that they may please in their district or state are not going to vote Republican just because they turned on Trump. Let me state this as clearly as I can, FUCK THE BASE! News flash, Richard Milhouse Nixon had a 30% base during Watergate, but that didn’t stop those Senators from going to the White House and telling him that he had played out his string. Nancy Pelosi arm twisted 20+ mostly new, vulnerable representatives into casting a vote in 2009 that sent them back to private life in 2010, and they knew it when they cast the vote, but they did it because it was the right thing to do, and what they had been elected to do.
The current day Republican party is sick and diseased. Like an arsonist, they can’t stop setting fires cuz of those purty flames. And like an arsonist, they’ll deep on doing it until either they’re caught, or until they set the fuse incorrectly, and the whole burning house collapses down on top of them.
I believe they are now at the latter juncture. Trump’s base is a solid 30%, but he got 46% in November. His current polling is at 36-40%, so anywhere from 6-10% have already defected. And the rest voted for change, and results. Right now, Trump cannot govern, and the GOP majority cannot legislate. Like that house fire, the Trump-Russia scandal is sucking all of the oxygen out of the room, soon they’ll be unconscious from a lack of air. Do they honestly want to go home next November wearing MAGA hats and screaming about Democratic obstructionism, or do they want to exorcise the cancer now, get back to normalcy, and go home next year with a few deliverables to try to fold that disgruntled 16% back into their own base? Right now, it looks like the GOP is hell bent for leather to end up a pile of charred bones under the burnt out rubble. The only real problem there is that we’re in the goddamn house with them.
You know, some, including myself, have comforted themselves that what damage Trump has already done can be undone. We can restock the State Department, reestablish sane environmental regulations, absorbing whatever incremental damage Trump’s idiocy caused, put our kids and teachers first, slap Russia silly, get back in Europe’s good graces, all of the base structures are still there. But Trump has broken something much harder, nay, nigh on impossible to repair, and he did it right here. He broke trust. Our democracy requires that we trust the system to be fair, and that we trust those who lead us to put country first. Trump has not just fractured that trust in both beliefs, he has ground them to dust. Krazy Glue will fix a broken vase, but if you look closely enough, the cracks still show. A cheated on spouse may forgive the infidelity, but the hurt will always be there, and so will the lingering suspicion. Like a marriage, Trump may have broken something that while it may be repaired, will never be quite the same again.