I suggest this piece posted yesterday at The Atlantic is well worth the brief time it will take you to read it.
After telling us how hard it is to keep track of all the nefariousness associated with this regime (and I use that word advisedly) Serwer offers the following paragraph:
There’s the ongoing special-counsel investigation into whether the Trump campaign aided a Russian campaign to aid Trump’s candidacy and defeat his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton; there’s the associated inquiry into whether the president obstructed justice when he fired former FBI Director James Comey, whom he had asked not to investigate his former national-security adviser; there are the president’s hush-money payments to women with whom he allegedly had extramarital affairs, made through his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, and facilitated by corporate cash paid to influence the White House; there is his ongoing effort to interfere with the Russia inquiry and politicize federal law enforcement; there are the foreign governments that seem to be utilizing the president’s properties as vehicles for influencing administration policy; there’s the emerging evidence that Trump campaign officials sought aid not only from Russia, but from other foreign countries, which may have affected Trump’s foreign policy; there are the ongoing revelations of the president’s Cabinet officials’ misusing taxpayer funds; there is the accumulating evidence that administration decisions are made at the behest of private industry, in particular those in which Republican donors have significant interests.
But rather than try to grasp these as separate and discrete occurrences, Serwer offers a different perspective:
There are not many Trump scandals. There is one Trump scandal. Singular: the corruption of the American government by the president and his associates, who are using their official power for personal and financial gain rather than for the welfare of the American people, and their attempts to shield that corruption from political consequences, public scrutiny, or legal accountability.
I think that is as concise and precise a description of what we are experiencing as anything I have seen, although it does not include Trump’s obsession with dismantling anything he can of the legacy of his predecessor.
The final two paragraphs of this powerful piece puts this all in context. To stay within fair use I will not quote all of the penultimate paragraph, which takes us back to George Corley Wallace, where the Alabamian mentions his attempts to talk talk about things like good roads and schools, but that nobody listened. Then Serwer completes Wallace’s statement and sets up the connection with Trump:
“And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor.” (These days, they stomp the floor for “son of a bitch” or “animals.”) Any effective hustle persuades the mark that they’re the ones profiting.
This leads to the gut punch of the final paragraph:
For those Americans unmoved by such appeals, the ongoing corruption of the official powers of the U.S. government on behalf of ego, avarice, and impunity should not be seen as separate stories. They are the same story, and it is the story of the Trump presidency.
ongoing corruption
ego, avarice, and impunity
the story of the Trump presidency
Indeed.
Go read the whole piece and pass it on.