PMC Commentary

The challenging task of never suffering Trump

The Washington Post has best summarized Trump's Nurem- Harrisburg rally last night (organized so that his tender ego would not be present at the Correspondents' roasting): "As much as the crowd stood with their man, they, like the president, wouldn’t mind some wins. After all, he’d promised that there would be so much winning, Americans would be bored.

"They’re not bored yet."

But we are. Informed opinion, from right to left, is already palsied — a mere 100 days in — by Trump Fatigue: the monotony of bluster, the tedium of banality, the unbroken dullness of this horrible little man's fraudulence. The conservative Kathleen Parker opines that "disliking Trump, even for all the right reasons, is exhausting and unsustainable. It’s also boring." The liberal Frank Bruni notes that "even outrage grows boring, and it begins to [dangerously] feel pointless."

The danger is obvious. The menace of Trump is endlessly remarkable, although remarking on such every day — and for another 1,359 days — is also exhausting. Hence through exhausted neglect, the menace could morph into the commonplace. We would then be in even deeper trouble, for Trump has no problem with sustaining his fraudulence. As he did last night.

With characteristic Trumpian bluster, he blew right by all the remarkable betrayals of his base. He has folded "the Wall," he has wimped out on Obamacare, he has flipped on NATO and flopped on NAFTA, he has ditched "America First" with a Syria intervention (more to come), and yesterday he dissembled on China like a Goebbels on Poland. "I don’t think right now is the best time to call China a currency manipulator," he said, subsequent to publicly conceding that China is, after all, not a currency manipulator. 

Perhaps even more sickeningly characteristic of Trump and Trumpism was his mind-blowing take on his speaking venue. Before the atrocity of the 2016 election, which he actually lost, he described Harrisburg, Pa. as "just rotting … just a war zone." Last night? He proclaimed Harrisburg a "beautiful" town. The war zone earned him deafening cheers from the incurably gullible, as did its remarkable transformation into a beautiful place. That pushed even Oceania's boundaries of Big-Brother bullshit, but for Trump it was just another day's labor in bamboozling the boobs.

It's exhausting, all this Orwellian humbug. And, to those of us intellectually stimulated by the challenges of reality — not the indulgence of bullshit — Trump's humbug is already deadly boring. Thus our greatest challenge is, pace Parker, that of sustaining a lively outrage at the unprecedented menace of Trump. It won't be easy.

 

Contempt and nihilism? Or hope?

Peter Wehner, a veteran of several Republican administrations, writes:

The 2016 campaign … showed us how extraordinarily wide the gap between what it takes to win the presidency and what it takes to govern has become…. For many Americans, frustration with our political leaders, which is understandable, has transmuted into contempt for governing itself, which is dangerous — a trend that verges on a desperate kind of political nihilism. But sometimes we learn the value of something by its absence. In the age of Trump, perhaps we will discover anew that there is an art not so much to the deal but to governing.

There's a great deal of seduction in that passage, and one is left to sort out the genuine from the meretricious.

Wehner opens with an observation that is incontestable: The gap between Trump's breezy demagoguery as a candidate and his sclerotic governance as president is outright chasmic. Had Huey Long dodged a bullet or Joe McCarthy sobered up and either gone on to the presidency, we would have a precedent for Trump's executive vacuousness. As it is, the Donald is a true pioneer; the original model, for all time, of just how incompatible are congenital con artistry and presidential competence.

Wehner's passage closes with an observation that is more wistful than incontestable, although I'd like to believe it, and mostly do. After four abominable years of Trump (barring his abbreviated tenure via impeachment), "we will discover anew" that conspicuously empty vessels full of populist promises are a really bad bet. Indeed, it seems we've accelerated that process of discovery by three years and 265 days. As a partisan associate of Wehner's told him: "The dysfunction in this White House just knows no bounds." Trump's sinking approval rating may be just as unknowledgeable.

It is Wehner's middle passage that is higher up for a judgmental grab. To repeat it, for your convenience: "For many Americans, frustration with our political leaders, which is understandable, has transmuted into contempt for governing itself, which is dangerous — a trend that verges on a desperate kind of political nihilism."

For starters, the "many [contemptuous] Americans" phrase is vastly problematic. Contempt toward Barack Obama is now at an all-time low, and he, as president, was the very definition of responsible governance. One may not have always agreed with Obama's actions, but one was bound to agree that governing thoughtfulness positively oozed out of the man. So, do "many Americans" possess "contempt for governing itself"? Sure they do. "Many" Americans also believe that Vladimir Putin is a stand-up guy, that the House will ultimately come together over a "better" health-care bill, and that Jared Kushner holds the diplomatic portfolio and foreign policy experience to achieve world peace.

Wehner also foresees a "desperate kind of political nihilism" settling in. Such an ideological conviction, however, would seem to be limited to many dunderheaded Americans. Most Americans, centrists and liberals and authentic conservatives alike, genuinely desire progress — whether in rebuilding America, ensuring more affordable health care, or in securing at least a passable level of fiscal responsibility.

Those majority progressive desires — carried out at even a conservative pace — are far from political nihilism, hence that would seem to be the least of our problems. Our undeniably largest problem, on the other hand, lies in converting small-r republican desires into electoral action. Trump and his hapless big-r Republican Congress weren't elected by most Americans — many of whom simply stayed home.

Trump, though, may be the answer to our biggest problem, which brings us back to Wehner's closing observation: that "in this age of Trump, perhaps we will discover anew that there is an art not so much to the deal but to governing." That's a much milder way of saying that perhaps voters, next time around, won't be bamboozled by demagoguery or sucked into indifference. That's also a seductive thought I can believe in — one I must believe in, or I'd be forced to join the hopelessly, destructively indifferent.

 

"Fox (or MSNBC) & Friends"

In stumbling on a psychological profile of "Fox & Friends" — "pitched to the frequency of the Trump base," a "high-definition ego fix," a "'daily affirmation that [their man] is successful and adored, that his America is winning' after all" — I had unwittingly stumbled on a succinct explanation of why I abhor "The Rachel Maddow Show":

The clubbiness of "Fox & Friends" is hardly a Fox or right-wing innovation; it’s also at work in, say, Rachel Maddow’s wonky progressive lectures. Neither is the show’s consistent partisanship, says University of Texas professor Talia Stroud, who studies media and political behavior. Research shows that viewers across the political spectrum who consume partisan shows develop increasingly polarized views, as like-minded commentators offer ready-made rebuttals and call into question the trustworthiness of the other side. It creates a built-in reason to tune in day after day. "If you’re listening to a news media source that’s telling you, 'The other side is going to make this argument, and the mainstream media never covered topic X,'" Stroud says, "it keeps you going back. Because you now see a value proposition."

My abhorrence of ideological lecturers applies as well to Rachel's follower, Lawrence O'Donnell. Last night, having once again successfully averted a TV encounter with the daily affirming, giggling, hand-clapping Maddow, I happened to catch the first five-or-so minutes of O'Donnell's hour of "ready-made rebuttals." In that brief window of wonky progressive sermonizing, Lawrence managed to tell me maybe 10 times that for weeks he had predicted the next failure (yesterday's) of Republicans' health-care something-or-other. On he went, over and over, reminding me — nay, reminding America! — of his breathtaking cleverness. Did anyone believe Republicans would pull off their next health-care tranch? Of course not. But not everyone has a national platform to brag like a Donald Trump. And I just can't take it. Lord knows that as a democratic socialist I'm as progressive as anyone. But my accompanying Montaignean skepticism prevents me from joining the left's cheerleading by watching "TRMS" or "The Last Word" — every bit as much as ever joining the right's, and watching "Fox & Friends."

 

One wobbly week at a time

The continuing paradigm of absolute incompetence in governing:

The [Republican] House and Senate on Friday approved a stopgap spending measure that will keep the federal government open for another week…. The measure approved on Friday continues government operations at current funding levels through next Friday.

One week at a time, my friends, one week at a time. They've had four months — January, February, March and April — to decide how to keep the government open not for another year but merely for the next six months (the fiscal year ends Sept. 30), and yet the best they can do is one week at a time. They have it all, the White House, the Senate and the Peasants' House, all of which are capable only of perpetuating the fiscal status quo, which is precisely what they ran against.

This morning the leader of the vastly inept Republican pack said "I don’t think there’s ever been anything like this…. I have to tell you, I don’t think anybody has done what we’ve been able to do in 100 days." Boy, can he ever say that again.

 

Can we live - literally - with Trump?

With near unanimity and astonishing simultaneity, this nation's more prominent conservative columnists have discovered how to endure what still promises to be the most menacing four years of an American presidency. Our loathsome bugaboo of a wanna-be strongman, Donald Trump, is still loathsome, they say — but a strongman he isn't. And in that, we may take some comfort; we can, perhaps, endure. Such is the new, #NeverTrump conservative consensus (almost).

This morning, David Brooks summarizes his tribe's somewhat relieved take by writing that Trump has "not gotten brighter or humbler"; he has only "gotten smaller and more conventional." His "convictions" are ephemera, his competence is "merely inadequate" (not "catastrophic"), and he has "mostly switched from being a subversive populist to being a conventional corporatist." With passing validity, Brooks concludes that "[Trump's] looks like any Republican administration that is staffed by people whose prejudices were formed in 1984 and who haven’t had a new thought since." In brief, Trump is more of an antique commonplace to be yawned at than a cryptofascist to be feared.

Michael Gerson concludes much the same. "In a number of cases, Trump has not been cunning but credulous; not an authoritarian but a pushover. During his campaign, Trump looked down on the weak; now, it turns out, he is weak." (See: China, the wall, health care.)

Gerson goes on to make two other observations: one profoundly undeniable, the other, deeply perplexing. "Trump is failing," he writes, "because he has little knowledge of the world and no guiding star of moral principle." Who would — who can — argue with that? Yet Gerson then notes, seemingly out of nowhere: "The best of our leaders — think Abraham Lincoln — have been sure about the truth and uncertain about themselves. Trump is the opposite."

There is nothing deeply perplexing about noting Trump's Himalayan ego and self-confidence. To assert, however, that "the best of our leaders" — "the best" being a matter of personal political preference and varying historical judgements — have been racked by Lincolnian doubts is rather dubious, considering the self-confidence displayed by, oh, Presidents Washington, J. Adams, Jefferson, J.Q. Adams, Jackson, Tyler, Polk, Garfield, Cleveland, McKinley, T. Roosevelt, Wilson, Coolidge, Hoover, F.D. Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, G.W. Bush, and Obama." I may have missed a few.

Finally we come to Charles Krauthammer, who chimes with Brooks: "[Trump] ran as a populist and won as a populist but, a mere 100 days in, he is governing as a traditionalist." Such is the new conservative consensus: We need not be too afraid.

The one outlier in influential(?) conservative opinion is George Will, whose opinion I'm far more in tune with. Will is amused by Trump's domestic betrayal of his base, but still very much afraid of Trump's reckless ignorance of world affairs: "Trump’s retreat from positions that enchanted his supporters is a matter mostly between him and them. How he addresses the world, however, will reveal whether he has gone from candidate to commander in chief without becoming presidential."

There we have it — the real horror of Donald Trump in the White House. Institutional checks on his domestic imbecilities remain; indeed, they appear sturdier than many imagined. So here, we can somewhat relax. But Trump as the unpresidential commander on chief — an impulsive toddler with total authority over the globe's mightiest firepower — is downright terrifying.

Paul Krugman, this morning, compares Trump to the horrifying 6-year-old of the "Twilight Zone" episode, "It’s a Good Life." Explains Krugman: "It featured a small town terrorized by a [prepubescent Trump] who for some reason had monstrous superpowers, coupled with complete emotional immaturity. Everyone lived in constant fear, made worse by the need to pretend that everything was fine." Krugman makes this comparison in relation to Trump's domestic imponderables. Those, though, are not what fearfully pin me to this president's non-existent wall. No, that's accomplished by knowing that Trump is commander in chief — an emotionally immature buffoon with truly monstrous superpowers.

 

The invisible Mitch McConnell

McConnell is just sleazy enough to earn the label of unAmericanism (his refusal to entertain Obama's Garland nomination was exceptionally appalling, even for the Senate majority leader and modern Republicanism), but he's also smart enough to know that Trump never profits his partners. Unlike Paul Ryan, who seems to be afflicted by chronic pixilation, McConnell understands, with immense solemnity, that Donald Trump is a disease — a potentially contagious one. And so he stays away. That doesn't make me like McConnell, but it is cause for some respect. The more that McConnell avoids Trump, the smarter I know he is.       

 

Trump slips a little more

A bit more chipping away.

Earlier this week an ABC News/Washington Post poll showed that 96 percent of Trump voters still said they did the "right thing" in supporting Trump. Today, A University of Virginia Center for Politics poll shows Trump's approval rating among these voters has dropped to 93 percent.

And among them, a majority (51 percent) only "somewhat approve" — versus "strongly approve" — of the job that Trump is doing.

I recognize that the Trump-defection pace seems tortuously slow. Yet we must remember that the incompetence in chief has yet to finish even his first 100 days. Plus, however slow these defections appear to be, they are in fact moving, they are in fact very real, and they are in fact becoming substantial, day by feckless-Trump day.

 

Poor Donald: If only he would show some leadership!

Now this, from Henry Olsen of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, you've got to love. Just as President Obama did, Trump is now taking the heat for a lack of — leadership! Writes Olsen:

The GOP was bitterly divided into at least four factions prior to Trump’s emergence, and their civil war had waged since at least the 2010 primaries. None of the existing party leaders has the stature, power or credibility to unite this group into a cohesive majority. The president’s failure to step into this fray simply makes the divisions harder to heal…. Only clear, principled leadership from the Oval Office could have brought these [warring factions] into accord [over, for instance, the health-care bill — my emphasis].

I'll have some of what Olsen is having. What a happy, altered little world he lives in. For absent the miraculously persuasive element of legal bribery — earmarked promises of new roads, bridges, bike trails and every conceivable boondoggle — what real power does any modern president have over the assorted fiefdom-holders of Congress?

This is in no way a defense of Trump, but what else is he to do? Promise to fly out and campaign for them next election? With Trump's wretched and worsening approval ratings, that would be more of a threat than a proffered gift.

Anyway, it's good to see that Trump is now taking the same lack-of-leadership! heat that Obama did for years. What comes around …

 

Political hypocrisy can wear you down

My wife was center-left, she always voted and, because she wished to be a good and informed citizen, she followed the general contours of day-to-day politics.

My wife also hated politics, for a singular reason: She detested its hypocrisy.

Time and again I would explain, like the veteran and therefore jaded political observer I am, that hypocrisy simply comes with the racket. It's nothing to get too distressed over, I'd insist. In our cyclical cage of partisan opposition does hypocrisy naturally run rampant.

Mine was the practical and, I very much believed, "sophisticated" view of day-to-day politics. Hers was idealistic and less "worldly," but it was also plainly ethical — far more ethical than anything I had to offer in the way of practical instruction. As a junkie marinated in the sewage of political hypocrisy, I had grown accustomed to its stench. My wife, however, stayed just far enough away from the cesspool of politics to be repulsed by its malodorous drifts.

And this week, as you know, we have a doozy of a hypocritical, repulsive stinker — repulsive, anyway, to those who haven't altogether lost their sense of idealism and ethics.

Given Trump's immensely fatuous, inequality-exacerbating and above all deficit-exploding tax cut plan, "Republican budget hawks will need to decide," as the NYT puts it, "whether they want to stick to the arguments of fiscal responsibility that they used to bludgeon Democrats during the Obama era."

You no doubt recall the conservative horror at Obama's deficits, which he inherited from the pseudoconservative Reagan and Bush II tax cuts. ("Original" conservatives under JFK's presidential tenure opposed his tax cut proposal on the grounds that while it might help boost the economy, it would also swell federal deficits — and that, conservatives would not countenance.)

To get a grasp on the current decision-making, ahem, dilemma of "Republican budget hawks," we need only ponder the words of U.S. senator and once-heroic budget hawk Pat Toomey: "Rather than conforming to arbitrary budget constraints, the president’s plan rightfully aims to jump-start investment, which will produce significantly more revenue for the Treasury over the long term than any revenue-neutral tax plan could generate."

Toomey's analysis is not only transcendent horseshit from any fiscally responsible or sane macroeconomic point of view, it is, of course, staggeringly hypocritical. As is the "analysis" of former Republican budget hawk and current deficit dynamiter, OMB director Mick Mulvaney: "As a conservative, [my boss's massive red-ink proposal] bothers me a little bit." But not to worry, added Mulvaney, for "we also look at deficits through sort of a different lens." Which is of a radically new prescription: Written specifically for Republican budget hawks, it blurs any bone-chilling hypocrisy.

It would have been bone-chilling to my wife, anyway, since she, at least, hadn't altogether lost her sense of political idealism and ethics. Between the two of us, perhaps she was the more sophisticated one — in that she, in opposition to my jadedness, was the more conscientious citizen.

 

Trump's tax proposal: It's actually kinda perfect

Trump gave this no more thought than one would to ordering "the usual" at the neighborhood bar. Verily, as the New Yorker's John Cassidy observes: "the only reason the Administration is making [a tax reform] announcement this week is that the President demanded one in advance of Saturday, which marks his hundredth day in office."

In brief, his "plan" is but another rushed stunt masquerading as policy.

Accordingly, it's also an unthinkable Trumpian joke of a plan. It arbitrarily slashes corporate rates from 35 to 15 percent, grossly expands personal deductions and, as a result, blows "a huge hole on the revenue side," writes Cassidy — a hole of up to $9.5 trillion over the next decade.

Cassidy points to a week-old NYT op-ed by the super-duper supply-siding always-wrong-until-now quadrumvirate of Steve Forbes, Larry Kudlow, Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore: "the White House seems all over the map on the subject [of tax reform]."

Boys, it seems that way because it is that way — because serious, thoughtful, concrete policy proposals aren't part of Trump's playbook, which is instead a manual on catch-as-catch-can demagoguery. Do you boys really believe that Trump cares if his "plan" is coherent?

All it is, in reality, is just another broad giveaway to the needy and desolate rich; another con sold to the innumerate boobeoisie as an economy-pumper; another ahistorical, unempirical piece of macroeconomic quackery. In sum, insanely imperfect as it is, it's the perfect Trumpian plan.

 

"Integrity, always integrity"

With increasing frequency, one's mere emotional disgust morphs into wanting to physically throttle them. Here to intensify this urge is Vox's superb Sarah Kliff, formerly of WaPo's Wonkblog:

House Republicans appear to have included a provision that exempts Members of Congress and their staff from their latest health care plan.

The new Republican amendment, introduced Tuesday night, would allow states to waive out of Obamacare’s ban on pre-existing conditions. This means that insurers could once again, under certain circumstances, charge sick people higher premiums than healthy people.

Republican legislators liked this policy well enough to offer it in a new amendment. They do not, however, seem to like it enough to have it apply to themselves and their staff. A spokesperson for Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.) who authored this amendment confirmed this was the case: members of Congress and their staff would get the guarantee of keeping this Obamacare regulation.

The requirement that Congress and staff be subject to the same Obamacare regulations as others is right there, in the original bill's Section 1312(d)(3)(D), which, for this Congress & Staff, notes Kliff, is obliterated by "(A)," "(i)," and "(ii)":

As I have written for a number of years now, for congressional Republicans it is less a matter of "dignity" than Integrity, Always Integrity:

 

Mistaking Trump's ignorant bullshit as a warrior strategy

Barton Swaim, a former speechwriter for then-Gov. Mark Sanford and contributing banality to the Washington Post, has struck on what he regards as an insightful defense of the Donald's trumpery:

The difference between the way typical American politicians use language and the way Trump uses it is the difference between an ordinary lie and the "lie" of a war stratagem. Both involve the deliberate communication of falsehood, but whereas the traditional liar claims to believe what he says and feigns outrage if you suggest he doesn’t, the war strategist assumes you know he’s trying to mislead you but wants to confuse and outmaneuver you and force you to guess wrongly about his intentions. For Trump, the language of politics is the language of war — a metaphorical war, but a war nonetheless. Words and sentences are tools and weapons — not, for the most part, vehicles for the communication of truth or fact.

I can't say I'm entirely clear on Swain's argument, probably because Swain doesn't know what he's talking about. Many politicians — Speaker Paul Ryan leaps to mind — lie only because they wish to accomplish something they know the public would oppose, such as yet more fiscal assistance to the top 1 percent. But "lie" must be forcefully qualified here, since in the speaker's mind his Ayn Randian gibberish is in no way a "deliberate communication of falsehood." It is divinity itself. A subjective lie isn't really a lie if its peddler believes in its splendidly truthful objectivity.

At any rate, Swaim contrasts the "ordinary lie" with what he calls Trump's lies of "a war stratagem," which sounds devilishly clever. There sits our unpresidential Machiavelli, who "assumes you know he's trying to mislead you, but wants to confuse and outmaneuver you and force you to guess wrongly about his intentions." Swaim may think he knows what he means by that passage, but I'm at something of a loss. Indeed, Swaim confirms my confusion by adding that "Trump doesn’t care what he said six months ago" (he doesn't engage in the "silly … pretense" of non-contradiction), and "We are 100 days into the administration of a president whose words sometimes mean what they seem to mean, but oftentimes do not, and it’s usually hard to tell the difference." Sorry, come again?

What Swaim misses is that Trump's supposedly strategic-warrior lies are in reality just iterated ignorance, compounded by a total indifference to truth — in short, bullshit. As philosopher Harry Frankfurt noted in his little book, On Bullshit, "It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction." God knows Trump possesses no convictions, except that of promoting the greater glory of Donald Trump. The bullshitter, continues Frankfurt, "does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose" — which, again, in Trump's case, is the public creation of a kind of Nietzschean superman in the White House. Concludes Frankfurt, "bullshit is the greater enemy of the truth than lies are," for the liar at least comprehends the truth.

Moreover, and more poignantly, why would a president choose to be "at war" not only with truth and reality, but with the very citizenry he is meant to lead? Why would he try to "mislead" us, want to "confuse and outmaneuver" us, and "force [us] to guess wrongly about his intentions"? What precept of judicious leadership is fundamentally grounded in panoptic deceit? If Trump knows his intentions — which he doesn't — what acceptable reason would he have to mangle them before the public? Good governance is grounded not in deceit but legitimacy — and Trump is engendering only distrust.

In sum, if Trump's bullshit is indeed a war stratagem, well, he's losing the war.

 

Rush's unhappiness with Trump, and some interesting history

Rush Limbaugh is an unhappy man.

I’m not happy to have to pass this on. I’m very, very troubled to have to pass this on. And I want to say at the outset that I hope my interpretation is wrong, and I hope this is not the case. But it looks like, from here, right here, right now, it looks like President Trump is caving on his demand for a measly $1 billion in the budget for his wall on the border with Mexico.

It gets better.

The Democrats are threatening a government shutdown. It’s the same old same old, and I was hoping that Trump would throw this shutdown thing right back in their face and have everybody realize they’re the ones engineering these shutdowns…. [N]ot having a shutdown has been the single focus of Republican policy for I don’t know how many years now. And it has translated into the Democrats being able to deny Republicans most of what they want and Democrats to get what they want.

I can't decide which is funniest — that Limbaugh is "very, very troubled" over Trump's poltroonery, or that Democrats have been "engineering these shutdowns" as Republicans have opposed them as a matter of policy, or that majority Republicans are pitiably helpless while brutish, out-of-power Democrats "get what they want."

 

Without ignorant heels, there would be no Trumpism

Donald Trump, "writing" — where else? — in Trumpworld:

Paul Waldman, writing in the real world:

I’m sure there are many in Trump’s hard core of supporters who will hold fast to their faith in the president and tell themselves that their beloved wall will get built eventually….

[But] it’s never going to happen….

As the months and years pass, Trump’s voters may realize that they got sold a myth, and he was never going to deliver. Or maybe not — for them, the story may have been so compelling that it doesn’t matter whether it came true.

Both camps will exist as the months and years pass; indeed, the first school of thought (so to speak) is already forming. But it's the second school of anti-thought — the extraordinarily compelled, "no-matter" school — that is so fascinating. This is the George W. Bush base that insisted WMDs were found in Iraq; it's the fanciful base that still believes supply-side economics works; it's the hyperpartisan base that held close to Obama as Muslim Other — all of it meaningless, easily disprovable drivel which even a minimally competent schoolboy could Google to destruction.

Yet in their epistemic bubble they live and thrive, for there is virtually no way for enlightened others to reach them. Should, perchance, some reasonably enlightened citizen get through their door and present a few facts? The anti-thought school of Trumpworld just digs its ignorant heels in farther.

I suspect many of them know, deep down, that they're playing a mug's game. But they care so little for America — the idea of America as traditionally framed — that standing by their man is of more importance than the nation itself. So they'll keep reading Trump's tweets and believing them — or, rather, telling themselves that they believe them. They crawled into bed with a snake, and now they'd rather be bitten than flee to decency, by conceding their foolishness.

 

Lopsided dysfunction

Politico:

[House Oversight Committee members Jason Chaffetz and Elijah Cummings] sent letters to the White House and federal agencies last month seeking [Michael] Flynn’s security clearance applications and other documents. The Defense Intelligence Agency, where Flynn formerly served as director, provided the committee with Flynn’s security clearance documents.

We then enjoy this ensuing contrast:

Cummings said the White House refused to comply with the committee’s request for other documents.

Chaffetz said his committee would be turning over the issue to the Army and Defense Department to make a final determination.

Cummings? Just a fussbudget. But what a pity that Chaffetz is retiring. He's such a fine, conscientious and dogged investigator.