Donald Trump's buffoonery can leave you in despair. But Michelle Goldberg writes, in The New York Times, that there is reason to hope:
The Democratic landslide in the midterms proved that the laws of political gravity haven’t been suspended; Trump’s incompetence, venality and boorishness had electoral consequences. Further, it was a year of justice and accountability for at least some of those who foisted this administration on the country. An awful menagerie of lowlifes was swept into power by Trump’s victory two years ago. In 2018, at least some of them started to fall back out again.
Consider what has happened to so many of those lowlifes:
When this year began, Scott Pruitt was still indulging in spectacular corruption as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Omarosa Manigault Newman had just been fired from her senior administration job and had not yet revealed her stash of secret recordings. Rob Porter, who has been accused of abuse by two ex-wives, was still White House staff secretary. David Sorensen, accused of abuse by one ex-wife, was still a White House speechwriter.
At the start of 2018, the casino mogul Steve Wynn was the Republican National Committee’s national finance chairman. He resigned after The Wall Street Journal reported that he’d been accused of committing multiple acts of sexual harassment and assault. (Wynn denied assaulting anyone.) Elliott Broidy, owner of a private security company, was an R.N.C. deputy national finance chairman. He resigned after The Journal reported that he’d paid hush money to a former Playboy model who said she’d had an abortion after he got her pregnant. (Cohen was also a deputy chairman; he resigned in June.)
As this year began, the white nationalist Steve Bannon, Trump’s former campaign head and chief White House strategist, was still running Breitbart News. He’d not yet burned his bridges to Trumpworld with his comments in Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury,” which was published in January. Since then, Bannon has lost considerable pull. He most recently made headlines after he was scheduled to speak at a conference on sex robots; a backlash to his invitation led to the conference being postponed.
In January, McClatchy reported that the F.B.I. was investigating whether Russia funneled money through the National Rifle Association to aid the Trump campaign. Throughout the year, as evidence of sketchy connections between the N.R.A. and Russia kept emerging, many on the right poo-pooed it. (“This attempt to turn the N.R.A. into another cog in the Russian conspiracy is laughable, but the mainstream media apparently still find it deeply compelling,” wrote Breitbart editor Joel Pollak in March.) On Thursday, Maria Butina, a Russian who’d nurtured ties to N.R.A. leadership and to Trumpworld, pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as a foreign agent.
Justice is on the move. It'll take awhile longer for it to catch up to Donald Trump.
Image: The Daily Beast
8 comments:
May it continue its momentum, Owen. The world thirsts for justice.
Not just the NRA. I find the connections between the National Prayer breakfast and the Kremlin interesting. Men of god indeed.
The world thirsts for Justice, Lorne. And, at this moment in time, it truly needs it.
It been my experience, rumley, that those who pray the loudest are those whose motives are most suspect.
Well said Owen. I really hope that justice will prevail.
.. I often used a term I developed or read of.. 'situational ethics' - The term was useful during the utter hypocracy of the Harper era and still applies to today's conservatives. It can apply to any 'public servant' elected or unelected. Its typified by sneering or snivelling holier than thou posturing as an upstanding christian. Jason Kenney is a fine example of a poster boy for the term. So whatever you are dirt bag guilty of doing.. you claim the high ground of the complete opposite. If you perpetrate Electoral Fraud, you claim to be a stoud and tireless defender of democracy
Mitch McConnell deserves the same poster boy award in the USA.. but there are just so many.. and the competition is fierce. Another term is 'aspirational'. So it kind of pops out of Ms Huckabee Sanders as 'I hope people remember me for my honesty and transparency' - now the White House press corps must have been mouthes agape - if she believes that, the medical term is 'delusional'
Another word signalling complete deceit is 'characterization' - an example might be 'I apologize without reservation if my characterization of certain children and teachers at Sandy Hook as drama actors was misunderstood by impressionable young white sportsmen men who own AR15's'
We need new terms, new vocabulary and updated lexicon for such behaviour. Mainstream Media needs to lead the charge. Unique turn of phrase or descriptors.. and there are tried and true terms rusting & abandoned in the political and media bewilderness. Sleazy, greasy, disgusting, murderous are being replaced by 'alleged' or 'unkind'. Vast environmental pollution, habitat destruction and species extirpation is now called 'Nation Building' or 'high paying jobs' or summarized as 'Economic Growth' - diluted bitumin is now Canadian Oil, as if its found in every single province and territory. 'Tidewater' is British Columbia's marine coast plus any territory between it and the Tar Sands (oil patch) that gets in the way of 'the opportunity'
As I recall, J.S, another MacDuff took down a tyrant.
The pen has always been mightier than the sword, sal. And, in the end, writers will have a lot to do with Trump's downfall.
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