Nurse the Hate: Comrade Trump Has A Problem

I was watching Fox News yesterday as I was curious to see how Pravda was going to spin the seemingly airtight indictment of Manafort and Toadie.  One would think that a detailed assessment of money laundering Russian payouts and charges of “conspiracy against the United States” would be noteworthy.  Yet Fox News waved it away as some sort of Democrat misdirection away from the idea that it was Hillary Clinton that was colluding with Russians.  The claim, completely devoid of fact or even logic, is one of the talking points of the channel.  There is also a bizarre fascination with the funding of “the dossier” that is attempting to be spun into a conspiracy despite every person that paid for the creation of the “dossier” being out front and saying “I paid for it after the Republican challengers stopped paying for it”.  I think they like saying “dossier” as it sounds much more impressive and foreign than “a report”.

There was passing mention of Papadopoulos’s guilty plea, mostly footage of the very odd looking Sarah Sanders contorting her face while lying about everything.  That woman clearly has no soul.  Still, she is perhaps the most amoral public speaker of all time and that is a gift of sorts.  Even Kellyanne Conway looks at her and thinks “not even one shred of what she is saying could possibly be true.”  Fox News completely avoided the irrefutable fact that Papadopoulos said “I did it” in regards to specifically meeting with Russians, attempted to set up further meetings specifically to work together to get Trump elected, and then lied about it afterwards.

I don’t think we have to debate the Trump campaign’s guilt.  Even douchey Don Jr. admitted to trying to get “dirt” on Clinton from Russian sources.  We know the Russians interfered with the election to get Trump elected.  We know Trump has been bizarrely deferential to Russian interests.  There is a money trail going to his campaign manager.  When the idea of Russian interference first surfaced, Trump went out of his way to block any investigation into it and continues to try to sell the idea of looking at something, anything else, instead.  Let’s be adults here and agree it happened.  Now it is just about ferreting out the details.  You would have to be a goddamn fool to think otherwise.  

The one third of the country that is still, somehow, on board with Trump will fight each step down the road as the picture becomes clearer.  Why these same flag waving zealots don’t feel betrayed by someone that even has the scent of treason on them is a mystery.  The only thing I can figure is that they stay in the Fox News bubble.  It’s easy to believe in Santa Claus when a 24 hour news channel is dedicated to telling you that he is real.  As this continues to fall apart and the country denigrates into madness, I hope I get the chance to sit serenely on a rock amongst a group of rapt listeners so I could say something that sounds like wisdom.  I might even shave my head and wear a monk’s hood when I sit Indian style and say “The one eyed owl sees only what it wants to see…”  Hopefully everyone nods their heads and looks to one another as if to say “That is some Confucius sounding shit!”.  Then maybe we can go out for Kung Pao Chicken.

This is going to be a major crossroads for the country.  The Republican majority has shown no inkling that they are capable of doing the right thing, nor even caring about what that might be.  Those guys would sell their mothers for a tax credit.  Fox News plays back false talking points while insisting it’s everyone else that is lying.  The facts don’t matter nearly as much as the repetition of falsehoods.  For much of America, the lies are the truth.  They backed a criminal, and it’s not easy to say “Wow.  I really fucked up.”.  It's much easier to stick with Your Team than eating crow from loudmouths like me.

This event is like Watergate, but much worse.  At least in Watergate, the country still believed in a collective vision of what America was supposed to stand for, a shared sense of values.  There was a sense of outrage at the crime attached to Nixon.  There was a belief, however self-deluding, to live up to a higher moral standard.  Now we have people living in opposite realities.  If you watch Fox News for an hour, you’ll start to think everyone else is crazy for picking on poor President Trump.  What happens if Trump and his criminals decide to fire Mueller?  What happens if Trump pardons all the people that committed crimes against the nation?  Who is going to fight back?  The Senate?  It seems to be that this shit is about to all go sideways.  Carry a compass.  Good luck.  It’s a rough trail ahead.