The Grand Illusion
As anyone following politics should know, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, and Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, brought charges in the Eastern District of North Carolina against James Comey, the former head of the FBI, claiming that Comey threatened the life of President Trump by posting a video consisting of seashells spelling out “86 47.”
Blanche claims to have other evidence, but given the fact that “86” is actually a restaurant term used to strike an item from the menu because the kitchen’s run out of that item, Blanche is stretching more than a little bit.
This is the second attempt by Trump to prosecute James Comey, and Blanche apparently is doing so because the Donald ordered him to do so, and after what happened to Pam Bondi once she failed to successfully bring charges against Trump’s so-called enemies, Blanche isn’t wasting any time.
Even some Republicans, including Senator Thom Tillis, are skeptical.
As for Comey’s being charged with threatening the President for merely expressing an opinion that Trump ought to be removed from office,whatever happened to First Amendment rights?
Unhappily, what else can you expect from a President who demands that comedians who make fun of him and his wife be fired? Or who discharges without a legally valid cause a highly commended career federal attorney merely because Trump hates her father?
What’s even more disturbing is that Trump can threaten anyone and everyone he doesn’t like, including to destroy an entire culture if those leading it won’t immediately capitulate, but takes umbrage in the slightest satire or mockery. He’s also delayed or withheld disaster aid to states that didn’t vote for him in the last election.
If any Democrat President had done half of what Trump has, they’d have long since run afoul of Congress, but superannuated adolescent Republican Representatives and Senators who once gloried in Trump’s braggadocio are now clueless chumps or sniveling cowards, unwilling to hold their bullying leader to the requirements of the Constitution.
Trump has apparently been a bully since childhood. Once he got rich, he learned how to bully people with lawsuits. Once he started leading the Republican Party, he learned how to bully opponents in the party with primaries.
As president, he bullies opponents through the Justice Department…and opposing nations with the US military.
He’s a bully. And I still have trouble seeing why anyone at all, much less 49.6% of the electorate, would think casting a ballot for such a horrendous individual is a good idea.
Meanwhile, love the post’s last sentence.
I was born in 1951. I have seen this behavior all my life, everywhere, writ large and small. When I was K-12 I wondered why people acted apparently w/out morals, thought, qualm of any kind. For a time I labeled it human nature. Now I refine that a little, saying it’s a vested “Identity” thing.
People have a desire, somebody pats them and disses what they diss then says “Tt’s yours. Just do what I say”. They do and it doesn’t really happen, but they’re told “It’s coming. Do more”. Now they’re invested and it costs to back out. And on and it starts to look impossible to change your mind, especially in public but also privately. So people, fearing the End of their Identity, start to twist and shift the whole world in order to maintain their Identity. Even unto death. Certainly over the dead emotions and bodies of others.
That’s my current take. There’s nothing too complicated here, everybody sees stuff. The scene, the counters vary – the action doesn’t. Sometimes it’s more consequential than others, though.