So here we are. We Democrats are grateful that Breitbart -- the modern equivalent of Der Stürmer -- is supporting Jeff Sessions against Donald Trump. We applaud this turn of events, even though Sessions is an ultra-conservative whose stances on marijuana, immigration, and forfeiture are repellent to us.
Why do we applaud? Because Breitbart's backing makes Sessions more difficult to fire. If Sessions keeps his job, then Robert Mueller is more likely to keep his job.
But why would we want Mueller to stay in place? He is a Republican appointed to head the FBI by George W. Bush, whom we despised; Dems often criticized Mueller during the Bush years. Yet now we're rooting for Mueller because we want him to mount an honest investigation of Donald Trump. We hope that this investigation will lead to impeachment and removal.
Bottom line: We applaud Breitbart, we root for Sessions, and we support Mueller in order to insure that the presidency falls to Mike Pence.
Yet we cannot stand Mike Pence.
Pence: A man to Trump's right on gay rights and other issues. More intelligent than Trump. More effective than Trump. More articulate than Trump. More skilled at working with Congress. More likely to pass legislation we hate. More likely to be re-elected.
Why on earth would Democrats prefer Pence?
Because Trump is crazy. Because Trump is stupid. Because Trump is a braggart. Because Trump is uncivilized. Because Trump is a natural autocrat. Because Trump is an embarrassment. Because Trump is linked to the criminal underworld. Because Trump is obviously beholden to Putin. Because Trump's narcissism and ignorance literally make us want to vomit.
Politics has always made for strange bedfellows. We now lay in a bed of ash and decay constructed in the Inferno -- an overcrowded bed pullulating with the most vile, nauseating, noisome and diseased devils ever to skulk out of the pages of the Goetia.
So here we are.
7 comments:
Very strange, indeed. Who'd have thunk that I'd be reading Jennifer Rubin, Rick Wilson, David Frum et al? Not only reading but adding "brava/bravo, ladies and gentlemen.'
Yup, that would be me because these Never Trumpers, conservatives/Republicans all are standing on the same side of the line I am and recognize the crazy man in the WH for what he is: dangerously destructive, criminally compromised and quite willing to take the whole country down.
Yes, strange bedfellows in strange times. Very strange times.
Peggysue
Joseph you made me look up Goetia....where do you learn these things??
Anyhow maybe we'll get lucky and Pence will be implicated as well. He was in on the collusion as well. Manafort DID pick him and he's obviously lying about knowing what Flynn was up to.
Pax, I always thought that you could construct a really good horror movie around the demons of the Goetia. They're all so strange and quirky, with differing powers and appearances and areas of interest. I never had any interest in writing a movie about vampires, because the genre is played out: Seen one vampire, you've seen 'em all. The Goetia, by contrast, offers an incredibly wide variety of new monsters.
Yet Hollywood continues to ignore the possibilities offered by that ancient book. I wonder why?
(BTW: It's pronounced Go-WAY-sha.)
Strange, yes. But not unpresisented, as we say these days.
Readers of Peter Pomerantsev will have a woozy feeling of familiarity with such situations.
Here's a link to a piece of his from 2011, which is still on my mind:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n20/peter-pomerantsev/putins-rasputin
Great posts, Joseph
"The novel is a satire of contemporary Russia whose hero, Egor, is a corrupt PR man happy to serve anyone who’ll pay the rent. A former publisher of avant-garde poetry, he now buys texts from impoverished underground writers, then sells the rights to rich bureaucrats and gangsters with artistic ambitions who publish them under their own names... Publishing houses have their own gangs, whose members shoot each other over the rights to Nabokov and Pushkin..."
Whoa, if only...my kind of dystopia.
Joseph are you a practicing magician?
McCain! And two bold women who played no games, Collins and Murkowski.
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