Like Adrastos, I’m recycling an image. Wish I could say it was because of Muses, but unfortunately it’s because of work. Well, work and that while watching yesterday’s House hearing, I kept thinking, wow, they’re fucking brainwashed. All of them. Sure, Cohen’s a convicted felon and a liar, but as the pundits kept saying, the lies were when he was … the president’s lawyer.
Michael Cohen got caught, realized his options were, at best, highly restricted, and that cooperating was his only chance at avoiding decades in prison.
The Trump cultists, on the other hand, have decided to stick with him, regardless. They’re either going down with his ship, or we’re in for some particularly dark times.
Meanwhile, what is Trump himself doing? Cozying up with a finalist if not top contender for creepiest living despot on the planet.
This isn’t normal.
This was a vivid look into the chronic ward of the prion disease that has eaten away the higher functions of American conservatism—and, thus, those of the Republican Party as well—since Ronald Reagan first served up the monkey brains almost 40 years ago. These are the complete creatures of the talk-show culture, the perfect products of two and three generations of gerrymandered in-breeding. These are the monsters from inside The Bubble. You could see this moment coming during the Obama years, in which the country returned the two worst Congresses in American history, full to the gunwales with Bible-banging crazy people. Sooner or later, this was going to be all that was left, and it was going to have to confront a serious crisis with unserious people. That’s what Wednesday was about.
For all Cohen’s record of duplicity and lying, which he repeatedly fessed up to during the hearing, [his] statement[s] had the ring of genuine insider knowledge. To be sure, this was a figure who acted as Trump’s fixer and bruiser for more than ten years, and who recently pleaded guilty to tax evasion, making false statements to banks, engaging in campaign-finance violations, and lying to the last Congress. But the very things that made Cohen such a problematic witness—his closeness to Trump and his history of finagling on behalf of his boss and himself—are also what made him a compelling one. This was an account of the darkness, told from within.
And yet the cultists, having neither the law nor the facts to pound, pounded Cohen or the table … reality television as government oversight. The Real Representatives of Wingnut Nation.
Damn.
Needz a “now with CYANIDE!!1!” on the kool-aid package.
It’s worth noting the freshmen Democrats who came last, and showed where they were prepared to take the investigation. A good job, and a reason those Republicans stepping up to be Trump’s next fixers should think about spending more time with their families.