At some point in the past week, I wanted to blame the current state of America, as it slowly stagnates from kleptocracy to full-scale authoritarianism, on the mainstream media, with its penchant for reporting "both sides" and doing nothing to find out which one of them is telling anything close to the truth. I even made a note to myself that, in writing to start off the month of May, I should spend my time and bytes arguing for the need for this 21st-century Watergate of ours to have its own Dan Rather, someone who would go after the truth regardless of personal cost (and who, in the end, did pay a price through a Karl Rove-created setup that, to be fair, he did not examine closely enough to protect himself).
But Watergate unfolded at a time in our history when there were still media outlets, even ones owned by Republicans, who were committed to letting the truth unfold in whatever direction it needed to do so. Just as, by the same token, there were Republicans who understood that the best interest of both their politics and their country depended on following the truth to the end, even if the short-term political price was steep. And just as there were Democrats who understood that advancing their politics and ultimately solving the needs of the nation, involved fighting on behalf of both their politics and their nation, without regard to waiting for an exact match between their politics and the mood of the people.
It seems odd to say it, and certainly odd to feel the need to do so in the first instance, but all of the forgoing almost makes me nostalgic for the Watergate era. Not the scandal itself, of course, but the fact that, in those days, there were enough people in positions of power to give our Constitution, and the institutions it established, the kind of weight on behalf of the powers and ideals contained therein to truly protect the public from internal threats, as well as external ones.
I still believe that people like that exist, and that they exist on both sides of the Great Ideological Divide that remains the obsessive focus of the MSM. For my part, I do the best that I can to try to be one of those people.
But I'm no longer certain that their are enough of us to make a real difference, must less even make a successful attempt to bridge the divide at all.
Why? For the simple reason that I think the rot from decades of largely unquestioned right-wing extremism, coupled with more than two years of T****, has seeped into our institutions to the point at which the institutions, and perhaps even the Constitution, are no longer capable of serving the functions for which they were designed.
And make no mistake: the rot has seeped across the national level, and all the way down to your local TV news station. In fact, let's start there: at the proverbial bottom of the food chain.
This past week, a reporter at a local Baltimore television station insinuated that demographics are actually a qualification for political office, by asking whether the city, after having three African-American female mayors, needed to go in a different direction when choosing its next leader. Even more egregiously, she posed that question to an African-American woman. You don't need to take my word for it; you can check this out right here.
Again, to be fair, the reporter apologized on Twitter for asking the question, with an explanation that seemed less than completely convincing. But she works for a station that views Baltimore as something that should be covered only with police-blotter stories, along with the ubiquitous sports and weather coverage. I have made the observation to others that, if you relied only on the station's footage, you would expect to be ensnared in yellow police tape every time you tried to cross the city line from the suburbs. Baltimoreans of all colors should boycott and demonstrate against the television station until the reporter is disciplined.
Now, for the national angle, let's move away from Baltimore 40 miles south to Washington, D.C.. To the House of Representatives, its Democratic majority, and its leader, Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
For a long time, they were willing to wait for the results of Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election before moving ahead with any attempt to impeach T**** for his many and various sins against our democracy. Those results are now available, and they show without any honest question that the T**** campaign worked with the Russian government in its efforts to win the election, and that T**** himself, in a variety of ways, actively attempted to interfere, and in some cases did interfere, with Mueller's investigation.
In the process, it has become painfully clear that Robert Barr, the Attorney General, has been acting not as the nation's chief counsel, but as a ribbon-clerk for T**** and his various unsavory interests. Barr has even gone so far as to suggest that a President (actually, he means this "President") can shut down an investigation of his or her actual wrongdoing based upon a sincere and unilateral belief in his own innocence, and to imply that he might shut down the investigations Muller farmed out to U.S. attorney offices throughout the country.
Pelosi and the House Democrats, in other words, now have enough of a predicate in actual testimony and investigative work to commence impeachment proceedings without being worried about the appearance of being motivated by partisan spite.
Or so one might think.
Instead, we have the spectacle of Pelosi and her Democratic counterpart in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, joyfully announcing an agreement with T**** to advance a $2 trillion infrastructure bill--with a promise to figure out how to pay for it later, and with congressional Republicans already balking at the proposed size of the spending.
We also have Pelosi herself talking about moving to stay in the political center lane, or T**** will carry out a coup d'etat against any 2020 election results he does not like.
To describe this kind of thinking as unbelievable is to be too kind by far more than half. Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues in Congress are effectively telling all of us that they would like to do their job in guarding the hen house, but they have to wait until the fox is willing to let them in it.
This is the same Nancy Pelosi who, only a few months ago, said in a New York Times Magazine interview that power is never given, and must always be taken. What the hell is stopping her from doing that right now?
In both of these cases, I have to contend that we see the corrupting influence of a "President" who does not govern by the rule of law and the interests of all the people, but by what he can get away with for his own private, personal benefit. And Presidents, as all of T****'s predecessors have been willing to concede, lead by example. A President sets the proverbial tone not only for his or her Administration, but for the entire nation.
Whoever said a fish rots from the head down (besides Michael Dukakis in 1988) was right. It most definitely does. Even when its head is orange from spray-tanning.
On a slightly more positive not, Pelosi and all of us should take a look at this.
And realize that a hopeless cause isn't truly hopeless, so long as you're willing to fight for it.
And, if you'd like to take a small step in that direction, click here, and let Mother Jones (a publication well worth supporting, and with which I have no connection) give you the opportunity to do so.
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