Yet Another Empty Vault

Monday, March 25, 2019

Not to pick on Geraldo Rivera, but the Mueller Report -- much-anticipated by "millions" according to NBC (I was not one of them.) -- is done and dusted.

And?

Exactly.

I will admit not closely following this, but I was jaded by countless other similar stories from the past: I strongly suspected there was nothing to this and, in any event, wasn't privy to all the information the investigators found and combed through. I am glad I did not waste much time on this, but that does not make me unconcerned. The tone and obvious purpose behind much of the coverage of this manufactured scandal are disturbing to say the least:

Image via Wikipedia, fair use.
The Mueller Report has been issued. At this moment, no one has actually yet seen it, other than a few top guys at the Justice Department -- Barr, Rosenstein, maybe a handful of others. Nobody knows what's in it, except for one thing: according to a "top Justice Department official" (probably Barr or Rosenstein), there are going to be no more indictments, whether relating to Russian "collusion" or anything else. Oh, wait a minute. Before today, there also had been zero indictments for anything having to do with "collusion" with the Russians by Trump or his campaign. So that one little thing that we know means that, after almost two years of investigation by Mueller and his team, and after another year plus of investigation by the FBI before that, the vast and awesome armies of our Justice apparatus have found exactly nothing in the way of criminal "collusion" between Trump or his campaign and the Russians.
The conservative commentator I quote above does not say as much, but NBC admitted (link above) just ahead of the weekend that the contents of the report are secret by law. But just wait for a big outcry from some quarters that the report has not been published. (Or not. I bet that's in full swing.)

The real scandal is that we have a far less than ideal President and the best his alleged opponents can do is weave conspiracy theories like this or fantasies like the Green New Deal. (I regard Trump as practically a Democrat, although perhaps a bit old-fashioned, and wonder a little why he doesn't enjoy more support from the media.) And, on top of that, his supporters -- who are supposedly in favor of limited government -- are now rallying behind him "bigly." Some of that is understandable and I am sympathetic: This was another disgraceful Kavanaugh-type attack, Trump did not deserve it, and he weathered the storm. But the fact remains that Trump is no champion of liberty, and his "vindication" does not change that. At best, the media and the Democrats have discredited themselves enough that they will fail to make significant headway for another four years. But that leaves the door open for Trump to further entrench xenophobia and bad trade policy among the Republicans, who should know better.

So there are no winners here. Indeed, liberty is the biggest loser, having been starved of oxygen first by desperate opponents and now by (among others) her bungling would-be friends.

-- CAV

6 comments:

SteveD said...

I suspect that the real criminality was on the other side - spying and investigating the president for no good reason when in fact only a little logic and common sense from a ten-year old could show that their narrative was wrong. Probably someone should end up in jail because of this fiasco.

I don't like Trump much - I like his opponents even less. They are doing everything in their power to make him into a sympathetic figure, as he does everything in his power to prevent that.

'I regard Trump as practically a Democrat'

For the most part I do too, although he's probably best described as a political opportunist whose beliefs (other than possibly tariffs and immigration) coincide with the last person who speaks to him. He makes Peter Keating look like an individualist.

What I can't completely understand is why the left has gone absolutely bonkers over him. Policy-wise you aren't going to get a more left-wing Republican president. He's the approximate equivalent of Bill Clinton. As far his vaunted authoritarianism, he's more bark than bite; envious of leaders of more authoritarian countries but lacking the focus to do anything. So if you are a democrat why not negotiate with him, rather than sell your brains and common sense to the devil? Why not try to be that last person who speaks to him?

Gus Van Horn said...

Steve,

The Boston Herald agrees with your main point.

Gus

Gus Van Horn said...

Oops! Here's the correct link:

https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/03/25/in-wake-of-robert-muellers-report-dont-celebrate-investigate/

Anonymous said...

Steve D. wrote,

"What I can't completely understand is why the left has gone absolutely bonkers over him."

Not just the Left. The GOPe (putative) Right, as well.

It's pretty simple. The BiPartisan Fusion Ruling party has long thought that they were the sole, appropriate, possessors of the levers of power. Our culture has created an Ruling Class whose interests run counter to those of the general populace, and like most self-annointed elites, they despise, and to a certain extent, fear hoi polloi types like the Tea Party folks, and Trump supporters.

The GOPe wing of the BPFR party are perfectly willing to go into 'opposition' as the minority party because it relieves them of having to make good on the promises made to their constituents during their campaigning for office, and still leaves them within easy scuttling distance of the crumbs dropped from the Demo wing's Rent-Seeking table. Plus, when they retire, they will get those cushy lobbying jobs where they have not yet reached the 'certain point [of] having made enough'.

The Tea Party threatened this very nice arrangement by raising the horrific possibility that a majority of elected Republicans would be genuinely interested in rolling back government to its proper scope. Bye Bye rent-seeking scraps. Bye Bye cushy lobbying job. Hello, real world and work, work, work, like the rest of the despised peons. (This is why the GOP did NOTHING whilst Lois Lerner violated Federal Laws and the GOP's putative constituent rights. They were happy to have her do the dirty work for them.)

Now Trump comes along and has the temerity to fight back against a bullying press and the Deep State and to pressure the GOPe to live up to the promises that they had made during the campaign. The GOPe decides that the best way to preserve the BPFR party is to deliberately allow the Demos to take the House. (A record number of the GOP retired into those cushy after gov jobs, I believe, with the sole intent of flipping the polarity of the House so the GOPe would no longer face blame for their unfulfilled promises.)

The Mueller report was an attempt to crush the Upstart Trump and As Many of His Associates as we can manage, so that no one, who is not 'One Of Us' will ever have the temerity to challenge the Ruling Class Ever Again. And, they've likely succeeded. Who in their right mind, who is not as Rich as Croesus, would attempt to take a principled stand in DC, knowing that this travesty of justice awaits them?

c andrew

SteveD said...

'Now Trump comes along and has the temerity to fight back against a bullying press and the Deep State and to pressure the GOPe to live up to the promises that they had made during the campaign.'

However, this suggests that Trump is self-driven and outside the realm of real estate and self promotion (possibly), I don't see much evidence of that. His entire history screams second hander. It is unlikely at the age of 70 that's he's had an epiphany. More likely, the cause to effect is mostly the reverse. It seems that the few good things Trump has done are plausibly because in those cases he has listened to his advisors or Congress. The tax cut for instance was congressionally led; moving the embassy to Jerusalem was pushed by specific cabinet members.

Is it possible that his opponents don't realize he's a fake even though a short review of his career should make that clear to anyone? That the opponents of freedom somehow think he is a friend of freedom? That they've been fooled by his persona. That they think he's actually not one of them or couldn't easily be co-opted even though that's been the story of his life? He's an entertainer. He deals in fake!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMKFIHRpe7I


It's scary to think that in a few short years, people may think back on Trump as an advocate of capitalism as they do now with Reagan. Meanwhile more damage is done to the cause of liberty and we move further and further away from it.

Anonymous said...

Hi Steve,

I can see where you might think that I was proposing Trump as a principled defender, given my last sentence. That was not my intent.

I think that the extreme response from both wings of the DC establishment is against him as an Outsider, not as a principled defender of limited government. If he had run as a Demo, or allowed himself to be coopted, or had knuckled under, then I think that the opposition to him would not have been nearly as severe.

If you recall, the Tea Party denizens were subjected to much the same kind of defamation, again from both wings of the DC establishment. And they were probably the most principled mass movement to come out of the putative right in a very long time.

I give Trump this much credit. He fights back. And because he did, we have found out that our previous fears about the depth and corruption of the Administrative State were not a patch on the reality.

If Hillary had won, the machinations of the Deep State would never have been shown. I think that that was part of the thought process of these power-lusting 'crats. Now whether Trump will do the morally correct thing here and purge and prosecute these bad actors - The Hatch Act being a good start - throughout the government, remains to be seen.

If he doesn't - and given his general approach to things he may very well not grasp the magnitude of the problem - I think we can concede that the ultimate goal of the Gramscian march through the institutions is now well within the grasp of the Cultural Marxist Left.

c andrew