The Handwriting is on the Wall......

We have turned an ominous corner in our journey through the “Valley of Trump” as we try to ‘fear no evil’.  If you take a step back from the daily indignities to our democracy and survey the entire landscape there are some signs that we are headed for a very unsettling time.

1.          There seems to be a coordinated assault by Republicans on the Mueller investigation, the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, and the Senate Judiciary Committee investigation.  They are painting Mueller’s efforts as biased, corrupt, anti-Trump, etc.  Republicans are being loudly vocal, led by their propaganda arm (Fox News) they are impugning, in increasingly vitriolic terms, the effort to get to the baseline facts of what happened during the election.  The President is repeating everyday that it’s a witch-hunt and ‘there is no collusion’.  He’s right.  There was no collusion….it was an outright conspiracy!  Trump’s campaign operatives met with the Russians repeatedly all during 2015 and 2016; they took calls, emails, met with Russian intelligence operatives, Russian oligarchs and their minions, Russian bankers, Russian lawyers and Putin cronies.  They assisted with the transfer of information to Wikileaks; they knew about upcoming releases of damaging information; they solicited Russia’s help in ‘finding the elusive Clinton emails’; they travelled to Russia for conferences, meetings, introductions.  They took money from the Russians.  Can you even imagine the uproar if any of those things would have occurred during the Obama administration?

2.    All of this is in preparation for the dismissal of Robert Mueller and his staff.  We are going to be told, and in fact are being told now, that the investigation is bogus, biased, false, etc. by the President and his obsequious toadies on a daily basis.  This is a coordinated attack to repeat these assertions over and over because as we know, if you repeat lies enough times, there are those that will come to believe it as the truth.

3.    There is an ongoing corruption of the rule                    of law. The administration is attacking the courts, the FBI, the Justice Department on a daily basis.  Trump describes the FBI as ‘tattered’.  35000 employees who toil on a daily basis to protect us from all manner of evil are being generalized and categorized as a biased mass of incompetent agents.  How do you think that will affect the moments when an agent presents his credentials in pursuit of bad actors?  Will the public see them as enforcers of the law or a Gestapo like force?   Trump has nominated a huge number of questionable candidates for lifetime appointments to the courts….and the Republican Senate has confirmed them!

 4.   The administration attacks the first amendment and the Free Press daily.  We have heard threats to ‘change the libel laws’, to threaten FCC licenses of organizations that purportedly vomit forth ‘Fake News’ 24/7.  We have daily Presidential press briefings that are filled with lies, obfuscations, misstatements and are basically worthless when it comes to trying to understand and report what this administration is doing.  We learned of Trump’s meeting with Kislyak and Lefrov after the Comey firing--through the Russian press!  Our press was not  allowed in the Oval Office when they met.  We learned that Trump had a 45 minute call with Putin the other day from a Russian press release, not from our own Executive Branch information sources.

       And today we learn that the administration has banned the use by the CDC of 7 words in any report or document it releases.  Freedom of the Press  anyone?  The words are: vulnerable, entitlement, diversity, transgender, fetus, science-based, and evidence-based…….are they kidding??

       Hey CDC!!!  Here are some alternatives you can use:           

            Vulnerable-- Powerless, defenseless

            Entitlement—claim, need, prerogative

                           Recompence, priviledge

            Diversity—diversification, multiplicity,

                           Variance

            Transgender—cross-gender, gender identi-

                           Fication, gender differentiation

            Fetus—embryo, developing egg, fertilized

                     Egg, blastosphere

            Science-based—empirical

            Evidence-based—factual, proven by facts

        

5.         Appointed and confirmed nominees to head the major departments of our government are selected because they are committed to dissembling the agencies they are appointed to:  Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of State, Attorney General’s office, Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of the Treasury, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of the Interior.  If the nominees are not hell bent on destroying the agencies, they are completely incompetent and ignorant of what they should be doing (Think Ben Carson, Steve Mnuchin, Rick Perry)

   Last night there was a startling tweet from an unexpected source:  Mr. Walter Shaub, late of the US Office of Government Ethics.  You will recall that he resigned several months ago after the administration marginalized his ongoing efforts to point out ethics violations and infringements by the new regime.

“This weekend I’m stocking up on portable phone chargers, warm clothes, & gear needed for when we take the streets. I’m concerned the assault on the rule of law is coming over the holidays when we’re distracted. It‘ll be a defining moment for the Republic.”

There are many who are now scared about what is happening to our government.  If Trump and the Republicans shut down the Mueller probe, the Senate Intelligence probe, etc. what happens then?

Will Walter Shaub’s prediction be realized? 

How will each of you citizens interpret the oath of office that all our leaders take: “I swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America”

Should we be scared or empowered?