Mueller has the Trump Card

Trump’s Russia scandal is a reality TV show that seems to be unspooling in slow motion.  The nature of a story like this can’t really unfold any other way when the audience just learns piece by piece about the individual details of all the egregious events that are a part of this saga.  What makes completion of the story even more sluggish is the fact that Special Counsel Mueller is perhaps the only one who has the most details and the most ‘truth’ about the evolution of this story and he is not telling…..yet.  Until he issues his report or divulges his findings, none of us—the general public, the Congress, the rest of the world---will be able to reach a consensus about the veracity of the claims made against Trump and his administration.

Everyone is caught up in positing about what happened and

predicting what will happen without any confirmation possible.  In the meantime, all the different groups of people with their own agendas and theories scream their opinions to the other groups believing that if they can scream the loudest, their theories will be proven correct.  Predictable.

Meanwhile, our democratic institutions are under attack by a President and administration bent on deconstructing government and degrading long held institutional bulwarks: the rule of law, a free press, equality for all.  That is the real danger slowly eating away at the foundation of our republic, much the same way hot coffee slowly dissolves a cookie.  If you don’t extract it from the liquid in time, it just falls apart.  

The biggest contributor to the looming battle over the survival of our institutions is the majority party in Congress that has abdicated its responsibility to be a check and balance on the Executive Branch.  As the evidence seemingly connects the dots and the administration appears to at the center of the approaching storm, they become more and more hysterical about the FBI and the Press, defending their President when they should be defending the Constitution, and worrying more about the vulnerability of our country to the Russians.

I read a really insightful opinion piece in the New York Times this morning that describes the conditions that contribute to the destruction of democracies.  If there are any arch-conservatives reading this blog, I urge you to ignore your loathing of the New York Times and read this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/27/opinion/sunday/democracy-polarization.html 

I hope it will give you food for thought about what is disappearing from our discourse, and why we should carefully consider how to bring back the concepts of tolerance and forbearance.  I wonder if that is even possible in today’s political parties.  Recent bi-partisan efforts in the Senate hopefully will show us a way forward.