The Carpentariat

In Iowa, Biden leads

Polling from Selzer & Co., rated A+ by FiveThirtyEight, via the Des Moines Register:

Thirty-two percent of respondents say [Joe Biden] is their first choice for president. ['Eighty-two percent of likely Democratic caucusgoers say they have a favorable view of Biden.']

Sanders … follows Biden with 19 percent. O’Rourke earns support from 11 percent of respondents.... Eight percent say Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is their first choice. No other candidate tops 5 percent.

The Register notes that "candidates who take an early lead in polling may face more hurdles than others who initially poll lower." It's a bit like winning the first hand in a poker game. Beware. But thus far Biden's opponents aren't much of an intimidating bunch, with, perhaps, the exception of Beto O'Rourke. Bernie Sanders seems played out, and Warren I can't quite figure, which is Warren's problem, not mine.

 

It's just not right

I may look a trifle tipsy, but I swear I wasn't. Not yet, anyway. My reason for posting this, though, has nothing to do with the status of my blood alcohol level in Portland. The reason is, instead: You should be able to see, just above my left bicep, the faintest splotch of red. It's a geranium. Outside. In December. Where I come from, there should be no outdoor flowers, and all snow. I'm not sure I could ever get used to this.

 

America in tatters

From the NY Times' online front page, I give you a snapshot of reemergent American greatness.

First, there's the headline: "Texas Judge Strikes Down Obama’s Affordable Care Act as Unconstitutional," which compelled an outraged op-ed by two law professors of once-differing opinions on Obamacare: "We were on opposing sides of the 2012 and 2015 Supreme Court challenges to the Affordable Care Act.... But as experts in the field of statutory law, we agree that this decision makes a mockery of the rule of law and basic principles of democracy."

How did Trump, persistent critic of out-of-control, partisan judicial power, react (on Twitter, where else?) to this mockery of the law? "Wow, but not surprisingly, ObamaCare was just ruled UNCONSTITUTIONAL by a highly respected judge in Texas. Great news for America!"

Below the Obamacare story, there is this: "Ryan Zinke, Face of Trump Environmental Rollbacks, Is Leaving Interior Department." That headline was accompanied by another: "Zinke has faced more than 15 ethics inquiries; at least six are ongoing."

And below that is this: "Investors Have Nowhere to Hide as Stocks, Bonds and Commodities All Tumble." Reads the story's text: "For the first time in decades, every major type of investment has fared poorly, as the outlook for economic growth and corporate profits is dampened by rising trade tensions and interest rates."

Assuming one has the stomach to persevere, one would then encounter this headline: "How McKinsey Has Helped Raise the Stature of Authoritarian Governments." That would be McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, which "At a time when democracies and their basic values are increasingly under attack, [is helping] raise the stature of authoritarian and corrupt governments across the globe, sometimes in ways that counter American interests."

It's a curious thing, this Make America Great Again slogan. That its agenda is in tatters is beyond dispute. Yet its unfolding is precisely what Trump promised the American electorate. Which means that Make American Great Again always meant make America lawless, unprincipled, economically precarious and capitalistically cutthroat — "sometimes in ways that counter American interests." This — all of it — was to be anticipated; still, it triumphed in the 2016 contest. Which further means that John Adams' remark was, perhaps, frighteningly prophetic: "There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

 

"It’s not impossible to imagine that elected Republicans will turn on [Trump]"

I was thinking the same just before reading Jennifer Rubin. She beat me to it.

"For Trump, it is becoming hard to imagine how he survives politically or legally." (I'd say "for us," but she and I shan't quibble.)

Adds Rubin: "Even if he avoids impeachment or avoids removal, only about a third of the country … thinks he’s innocent. When charge after charge piles up, each backed up by multiple pieces of evidence, it’s not impossible to imagine that elected Republicans will turn on him — or that Republican voters, who see his presidency at a standstill, will begin to look for alternatives for 2020."

Imagine that at the Republican nominating convention the incumbent president is facing, "Under the umbrella of 'obstruction,'" additional criminal charges of "witness tampering, perjury and conspiracy," writes Rubin. It's a hard thing to further imagine that even GOP delegates would nominate a known crook.

And then there are the primaries. John Kasich and, God forbid, the indecisive Jeff Flake might make a go of it yet.

In lieu of unreciprocated party love for Trump, I still imagine — indeed I believe — that Trump will more readily come to accept that resignation is the only way out. If renominated and defeated — a certain reality this time around —or for that matter, if not renominated, he would face an immediate future of indictments, trials, convictions, and very possibly jail time. Bob Mueller could offer him a stay-out-of-jail card: Resign, and it all goes away.

 

Choose your odds that Trump will go down

"Trump has long railed against 'rats' who cooperate with law enforcement" — observes the LA Times, in the most striking, one-line description of a president who resembles a Gotti or Capone more than a Nixon — "and he repeatedly lashes out at former aides who’ve done just that."

Now, he's a one-man Hole in the Wall gang. "For the second day in a row," continues the Times, "the president had been in the White House residence all morning, fuming about federal investigations that have moved closer to him…. The result is Trump has become increasingly isolated" as he stews over hush money he prevaricated about, illegal inaugural committee contributions, the "family business" being investigated, his tax returns examined, dozens of illicit Russian connections and, undoubtedly, more exposed crimes to come.

The most popular betting game in America? Perhaps the world? "They're still not saying it publicly, but most Republicans on the Hill understand ... that it's not going to end well, that it's going to be bad," said a Republican operative in a titillating introduction to: "When will Republicans start saying it publicly?" The odds for "sometime before 2020" run from 1:1 to 100:1, the choice of which depends largely on one's gut instinct.

Beltway insiders would opt for odds somewhere around 3:1, I gather. "Several [persons] … close to the president," the Times reports, "said Trump already senses diminishing respect and worries about losing support from powerful financial donors and Republican lawmakers." Art of the Deal ghostwriter Tony Schwartz notes that Trump's "behavior certainly suggests he feels increasing fear and isolation."

The president's legal troubles are mounting and it seems we don't know the half of them yet. It's an inverse thing; as his troubles mount, his partisan support will fall — which, finally, squares with the law of political gravity. I'd go with 1.5:1.

 

Crimes before his criminal presidency

The NY Times:

"Federal prosecutors are examining whether foreigners illegally funneled donations to President Trump’s inaugural committee and a pro-Trump super PAC in hopes of buying influence over American policy."

I have placed the comically useless word in bold. Of course foreigners illegally funneled donations to Trump's inaugural committee and super PAC, which is to say, Trump accepted illegally funneled donations.

I appreciate that journalists and editors must hew to the conditional. They must never assume. Thus: whether Trump accepted illegal donations. But to the real, pragmatic world, assuming Trump did something illegal is the same as knowing Trump did something illegal.

The man is criminal to the bone; his every thought is centered in how to bend, shortcut, molest or mutilate the law -- usually the latter. Why? Because that's what mobsters do.

 

City day

Portland doesn't actually lean, although with a bit more traffic on one or the other side, it just might. I've been surprised by the automobile congestion here; when you're in it, it's as though you're in downtown Chicago. I grew up as a city boy, but I've had enough of urban living. I'll take the country, perhaps a small town a half-hour or so from civilization.

For instance we were in Sandy, Ore. a few days ago, about 45 minutes from Portland. Here is the town's diminutive city hall, which suggests more than enough municipal authority for a misfit like me. I want government, but I want it in Washington, D.C. — nowhere near me.

I return Tuesday. I shall miss Oregon's great outdoors, magnificent scenery, and not least, its smooth roads. I've yet to encounter a pothole, the skillful dodging of which provides about the only entertainment in Champaign, Ill. And I'll be sad to leave lady-friend L. Reeves, who will also miss the Portland area, since she's moving to Michigan. (The employment thing, you know.)

See you in the morning.

 

Those clever Dems

Jon Chait:

Democrats appear to have won this latest round [of government-shutdown responsibility avoidance]. Republicans, or at least those speaking on the record, express mystification at just how they pulled off this tricky feat. "I think [Senator] Schumer was very shrewd in his efforts to make certain that whatever blame is to be had for a shutdown doesn’t rest with the Democrats," Republican senator Jerry Moran told Politico. 

[Chait lists five reasons for 'how' Democrats shrewdly did it.]

3. [Of the five, the only one needed]. Trump loudly and repeatedly claimed responsibility for shutting down the government….

Schumer’s main strategic contribution was trying not to laugh. He was largely unsuccessful.

Editorial writer Alan Barth said, in the 1940s, that "News" — later revised to "journalism" — "is the first rough draft of history." Chait's piece is proof.

 

Two pundits and the politics of wizardry

When I saw the CNN headline, "Beto O'Rourke leapfrogs most of the 2020 Democratic field," I understandably thought it came from some ghastly poll. Turns out, O'Rourke Mania was just an affliction experienced by the story's writers, the data-driven journalist Harry Enten (formerly of FiveThirtyEight) and that tedious master of conventionally dull wisdom, Chris Cillizza.

The Cillizza-Enten piece is rather peculiar, in that they spend all of their opening statements on The Unparalleled Excitement of Beta O'Rourke — only to choose Kamala Harris as the candidate "most likely to wind up as the Democratic nominee." Do they explain why? Sort of. Unfortunately.

In words other than mine, though mine are more "authentic," they write that Ms. Harris is the reigning princess of identity politics: "her profile — an Indian-American and African-American woman with a law-and-order background — looks tailor made for the 2020 Democratic electorate." Notice her law-and-order background (she was once California's attorney general) takes a backseat to her double-bonused, mixed ethnicity. Then, ominously: "Harris' big challenge? She's never been on a stage as big the one she will be on if and when she announces she's running" — which is true of damn near every presidential candidate.

My guess is that, in determining their rankings, Cillizza and Enten were attempting to channel the progressive-activist mind: What the Democratic nominee needs is the right skin color, the right gender, and youth. Crowning experience, which lies heavy on the head of #3, is a throwaway. Yet in the 2018 midterms, progressives largely opted for Democratic candidates who possessed the potential to actually win, rather than robotically choosing progressive darlings.

Here's to hoping their pragmatic mindset holds throughout 2020.

 

Will the GOP bail on Trump?

The fetid incoherence of Trump's politics is suddenly alarming to the craven servility of the Republican Congress. It seems that claiming preemptive credit for a politically disastrous government shutdown is an unsettling puzzler to Trump's GOP allies. Their faith in the president's populist wisdom — his gut is smarter than anyone's brain — is slipping. Or so some believe.

The Times' David Leonhardt, for instance, sees Republicans' openly rattled nerves over Trump's questionable border-wall politics as an introduction to party defection. "I know what you may be thinking: Trump’s allies will stick by him, regardless of what happens. I disagree. Already, there are early signs of waffling from Trump’s usual allies…. Just because they have not abandoned him yet doesn’t mean they never will." I agree.

Leonhardt's last point is, as a matter of logic, undebatable. The future is not always dictated by the past. Debate centers instead on Republican willingness to go down with an increasingly unpopular president. We can't yet know just how unpopular Trump will become, but we do know that GOP defections would be based not on high principles but on Trump's low approval ratings. If his ratings stumble toward Nixon's basement — somewhere in the 20s — Republicans are likely to flee, falsely claiming, of course, the very principles they forever forfeited in 2016.

The Washington Post asserts that the border-wall controversy has caused "a new rift between the president and his party on Capitol Hill." Said John Cornyn, the Senate's #2 Republican: "I don’t understand [Trump's] ­strategy, but maybe he’s figured it out and he’ll tell us in due course." Ouch. The Senate's #3 Republican, John Thune, said a shutdown "would not be good"; "it’s just simple math — that you’ve to got to get 60 votes in the Senate, and that’s going to require Democrats" — and implicitly, the impetuous president failed to think about that. In the GOP House, "some questioned the wisdom of holding a vote that would face certain rejection in the Senate," writes the Post.

But "rifts" are not ruptures. And the latter won't come until Trump proves himself a poisonous creature of ever-diminishing returns; whenever — if ever — his hardcore base is finally outnumbered by less fanatical Republican voters. Will that numerical inversion come about? I suspect it will. But I'm not sure I'd lay money on it. The GOP is severely diseased, and yet more Trumpian poison might only be superfluous.

 

WH Chief of Staff Piers Morgan

"Dear Mr President, I wish to formally apply to be your new Chief of Staff," wrote Piers Morgan in a Daily Mail, open job application. "You might not immediately recognize what qualities I have for such a massive job in your administration," whereupon Mr. Morgan proceeded to itemize them at brutal length, which USA Today mercifully pared down:

***

1. "You need someone who will look you in the eye and tell you when you’re being an idiot. Seriously."
2. He would "surround the Oval Office with loyal people who like and respect you, not the type of ghastly, untrustworthy reptiles like Omarosa Manigault Newman."
3. He would vet Trump’s tweets.
4. He would get the media to focus more on Trump’s achievements.
5. He would be a chief of staff "who gets on with Ivanka and Jared, and encourages you to listen to them as much as possible."
6. He could bring an end to the war with CNN.
7. Things are about to get heated with special counsel Robert Mueller. "I love a scrap."
8. He would "use Melania more. She’s become a very popular electoral asset."
9. "I’d literally pay to work for you."
10. "You need someone whose reputation won’t be remotely tarnished by working with you and who won’t mind in the slightest if you suddenly fire him."

***

I endorse Morgan's application. He's just what this country needs: A man who now supports Brexit, a national suicide pact equivalent to the imbecility of electing Donald Trump president of the United States. But I'm skeptical that Morgan is serious about his employment-importuning.

He could never hire a staff who "like and respect" Trump, for instance, or make him amenable to being told he's "an idiot," or vet his tweets, or end Trump's cherished war with CNN.

Worse — far worse — is that Morgan clearly doesn't know his movies. In #7 of his open letter to Trump, he wrote, "As Obama’s former CoS, Rahm Emmanuel, said this week, you need a 'true wartime consigliere' like Robert Duvall’s character Tom Hagen in The Godfather."

That's unforgivable. As everyone knows, Tom Hagen's problem was that he wasn't a wartime consigliere. How could anyone honestly aspire to the position of chief of staff for the mobster Trump while misunderstanding the greatest mob movie ever made?

So, while I endorse the clownish Piers Morgan's application, I suspect he's again just clowning around, seeking cheap publicity — much like Trump, who was also unserious about his job application.

 

Ann Coulter explains the Democratic Party

If you're a Democrat, and you probably are, or at least you're a close approximation, I thought you should better understand the party to which you pledge allegiance — mostly because the other party is barking mad. Explained esteemed political philosopher Ann Coulter on Laura Ingraham's harpy show last night:

In the Democratic Party base … they all hate one another. I mean [the party has] the Muslims and the Jews and the various exotic sexual groups and the black church ladies with the college queers…. You must hate white men. It's the one thing they have in common.

Speaking in aggregate terms, Ms. Coulter is, of course, correct. The Dem Party embraces Muslims and Jews, who don't much care for one another. And black church ladies aren't particularly fond of college queers. (Ms. Coulter offered no antipodal group when it came to "various exotic sexual groups" — whatever that means — so on that, I'll pass.)

What Ms. Coulter misapprehends is precisely what makes the Democratic Party more popular than the opposition. It is indeed a "big tent" party, capable of housing disagreement. The Republican Party, on the other hand, is the monochromatic party of "hate[d] white men" — toothless rubes who believe Ann Coulter is an esteemed political philosopher.

And there you have it: Your incontrovertible morning seminar on the American political system.

 

An unstable dolt

"I’m not going to blame you for [a government shutdown]," said Trump yesterday, proudly, thereby donning "the mantle" of recklessness that every thinking politician disowns. "The last time you [Democrats] shut it down, it didn’t work" — which should have told him something — continued Trump. "I will take the mantle of shutting down, and I’m going to shut it down for border security."

That would be the border security, at present funding, that he claimed had already built "tremendous amounts of wall." Go figure.

Mitch McConnell did, and he disliked what he saw adding up. "One thing I think is pretty clear no matter who precipitates the government shutdown: The American people don’t like it and I hope that will be avoided."

Subsequent to the president's mano-a-mano-und-lady Oval Office brawl, Trump, speaking to reporters, declared victory. "If we have to close down the country over border security, I actually like that in terms of an issue…. I think I win that every single time."

Trump's cheerful demeanor didn't quite square with later reporting. According to the L.A. Times' Eli Stokols: "He stormed out of the Oval, walked into an anteroom just off the Oval Office and had in his hand a folder of briefing papers. And he just scattered them out of frustration — threw them across the room."

About that, I have questions. What had he been doing with briefing papers? Using them to fan himself? I can only assume that the unread briefing papers' Item No. 1 stated: "Do not, under any circumstances, claim the mantle of a government shutdown."

 

Dems must unify early

As was I, Ron Klain was rather bemused by Frank Bruni's "hit job," as I termed it, on prospective Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, Klain's former boss.

For one thing, Bruni was fearful of Biden's age, which, to me, means incomparable experience within the Democratic pack. Republicans' nominee will be roughly the same age as Biden when he runs in 2020 — assuming he hasn't resigned (my guess), or been indicted or impeached and removed — thus Biden's age won't be a serious factor.

Yet the former vice president's supremely qualifying experience — again, which comes with age — was also a peculiar negative in the NY Times columnist's opinion. Writes Klain:

"Bruni argued that while Biden is 'impeccably qualified,' such a candidacy did not 'work out' for Hillary Clinton and should not be tried again. Beyond the obvious fact that Biden and Clinton are not the same person, this argument is flawed in three respects." Which are: "Clinton won more votes than Trump"; "there’s no reason to believe that Clinton’s experience cost her votes"; and "experienced leadership could be precisely what voters are looking for after four years of Trumpian chaos."

This should seem bloody obvious to anyone with political, or just common, sense. To devalue a politician for his vast experience is akin to seeking a physician who has rarely practiced medicine. Further, to be wary of age-lending wisdom only because another experienced politician lost (though not really) to an accomplished demagogue is among the shallowest of nerve-rattled opinions.

Last, Klain observes that one poll — Morning Consult, graded "B-" by 538 — "shows that Biden [76] and Sanders [77] are overwhelmingly preferred by millennials, jointly taking a larger share of … younger voters (53 percent) than of the electorate as a whole (45 percent). Other polls have found similar results." Overall, in the cited poll, Biden led the pack; he was first choice among 26 percent of voters, second choice among 20 percent. (Respectively, Sanders was 19 and 16 percent. Other presumed candidates were in single digits.)

For Democrats, salubrious it would be if the front runner remains the front runner throughout the early primaries, thereby squeezing out the less qualified and avoiding a nasty, costly, internecine war. The true enemy of the people is Donald Trump, and only a swiftly unified party can concentrate all its resources on expelling this insidious plague of a man from office.

 

As all is lost, the hilarity of silver linings

The reading of right-wing sites always promises the sublime pleasure of unintended jocularity. Their compulsion to find a silver lining around every dark Trumpian cloud is a guaranteed disorder; where others see nothing but ruination, desolation and doom, right-wing scribblers behold the merriest of serendipity.

The latest in this curious phenomenon of pseudoconservative psychosis comes from Hot Air's Ed Morrissey, who inaugurates his piece by reviewing CNN's coverage of Nick Ayers' rather rude refusal (by Twitter) to assume the wretchedly inherited responsibilities of White House chief of staff.

The president, notes Morrissey, was "humiliated" and "super pissed" at being "blindsid[ed]" by Ayers's rejection, which left Trump "with more chaos in the White House as the year winds down." Plus, with Ayers out, "Now there is no front-runner for the job," Morrissey observes.

Moreover, the White House political director, Bill Stepien, and the office of public liaison's director, Justin Clark, have recently left their employ. And, somewhat amusingly, "multiple White House officials have complained privately that Shahira Knight, the legislative affairs director, is more focused on" legislative affairs than politics. Sin of Trumpian sins.

And just what does Mr. Morrissey have to say about all this — the chaos, the blindsiding, the desperation and grievous absences? I quote: 

That’s actually not a bad position for an incoming chief of staff to have.

Alas, never let it be said that right wingers lack a sense of humor — even if riotously unintended.

 

Playing to the base: The vicissitudes of political chicanery

 

The NY Times' above-the-fold story this morning:

 

 

A few hours later, the NY Times' above-the-fold story:

 

And Trump couldn't care less. He impressed his nativist base, and that's all that mattered to him.

 

In the GOP Senate, a phalanx of denial

We now have strong evidence that Donald Trump is an illegitimate president. In large part he attained the office by defrauding the American electorate, concealing hush payments borne of illicit affairs and Russian business contacts, well into 2016. During the campaign he fiercely denied both activities, and at least 80,000 voters throughout three critical states, it would seem, believed Trump's denials. If they had known then what we know now, Republicans likely would be investigating the many imaginary crimes of President Hillary Clinton, not Democrats the criminal Trump.

Trump's crimes — alleged today, proven tomorrow — were, by any measure of justice, far worse than Bill Clinton's dallying with a White House intern and then lying about it. So naturally, the party of law and order and American values and Christian rectitude and God and flag and family is crestfallen to find that its leader is a crook, and is vowing to set things right. Right?

Well, not quite. It appears the GOP is, instead, a bevy of very patient bleeding-heart liberals concerned mostly with safeguarding the presidential perpetrator's constitutional rights, disbelieving those who've given sworn testimony, and in general dismissing the severity of Trump's crimes.

Says Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee: "As long as Cohen's a liar, I shouldn't give much credibility to what he says." (Although Trump's thousands of documents lies lend credibility to what he says.)

Says Sen. Orrin Hatch, appallingly: "I don't care, all I can say is he's doing a good job as President." (And Al Capone had soup kitchens!)

Says Louisiana's Sen. John Kennedy: "Jesus loves [Cohen], but everybody else thinks he's an idiot. He's obviously a sleaze-oid grifter." (For definition, see: GOP Senate.) 

Says Sen. Ron Johnson: "[Dagnabbit, as Government Affairs chairman I spent hundreds of hours investigating Hillary's emails, but now] "I'm not sure how we would even get … information" on Trump's hush-money charade.

Says South Dakota's Sen. John Thune: "Until we know all the details — it's a sentencing filing…. So, it's hard to read too much into it." (For God's sake just read it; you needn't read anything "into it.")

Says the ever-vacillating, ever-furtive, ever-treacherous Sen. Susan Collins: "We have to get all the facts and I'm going to wait until Mr. Mueller concludes his investigation." (And then she'll conclude it means nothing.)

Says Sen. Roy Blunt: "I don't know that it changes things much. I think you would have to have more than this happen before anything changes much." 

Yesterday, the Post's excellent Paul Waldman nevertheless wrote, "Every Republican who works for Trump, who supports him, who defends him, who justifies him, who excuses him — all of them are responsible. All of them are implicated in his misdeeds.... If, when this is all over, they don’t pay a price for what they did, we should all be ashamed."

No, we should not all be ashamed. They should be ashamed. But they won't be. From South Dakota to Louisiana, they'll simply be reelected — because from Trumpworld, Missouri's Blunt gets it right: "You would have to have more than this happen before anything changes much."

 

The (almost) friendless Theresa May

The Washington Post reports on our British cousins' spectacular, thankfully unprecedented, Frankensteinian clusterfuck:

Faced with a devastating loss in Parliament, British Prime Minister Theresa May announced Monday that she would delay a vote on the Brexit deal she negotiated with the European Union and instead return to Brussels to ask for more concessions.

"If we went ahead and held the vote tomorrow, the deal would be rejected by a significant margin," May conceded to a packed chamber in the House of Commons….

May’s humiliation in Parliament does little to bolster her cause in Brussels, as Europeans leaders wonder how long the weakened British prime minister can hang on to power.

As long as she likes, I should think, for who in his or her right mind would want to step into May's pumps?

Others, here, have commented on their growing sympathy, even admiration, for Ms. May. I would like to add mine. She's inescapably caught between soft Brexiteers and hard Brexiteers, between immigrant-friendly humankind and raving xenophobes, between realists and Boris Johnsonian demagogues, between those who comprehend macro- and international economics and those who don't — in short, between the thoughtful and the halfwitted.

She's caught, trapped, up Shit Creek — and mostly friendless. But Ms. May, just know …

 

The tyranny of ordained religious faith

"Letter & Liturgy"'s Samuel James critiques Andrew Sullivan's "America's New Religions," which I deemed "among his strongest" of columns, partly for the reason that James deems it weak.

Sullivan’s prophetic mantle is a bit too see-through…. For years Sullivan was one of the most influential and impassioned advocates of legal same-sex marriage, and his "conservative case" for radically redefining matrimony drew extensively on his progressive Catholic sensibilities…. Sullivan’s lifelong advocacy for same-sex marriage represents a lifelong resistance to the unanimous teaching of the Christian church and the overwhelming judgment of the Scriptures [my emphasis].

Does Sullivan truly want a Christianity that talks down to politics? It’s difficult to know, only because there seems to be a lot of confusion in his own mind over which political issues deserve equivalency with the Atonement, and which don’t.

Sullivan's Christianity is, charitably speaking, nuanced, which is to say, he ironically advocates a universal Christianity grounded in his own religious biases and political opinions. I suspect most every Christian's Christianity follows this corrupted nuance — corrupted, if one also believes that the doctrines of theological authority are final, which, alas, most nuanced Christians puzzlingly profess.

Yet, on second thought, my assessment of Sullivan's Christianity is perhaps less charitable than notably pragmatic. I see Christianity for what it is — in practice — not what is written in the New Testament, which, to comply with, requires an unrealistic, Christlike superhumanity. Hence I can forgive Sullivan and his fellow Christians their apostasies. They're only human.

James, on the other hand, is aggressively critical of Sullivan; he implicitly charges the Catholic writer with odious hypocrisy, while implicitly preening his own theological virtue. Writes James: "For Sullivan’s sake and ours, I wish he would reconsider his own role in the gutting of American Christianity, and turn to a solution more ancient, and more spiritual, than ever before." Shades of George Wallace —fundamentalism now, fundamentalism tomorrow, fundamentalism forever.

I don't mean to dwell on this one piece of Sullivan's, and its counter-critiques. The clashes do seem to me, however, an almost divine invitation to ponder the absurd humbuggeries of mass religious devotion, contra the serenity of individual spiritual contemplation — if individuals so choose.

 

Trump and his "Bottomless Pinocchios"

Glenn Kessler, of the Post's Fact Checker, has been forced to innovate. For years he has dispensed one, two, three or four Pinocchios to politicians who lie or, with more innocence, propound a marginally false claim in what is ordinarily called "spin." But Donald Trump has rendered Kessler's format rather useless, since claiming, for instance, 42 times that Democrats — not the Trump campaign — colluded with Russia is an assertion that in no way compares to traditional political lies.

So what's a conscientious fact checker to do? Kessler's answer is the creation of The Bottomless Pinocchio — to be "awarded to politicians" — meaning Trump, exclusively — "who repeat a false claim so many times that they are, in effect, engaging in campaigns of disinformation." Writes Kessler:

"The president keeps going long after the facts are clear, in what appears to be a deliberate effort to replace the truth with his own, far more favorable, version of it. He is not merely making gaffes or misstating things, he is purposely injecting false information into the national conversation."

To be awarded this dubious prize entails rigorous conditions, which any human politician could never meet: "The claims must have received three or four Pinocchios from The Fact Checker, and they must have been repeated at least 20 times." Adds Kessler: "The Fact Checker has not identified statements from any other current elected official who meets the standard other than Trump. In fact, 14 statements made by the president immediately qualify for the list."

A sampling of Trump's Bottomless Pinocchios is enough to make us imagine that we're reading a Goebbels Dispatch to the Masses:

*"Robert S. Mueller III is biased because of conflicts of interest." (Repeated 30 times.) Though on the lower numerical end of Trump's repeated lies, this one is extraordinarily offensive, since such a claim is so ludicrously false about the Dudley Do-Right prosecutor.

*"U.S. Steel is building many new plants." (37 times.) Kessler notes this claim "verge[s] on the edge of fantasy"; not one new plant is under construction.

*"The U.S. economy has never been stronger," (99 times.) Eisenhower, LBJ and Bill Clinton had stronger economies.

*"The U.S. has started building the wall." (86 times.) Border-security funding excludes expenditures on a wall.

Trump's most repeated lie? That his "tax cut was the biggest in history," which he has blathered 123 times. In fact it was "the eighth largest tax cut in 100 years," although the lie "continues to be an all-purpose applause line in the president’s rallies."

How does Trump get away with repeating these outlandish falsehoods? In truth they dwell, indeed thrive, not in America, but in Trumpworld — an exotic, utterly separate nation composed of Fox News, Breitbart.com, Rush Limbaugh, and right-wing social media. The bumpkins who attend Trump's rallies and, in approval, yell themselves hoarse are familiar only with ordained Trumpian propaganda; they are wholly ignorant of the real world, which laughs at them. Of the latter they're at least aware, which then reinforces their determined ignorance. Laugh at a man's patently false beliefs, and he'll double-down on them.

But laugh is all the real world can do. Its chortling is reflexive, not strategic. The bumpkins are hellbent on living in their imaginary world in which Trump is the bold truth-teller and Bob Mueller is a "conflicted," Democratic witch hunter — and in a perverse way, it's funny as hell. Neither side can help itself.

 

Russian collusion at a glance

The defense:

The reality:

These are the people who, during Donald's campaign, were in contact with Russian nationals — from a Russian ambassador, a Russian deputy prime minister, a Russian pop star, a Russian weightlifter, a Russian lawyer, and a "Soviet army veteran with alleged intelligence ties." 

They say where there's smoke, there's a blazing conflagration — a veritable vanity of the confires, or in this case, the Donfires as well. But Mueller is no Savonarola, and the assorted Trumpeteers are no Trumpian heretics, though I'm sure they now wish they had been.