A Dark Pit

Regarding the Mueller report and Attorney General Barr reading through it and making his own assessment and excluding Congress from reading it, is a damned win for Trump.

During the Nixon investigation, AG Jaworski and his committee looked at the report, provided a guideline for Congress, and submitted the whole report.  Jaworski didn’t take it upon himself to make his own ruling. AG Barr making his own ruling despite his history with the Republicans and Trump himself, and with Republicans pushing to never have the full report be made available to the public is quite a coup. Trump and conservatives celebrating and proclaiming his innocence of all crimes rings quite hollow especially with the proof of his innocence being furiously kept secret.

Even with the Mueller report being released, there are talks of Trump redacting several parts of it due to executive privilege.

There’s gambling in the establishment. The game is fixed.

Alex Jones, QAnon, and alt-right pseudo-intellectuals and conspiracy theorists often see small things, make mountains out of them, and terrorize people with their pursuit of a bigger, sexier story, one with hidden cabals, sex rings, etc. THERE IS ONE RIGHT HERE! They are blocking a report which has details to what may or may not be impeachable offences! And if you want to talk sex, Jeffrey Epstein, a financier who ran a pedophile ring may or may not be connected with conservatives, particularly Alan Dershowitz and Labor Secretary Alex Acosta! Heck, a lady who ran a prostitution den was just taking pictures with Trump and his ilk and peddling access to them! Hey conspiracy theorists, you’re really bad at conspiracy theorizing!

But what’s to happen now? Here’s my prediction.

The Democrats will continue pushing for the release of the Mueller report, but while they’re at it, they will slowly lose interest over it as the media gets hammered for “pushing Russia-gate” when apparently “there is none.” Those are all in quotes, because that is the talking point conservatives will uniformly use on the way to the elections. They will use weaponized the Mueller report and pretend that it vindicates Trump, even though that is not what it says. AG Barr explicitly said it doesn’t exonerate Trump.

In the meantime, the Trump administration will try to control the news cycle by being incredibly hideous. They will attempt to move on and bury the issue with reckless hideousness. Just a couple of days since the release of the report, they are already working to totally repeal Obamacare again and they are planning to take away funding for the Special Olympics. This is cartoon villainy. And at some point, the Democrats will have to take on issues like healthcare and spend less time fighting for the report and/or using it to further take on the Trump organization.

The SDNY will continue with their investigations, but the lackluster result from the Mueller report release take away some of their momentum and again, conservatives will use the Mueller report and AG Barr’s proclamation as a weapon against it. Should they find criminal evidence on Trump, I’m not sure if there is political will to use it against him, no matter how serious those crimes may be. Definitely not on the conservative side of the aisle.

Even now, some Democrats are already moving on from the issue, saying that the only way to fight Trump is during the 2020 elections. This is weak and craven, but network television loves this talk. Network news loves elections. They would love nothing more than countless debates and panels discussing elections. They would even recycle some of the villains from the Mueller investigation. Already, I see George Papadopoulous being interviewed on MSNBC as some sort of witness or expert, not as a weasel traitor.

Even if there was clear evidence of collusion, Mueller did not believe in indicting a sitting president. Even if there was clear evidence of collusion, Nancy Pelosi believed that impeachment would not be worth it. And even if she pushed for impeachment, there are too many Republicans who are protecting Trump. It would be impossible. They are just that craven. So yeah, the disappointment that Democrats and progressives feel at the moment was already coming. It just took a while to get here.

Trump will not be taken away from our lives outside of an election defeat. And even if he’s defeated, there are far too many evils that he rooted out that will take longer to get rid of. Islamophobia, the rise of white nationalists, racism, fascism… even complacency, and self-defeat, these are all evils which gave rise to cartoon villains like Trump.

America is Bored

Many years ago, I enjoyed the first couple of season of The Apprentice. It was a rather goofy show. I saw it the same way I saw America’s Next Top Model. The Apprentice wasn’t producing any Warren Buffets out of its pool or talents, and America’s Next Top Model wasn’t going to produce the next Heidi Klum (who happens to have a reality show at the same time as well). I knew at the time that Donald Trump was full of it. He marketed everything and was willing to plaster his name on everything. His audiobook even had a section devoted entirely on advertising products. He was a cartoon of a man, and it was entertaining at the time. And then I got bored by third season.

I used to enjoy Gavin Mciness. I read Vice regularly on its early days and often enjoyed his many contributions although I didn’t really agree on some of his opinions. After splitting from Vice, I still enjoyed Gavin Mcinness with some of his comedic attempt. I thought the whole, “how to be a man” thing was great satire. And for a short period, I thought his hyper-masculine rants and conservative turn was a Kaufmanesque attempt at humor. It wasn’t. I moved on.

I saw a few of Jesse the Mind Ventura’s old show on conspiracy theories. I thought it was hilarious when it came out. I wasn’t quite sure whether it was tongue-in-cheek or not, especially when he goes around with his “investigative team.” A lot of what they talked about was hilariously flawed, but with a bit of production, it made it more entertaining than it should be. A couple of times, he even had Alex Jones on the show. I didn’t really know much about Alex Jones at the time, but I do remember that a lot of the big revelations and conspiracies he was talking about in the show all amounted to teases which led to nothing. There were no evidence. Just a couple of men often staring at a barbed wire fence and making up stories about what’s on the other side. I got bored and moved on to shows which had actual writers.

The first time I heard about Milo Yiannopoulous was when I heard about Gamergate. I wasn’t really that invested in the issue at the time, after all, there are bigger things out there in the world that should concern people than “ethics in video game journalism.” I found that Anita Sarkeesian and Milo Yiannopolous at the time were both working their own crowd to build up their brands. I was just amused that the whole thing blew up so much that Sarkeesian found an audience at the UN and Yiannopolous became a hero of the alt-right. And I’m like… how about playing video games instead of just arguing about them?

I used to watch Michael Lebron on Lionel Nation. He came into my radar around the same time I started listening to Sam Seder. I thought some of his arguments made sense, and it was interesting how he would sometimes go against popular takes on politics, culture, and what not. I thought he was a decent but an old-fashioned broadcaster. Then I moved on to other things. Next thing I know, I see him peddling Qanon conspiracy theories and posing with Donald Trump. Ugh.

What I’m getting at here is that America seems to have been caught up with me at my most bored a few years ago, me at my watching Jerry Springer because there is nothing else on television (and yes, I know Jerry Springer is a better statesman than most of the clowns out there right now). I’m surprised that these people I mentioned have large followings, enough for Mcinness to have global franchises of his hate group and for Trump to become the leader of the free world. Why didn’t the rest of the world move on? Couldn’t they see there are more entertaining stuff out there?

In any case, here’s hoping that the joy of seeing D-list entertainers will be usurped by an even darker desire… the desire to see someone spectacularly fail. It was entertaining to see the whole Gamergate thing erupt, but it’s even more entertaining watching Milo Yiannopolous fail again and again at trying to be relevant. It was entertaining to see Donald Trump rise. It’s the reason why cable news gave him and his supporters so much free coverage. But it would be even more entertaining to see a US president fail spectacularly. This would guarantee more rating for cable news shows.

I believe this is what ultimately will happen. People will root to see him fail just for the spectacle of it. How do I know this? The times I was watching The Apprentice, reading Gavin McInnes, or checking out Lionel Nation or Gamergate, I remember those are periods when I would occasionally scroll through Failblog. It was quite entertaining to see people fail. So yeah. C’mon America. Catch up with me at my most bored.