A Visual Aid

Theo Spark provided this handy representation of the Mueller Probe.

You can stop here if you want. It’s not the season for politics.

You’re still reading? OK, that’s your call.

I’ve been avoiding political commentary. Negativity is bad for everyone (including me) but it has given me time to form a theory. Maybe the stupid has to happen. It seems avoidable yet fools stick their finger in the light socket over and over. Is it necessary? Does the universe demand it? Are we watching adults learn lessons they failed to grok at age 11?

Figurative shovel handles hitting skulls that should know better merits a Curmudgeonly Gem Of Insight:

“When given the temptation and opportunity to do something monumentally stupid, it’s a perfectly reasonable choice to take a deep breath and let it go.”

After the 2016 election lots of people went ape. I can understand disappointment (who hasn’t seen an election where their preferred choice got pounded?). But the cult had an overdose of cognitive dissonance and went into a tailspin. Disappointment is normal, denial and anger (and riots in the street) are not.

Desperate to rationalize that the thing they just witnessed couldn’t possibly be true… even though they saw it with their own goddamn eyes… folks started plotting. They may think they’re Machiavellian but they’re not. They’re like teenage girls deciding to rumble with Thor. They might sprain Thor’s big toe but he’s just going shrug and hammer their ass into the pavement for getting in his way. Calmer heads would say: “Stop! This won’t work out well for us.”

Anyway, to end my bad metaphor, it took a few weeks for everyone to give up on their first idea. They weren’t going to recount their way out of this one. Math doesn’t listen to whining and Trump won beyond the margin of cheat.

Then, when wiser heads would accept that elections matter and promise to show better governance before the next job review in 2020, another dumb idea took root. They seized on Russia, Russia, Russia. That bitch Marsha gets all the attention and everything is her fault. It wasn’t an accident; the idea had been seeded. The minds that received it were fertile soil.

I remember thinking “after what the DNC did to Bernie Sanders they’re going to investigate the election?” Really? Isn’t that the last thing they’d choose to investigate? Won’t they bump into 30,000 e-mails? State secrets are on a convicted perv’s laptop and the one who facilitated it demands investigation? (Also, God bless Weiner for having such a great name.) Won’t sniffing around Russia dig up the uranium deal? Will it reignite Benghazi? Isn’t this going to bounce off Trump’s thick skull and land on his opponents?

It’s like Cheech and Cong demanding the cops look in the trunk.

You’d better be purer than the new fallen snow if you’re going to unleash amoral lawyers with unlimited budgets. Witch hunts have a way of backfiring. I’m not the first guy to notice this. Didn’t Jesus say something about who ought to cast the first stone? Or was that a proverb about glass houses?

Who among the Trump’s opponents considered what they were trying to do? Like maybe pour a stiff drink and sit in a comfy chair and turn it over in their minds. Is this a smart idea? Where will this lead? Are tactics based on scandal the best arrow in my quiver? Are they likely to hit Trump? Could they boomerang and bite me in the ass?

Trump has been pretty careful. He’s been in the limelight forever. Nobody knows much about about Obama’s past. Sometimes during the campaign it wasn’t clear where Hillary actually was. Bill Clinton (who doesn’t own a private plane but seems to borrow them freely) appeared on a tarmac to meet Loretta Lynch and thought nobody would notice an entire fucking jet. By contrast Trump is tracked. If he took a shit at the restroom in a Kentucky Fried Chicken in 1978 someone remembers it. He acts like a man who’s used to being monitored. Scrutiny has honed him. Conversely protection from scrutiny allowed many of his opponents to act like Caligula and stack skeletons in the closet like cordood.

You don’t use scandal when your main driver has 30,000 emails hanging out of her back pocket, a pissed off commie in Vermont with cultlike fans, married a man who fucks employees, and is associated with a convicted perv named Weiner. This is not their strong suit. The party that made Chappaquiddick a household name thought it wise to go after a man who doesn’t drink? The candidate that made a shady 10000% profit and has a charity that seems to do no charity is challenging the ethics of a man who’s every business deal (including failures) is analyzed on the front page? Investigations find skeletons in closets. Don’t start one if you live in a graveyard.

Nobody knows where this is going. (Though I’m sure it’ll be fun to watch.) They shouldn’t have created Frankenstein’s monster and turned it loose with the naive assumption he won’t show up in their own living room.  Strange things happen. Half the reason Wiener’s perving put him in jail is that his wife was Hillary’s right hand man. Investigating Hillary’s fishy real estate deal unearthed Bill’s spooge on a blue dress. Secrets have a gravitational pull on overstaffed investigators and Trump doesn’t seem very secretive. Russia, Russia, Russia advocates should know this; especially Hillary. How did the wife of a disbarred lawyer forget?

Regardless, things are proceeding accordingly. A zillion dollars and hundreds of people spending endless man hours all year have unearthed… not a lot. The investigations don’t make James Comey look better. His prints are all over memos trying to bury Hillary’s 30,000 emails. And he’s fired. Michael Flynn is formally accused of nothing except saying the wrong thing to a man with a badge. It’s called “aggravated class II Martha Stewarting”. The Russia dossier is discredited and was paid for by the DNC? How does this make Trump look bad?

There always could be a bombshell. His opponents, lacking evidence, hope he’s dirty. Raise your hand if you’ve heard “this time we’ve got him” in the past. Did any of them work out?

They’re projecting. The left side of the spectrum is awash in “issues” and assume everyone else has the same weaknesses. If Trump is secretly a Russian spy that throws orphans off the roof of Trump Tower I’m pretty sure someone would have spilled the beans by now. Eventually investigators are going to have to justify themselves by finding fruit elsewhere. The low hanging fruit is the group that created the investigators.

Now I’m going to segue into what happens when a bad idea boomerangs. Consider the current pervnado. (The best word ever!) This summer, the media was shocked shocked shocked to discover that Hollywood, spiritual home of Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, might have a few pervs. Why discover this in mid 2017? I suspect it was a handy distraction from the dying Russia, Russia, Russia narrative. The damn broke and it’s drowning everyone. Weinstein is toast and that just got the ball rolling. You’d need a spreadsheet to list the names. My favorite is Kevin Spacey. When accused of sexually harassing a 14 year old he explained “I’m like gay and stuff”… which is like responding to an accusation of carjacking by saying “I totally dig croissants”.

What do you do when scandal is not your best trait? If you’re one of two political parties you use scandal to go after an aged bible thumper in Alabama. Was this wise? Did they consider where it would lead? Did they think “is it good planning to drag the pervnado from Hollywood to the Senate?” Of course not.

So what happened? Everything happened as it should! Accusations targeting the decrepit bible thumper were weak. In due time they were discredited and he seems to be doing well in the polls. Meanwhile, Senator Steward Smalley from team investigate for malfeasance is explaining a photo of him kneading the tatas of a USO performer in a flight suit. Would this have happened if folks in the opposition weren’t trying to use scandal as a tool? Would any of us know that Congress has a special fund to pay sexual harassment cases without the pervnado? Are any of the revelations harming Trump or his party? Was a wounded Minnesota Senator a good trade for failing to fix with the Alabama Senatorial election? Wouldn’t wiser heads have let sleeping dogs lay?

Al Franken’s issues are what a backfire looks like.

As 2017 leads to 2018 I can almost hear their thoughts. “Let’s put that shovel on the ground and stomp on the motherfucker once again. This time we’ve got him for sure. OUCH. Well it didn’t work that time but lets try the shovel again…”