Covid, the Constitution, Trump-Russia Again and Epstein — Four Stories Unhinging Our World

Donald Trump announcing executive orders to provide Covid economic relief

by Thomas Neuburger

There's so much going on right now that it's hard to focus in just one place. At least four stories are simultaneously shaking our world.

Covid is taking us all down the garden path, us Americans of course, thanks to our failed-state government, a government that simply cannot govern, at least with respect to the virus. Bottom line: Absent a miracle, we will never be free of the Covid emergency until we are free of the current government. That means next year at the earliest.

Is this the Republicans' fault? Of course it is; they're monsters, at least at the leadership level, beasts who worship no god but power and control. Modern Republican leaders are the exact analog to the old Southerners against whom Lincoln railed in his Cooper Union speech: "Your purpose, then ... is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please.... You will rule or ruin in all events."

Rule or ruin.

But Democrats share a good share of the blame for not sweeping the Republican pieces from the board at every opportunity given them — and Republicans gave them many opportunities.

The 2000 election result, a constitutional coup by the Republican-corrupted Supreme Court, should have rejected by Congress, yet not a single Democratic senator would stand with House members to challenge it. All it would have taken was one. Had they had in their hearts courage instead of the illusion of comity, Bush and Cheney — our own mass murders — would not have been president, and Iraq would not have been ravaged raped for years by our wars, our governors and our mercenaries.

Later, when Bush left office, he should have been tried for war crimes, not the least for his torture regime, yet Barack Obama and Democratic leaders like Pelosi chose to "look forward, not backward" and in effect, sanction his criminality.

The list goes on. Republicans have been enabled at every turn by Democratic leaders — against the strong wishes of much of the Democratic base — the most recent instance by allowing Trump to keep American troops in Afghanistan instead of committing to a withdrawal schedule. They give him more power every time he asks for it.

As for the current Post Office flap, which Democrats are so rightly exercised about, recall that it was Democrats like Henry Waxman who co-sponsored and enacted the 2006 "Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act," the lawthat's killing it. That bill passed the House 410-20 and the Senate by unanimous consent. Even Bernie Sanders, then a House member, voted yes on that bill.

The list of Democrats enabling Republicans' evil deed would fill many pages, perhaps a dozen a year. Remember when Chuck Schumer gave Trump the gift of expediting "a whole much of ... lifetime judicial appointments" in the middle of the Brett Kavanaugh fight?

But that's just one mess we're in. A paper that's circulating lately outlines the hell we're headed for if Trump and the Republicans decide to play "constitutional hardball" at the end of the current election — which all on its own, thanks to Covid and Republican tactics, is a guaranteed three-ring circus of horrors, an E-ticket ride to the devil's ninth ring. Claims of "invalid election" are sure to come from whichever side seems to lose (unless Trump seems to win by theft and Democrats acquiesce, again).

Will Trump and Republican leaders play hardball with this election? They obviously have in the past, though it's unclear to me what today's Republican leaders want most — to support Trump to the greatest extent, or be rid of him for good and return their party to "rule by the Chamber of Commerce." 

If Trump goes hard to the end though, will Democrats go hard against him? Al Gore surrendered to Bush and the Supreme Court in 2000; Bernie Sanders (bless him for all his good work) surrendered to Barack Obama in 2020; and even today, Democrats seem about to surrender on Trump's "Covid" executive orders instead of taking him straight to court as they ought to do, and as the Constitution demands.

And that doesn't begin to touch on the other two massive stories of recent note.

Consider Matt Taibbi's publication of, and comment on, the revelations of Steven Schrage, who casts much light on the Trump-Russia origin story (Taibbi's subscriber-only piece is here; Schrage's public piece is here). These are must-read pieces for anyone who thinks that a political tale can have more than one villain, and that the U.S. security state can be one of them.

Finally, the Trump-Russia narrative starts to make sense for those who try to ground their sense in the facts. Schrage's story and on-tape conversations with Trump-Russia originator Stephan Halper may play a deciding role in the August 11 rehearing on the Justice Department's decision to drop the case against Michael Flynn.

No mainstream outlet will cover it honestly though, or cover it at all, so be prepared for partisan silence and spin. Read Taibbi only if you want the Jack Webb ("just the facts") version of this nightmare tale. As I said, any story can have more than one villain.

Finally, recall the release of the latest Epstein documents, which come ever so close to unveiling in full what looks for all the world like a monumental, global, sex-and-blackmail scheme — one involving the wealthy, the powerful, and several foreign security shops — a story that no one of consequence in the world wants to see revealed. We may yet see more accidental suicides come from that one, rather than be allowed by our betters to face head on what all of us know without really wanting to know.

If each of these tales were a novel, they would fill together the summer with great delight. We could stack them on top of each other and work though the pile, reading each in turn, the next treat following the last in serial pleasure. Unfortunately, this is like reading all four novel at once, each played out simultaneously in front of us, a cacophony of complex stories that bump and rub against each other, all claiming attention, each hard to accept and difficult to hear ... and none of them fiction.