Strzok’s defense, that he never let his political opinions affect his job performance, is practically irrelevant when you consider Lisa Page’s position in the bureau, and her position as Strzok’s paramour.
Efforts to persuade like-minded people to form intense antagonism toward non-like-minded people – indeed, to fear them and hate them – underpin most political campaigns.
For years, as we watched our republic deteriorate, we could say, “Well, at least we still have free speech.” Now we cannot say even that. To echo the bearded guy in robe and sandals who walks city streets with a placard in the old New Yorker cartoons: ‘The End Is Coming.”
Someday people who consider Jones and his opinions vile will not be on top. Then their freedom to write and speak and publish what they think will feel threatened, and they will feel marginalized. What will they say then?
We make sure the adolescent girls are raped no more than once or maybe twice a week. That way they can recover. As for the boys, we put them in the secure housing unit only when necessary.
The Charlottesville battle occurred one year ago this weekend. I’m not sure anyone believes that confrontation will be the last one.
The FBI values its independence: that is, it does not want to operate under anyone’s authority, including the president’s, the attorney general’s, and certainly not under any supervision from the judiciary. It answers only to itself, and that is exactly what insiders want. What do the rest of us want? It does not matter.
Meanwhile Democrats simply look desperate, while they neglect the basic hard work required to defeat a shrewd opponent who does not care that much how he comes across. A lot of people voted for him in 2016 because he would not play by anyone’s rules but his own. Democrats have not given those people a good reason to change their minds. They have not even thought about whether they should change their own minds.
You will not find Trump’s decoder ring, nor will you find evidence of a deep, traitorous plot. You can only look back with this president, not ahead. The view out the rear window may not be pleasant, but neither is it inconsistent. Trump likes and admires Putin.
Did anyone, twenty years ago, think today’s United States could exist in 2018? What happened over the course of one generation, that we should find ourselves here, in this spot, with a cold civil war brewing at home? How did we arrive here?
In this whole sad chain, it takes only one person to say “No, I’m not going to do this.” One person can stop the whole train. We are not at the point where secret police take you out back to shoot you if you refuse to go along, but school districts fire people for far less. If this train keeps rolling, we may wonder why we did not try to stop it when we could.
Macron’s program declares that for some prescribed amount of time, people sixteen years of age belong to the government. They have no choice about an obligation they did not seek. Nor do they have a voice in the matter, as they cannot vote.
