"A Gang Of Criminals Are In Charge"

 

This is one of the better encapsulations of the state of things right now:

“Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale?”

Augustine made this suggestion 1,600 years ago, in The City of God. Today, in the country of Trump, we’re getting a convincing demonstration of Augustine’s proposition. Justice has been removed and a gang of criminals are in charge.

They’re certainly acting on a large scale. Their expertise ranges from ordering war crimes to covering up sex crimes to engaging in all manner of financial criminality. They’re a diverse bunch, from tough guys outfitted in combat gear and masks rampaging through the streets of our cities, to smooth operators in tuxedoes who mingle with ease at state dinners. Their ranks encompass experienced criminals and newbies. They commit novel crimes and cover up old ones. Allies who had the misfortune to be caught—or were too bumbling to succeed—get pardons from the boss.

It’s all a veritable festival of law-scorning; an amazing smorgasbord of law-breaking. And it turns out that if a president aggressively shuns any concern for justice and is willing to demonstrate utter contempt for the law—if he then disables the Department of Justice and the judge advocates general and almost all other internal checks and mechanisms of accountability—his gang can get away with a heck of a lot. They don’t even have to shoot particularly straight.

And so we have an administration that embraces and pursues criminality greedily and shamelessly. They’re so far unpunished, and there doesn’t seem to be much expectation that they will be punished. [snip]

It was somewhat heartening to see the Republican chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees join the Democratic ranking members in expressing alarm at the reports of the killing of the survivors. They said they were going to look into what happened. We’ll see how far they’re really willing to go.

And we’ll see if, perhaps, as they explore accountability in that one arena, they’ll dip their toes into the many others. We’ll see if anyone is willing to act against the mind-boggling and pervasive grift of Trump and cronies, and their subordination of foreign and domestic policies to their own personal financial interests. We’ll see if they push back against the rampant use of the pardon power in return for what are effectively bribes. We’ll see if they’re willing to treat this White House as what it truly is: a hot bed of corruption; a grift operation wrapped in the emblems of the state.

Not to try to stop the reckless criminality of this administration is to collude in it. It is to accept the collapse of our experiment in republican self-government into rule by a lawless gang.

That's part of a post by former Republican Bill Kristol at "The Bulwark," going after the most corrupt and evil regime in our history with hammer and tongs. Better late than never, Kristol votes Democratic now and often pens or Skeets some of the most incisive, biting critiques of the Malignant Fascist and his "hot bed of corruption" regime of anyone on the planet.

We've written before of the need, once this nightmare is over (and it will be someday), for this country to undergo as thorough a de-Nazification reform as occurred in Germany after World War II: renew our alliances and reform the military, laws, courts, media -- all the institutions of civil society where the works of this regime have corrupted and eaten away the progress of the last 75 years (let's start with demolishing the MF's golden ballroom and removing all the gilded trappings in the White House and restore the East Wing).   To not thoroughly cleanse ourselves of this gang of criminals and their pervasive rot would be to fatally repeat the mistakes of the last four years.

(Photo:  the crime boss MF's mug shot / Fulton County, GA, jail)

QOTD -- An Affirmation Of Responsibility

 

"... [T]he Trump administration is becoming both increasingly aggressive and increasingly unaccountable.

"Which brings me to the 'No Kings' protests planned for Saturday. Several old friends have been amused that I seem to have become a defender and advocate of popular mobilization against the government. And several new friends have commented on the irony that I was a supporter of policies they protested in earlier times.

"Fair enough. But we’re beyond irony and amusement. The administration’s campaign against a free society is intensifying. Congress, controlled by the Republican party, is acquiescent. The Supreme Court so far hasn’t been much of a barrier. And elites outside government are increasingly finding reasons to go along and get along.  [snip]

"... We do ultimately depend on the common sense and common courage of the people. “No Kings” is an expression of protest. But it is also an affirmation of responsibility. We the people ordained and established our free government. It’s up to us to keep it." --  never- Trumper Bill Kristol in "It's Getting Worse," published in The Bulwark.  Whatever their transgressions in the past, folks like Kristol, Rick Wilson, Joe Walsh, and scores of other former Republican partisans are on the "right side of history coalition" now, and that's what counts for us.  We need every American who values democracy and the rule of law to be welcomed into that coalition.  No Kings in America!

Right-Wingers Playing Into ISIS' Hands

As we hear the hysterical, reactionary drumbeat from the usual, arrant fools on the right both here and abroad, let's see what intelligent people have to say about ISIS' strategy and how to defeat it.

Here's Fareed Zakaria (h/t Crooks and Liars):

It's worth asking, what does ISIS want? By most accounts, it wants all of this, a world divided between Muslims and non-Muslims. Its propaganda stresses that the West is intractably anti-Muslim. It has always openly tried to draw Western forces into Iraq and Syria hoping to make itself the great army of believers fighting the crusaders. (our emphasis)

 Here's Shadi Hamid:

“Anti-Muslim and anti-refugee sentiment really play into ISIS' hands," Shadi Hamid, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an author on Islamist politics, told The WorldPost. “The more that happens, the more French Muslims feel alienated and are susceptible to extremist recruitment.”

“France has long had a problem with integrating its Muslim population, and France does have a disproportionately high contribution of foreign fighters to ISIS,” Hamid said. “So there’s a deeper issue here and it hasn’t gotten better, it’s only gotten worse.”  [snip]

"You hear Republicans saying clash of civilizations and civilizational war, and they don’t realize that’s exactly what ISIS wants us to be saying," Hamid said. "It’s remarkable to me, and just shows a very basic lack of understanding of the threat that we face." (our emphasis)

In the aftermath of the horrific attacks in Paris (and, if confirmed, the downing of the Russian airliner by a bomb over the Sinai, killing 224 people), the response must of course target the vicious, soulless perpetrators.  We must not let this crime be used by right- wingers to set citizen against citizen in order to fulfill their xenophobic, authoritarian agenda.  That would make us allies with ISIS, a role currently being played by right- wing extremists.

UPDATE:  See also this piece by Harleen Gambhir on the same subject.