Talk is cheap, action dear
Straight-shooting, preternatually honest, ever-faithful and true-blue John Durham strained mightily for lo, these four years, to bring forth…a gnat.
Abandon the Swamp
The only hope for the republic is to downgrade the place of Washington in our public life. The business of Washington is to make government bigger—forever. That is not what the people want.
Isn't it? I keep hearing people on Our Side say that, over and over again. But how sure are we of it, really? Has anyone seen compelling evidence for it of late, outside of our own circle of RightwingNaziDeathBeast friends and/or acquaintances? Is this in fact, as the sorely-missed Rush Limbaugh always insisted, a “conservative-majority nation”? Because from where I sit, it sure looks less and less like it with every passing day.
Suppose a document drops in the wilderness and no one is around to hear it. Does it make a sound? I submit that John Durham just tested this Bishop Berkeleyesque query. The special counsel spent four years beavering away in the forests of the deep state and what did he produce? Three hundred pages telling us what, for the most part, we already knew and with the result that exactly nothing, apart from a little hand wringing, will happen.
We already knew that James Comey, Robert Mueller, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, John Brennan, Susan Rice, Michael Sussmann, Kevin Clinesmith, and all the other characters in and around the Russia Collusion Delusion had fabricated the story of Trump’s supposed connection with Russia out of whole cloth.
We already knew that they had gone out of their way to protect Hillary Clinton.
We knew that there was no predicate for obtaining a FISA warrant against Carter Page (one of many thousands of such warrants), thus opening a back door into the Trump campaign.
We knew that the surveillance apparatus of the regime had been weaponized to prevent Donald Trump from being elected and then, when he surprised everyone by winning anyway, to taint his administration and render him radioactive.
What should we make of Durham’s non-revelatory revelations?
No more than what they actually are: much ado about nothing, far too little, far too late. Like the game-changing, “blockbuster” Mueller report, it will soon be forgotten, dropped down the memory hole forever. Just another “Kraken” that, upon its release, turned out to be more of a tadpole.
Still, Durham’s bulletin is useful as a marker of the futility in which we labor. André Gide touched on this point when he reminded us that “Toutes choses sont dites déjà, mais comme personne n’écoute, il faut toujours recommencer.” Over the past five or six years, virtually everything that Durham said in his report had already been said. But because no one was listening, it is necessary to start again and say it once more.
Is it really all that necessary, though? Is there some point at which the futility of mere words to avail us anything at all, aside from whatever dubious satisfaction we might find in the sound of our own gums flapping, must at long last be forthrightly acknowledged—that action will be required of us if we hope to ever live free again? Or is there not?
Follows, further same-old-same-old ruminations about Trump, DeSantis, the 2024 “elections,” and sundry other irrelevancies. But then, unexpectedly, Kimball drops some pretty good suggestions.
Here’s a bit of unsolicited advice that I have for the former president should he be elected again: Stay out of Washington as much as you can. Stop the newspapers. Have your mail forwarded.
Washington really is a swamp and it will consume you. And here are a few particular bits of advice:
1) Have the inauguration in Mar-a-Lago.
2) Govern from Florida as much as you can.
3) If you decide to indulge in the theater of the State of the Union Address as it has evolved, deliver it from, say, Kansas.
4) Disband the FBI. We should never have allowed a national police force to come into being.
Move the bits of the government you can’t actually destroy to other parts of the country.
Do these things instantly—the day you take office. The deep state will howl. The bureaucrats will oppose you. The lawyers will sue you. Do it anyway. Act first, deal with the consequences later.
Excellent ideas all, not a single one of which has the proverbial snowball’s chance of ever seeing the light of day. Then, it’s back to the same-old-same-old again.
Conduct metaphorical dawn-raids on their people and institutions just as they weaponized the Justice Department against you and your supporters. That would not only be the retribution you seek, it would also be reciprocity. Speed and thoroughness will be of the essence. If you hesitate, if you are half-hearted, you will be lost.
See that? “Metaphorical,” the man says. For Christ’s sweet sake, WHY?!? Were those (ongoing) “Justice" Department raids you just mentioned in any sense metaphorical, prithee tell? Are the J6 dissidents in the Amerikan Gulag locked up behind metaphorical bars? Was Trump’s spite-fueled, politically motivated recent conviction on transparently spurious charges of sexual battery and “defamation" metaphorical? The bullets that robbed Ashli Babbit of her life, the Capitol Po-(head)lice truncheons and jackboots that clubbed and/or stomped poor Rosanne Boyland right into an early grave, all “metaphorical"?
When we preemptively commit ourselves to tying one hand behind our backs by docilely remaining in the realm of the strictly “metaphorical,” is not the struggle against tyrannical oppression and rampant FederalGovCo injustice and abuse by definition “half-hearted”?
As somebody or other once said, is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of (decidedly NON-metaphorical) chains and slavery?
Kimball goes on from there to say that “the focus should be on eclipsing Washington, D.C. as the seat of government,” a proposal I wholeheartedly endorse. Think the inevitable Swamp response to any such worthy endeavor will be limited to metaphorical means alone, though? More pie-in-the-sky spitballing:
It has long been obvious to candid observers that there is something deeply dysfunctional about that overwhelmingly Democratic, welfare-addicted city. It is a partisan sinkhole. Jefferson wanted the capital moved from New York to Washington in part to bring it closer to the South, but also to place it somewhere that was officially neutral. There is nothing neutral about Washington today. The city has some impressive architecture and urban vistas. They should be preserved and staffed as tourist attractions. But the reins of power should be relocated.
The more I think about our situation, the more I believe the only hope for the republic is to downgrade the place of Washington in our public life. The business of Washington is to make government bigger—forever. That is not what the people, who pay for it, want. Legitimacy is draining out of our governing institutions at an alarming rate. Stanching that debilitating flow requires that we redirect our attention away from the greedy puppet show in Washington to the true source of legitimacy, which is with the people.
Trump is one of the few people with the temerity to attempt such a thing. Perhaps he can appease some of his critics by proposing we rename Washington to George Floyd City. I would be OK with that. In any event, the actual government of the country should be moved to some neutral ground, out of the overwhelmingly corrupt cesspool that is Washington.
As long as the federal government retains its excessive power, wealth, and sway over American lives, no matter what innocuous, backwater ‘burg you relocate to, the Swamp critters will make their way there en masse, and just pick up where they left off. The whole sordid process will start itself anew, and that once-remote locality, however pleasant a place to live and/or work it may once have been , will be stained, corrupted, and ruined forever just like DC has been.
Sorry, Roger ol’ buddy ol’ pal; I love ya and all, you know I do. But if you truly do want to see any of what you suggest actually transpire, it’s gonna require a lot more than words alone to get the thing done. To adapt a fine old adage, revolutionary times call for revolutionary measures—and, as our hallowed Founding Fathers well knew, that means something well beyond the merely “metaphorical,” I’m afraid. Revolutions can be demanding and intransigent like that sometimes.
Metaphorical revolutions can only produce metaphorical freedoms, metaphorically upheld, safeguarded, and enforced by Constitutions, charters, and governments that are no better than metaphorical themselves. Best remember it, before it’s too late to do any real-world good. Metaphors are all fine and well—inspirational, even quite useful in their proper place. That said, though, being just words they can accomplish nothing whatsoever when up against practical reality, which tends as a rule to be hard-nosed and unyielding.
As history has demonstrated time and again, no, the pen is NOT mightier than the sword. In the end, this is what we’re left with (via WRSA):
Every time a new version of that meme-image pops up I can’t help but giggle to myself a little bit—an ever-reliable fit of jollity brought on by the first iteration of it I can recall seeing, which featured the text “I’ll just vote for Biden/Welp, lost my job.” Still one of my all-time faves, that one is.