The ‘Russia Hoax’ and other grudges

Too long, didn’t read, but late last week Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard proclaimed that she had in her possession a full ream of intel conclusively proving that the Obama Administration, in its 11th hour, prepared a fusillade of fake evidence designed to defame President Trump as an agent and dupe of the Russian Government. Trump, somewhat on his heels with the Epstein Files scandal, began screeching online about the Russia Hoax. Today he posted a meme showing various Obama Administration figures, including Obama himself, wearing orange prison jumpsuits, holding up cards with their names on them, with the logo “THE SHADY BUNCH” embossed on top. Very hip, Mr. President, retweet a Beverly Hillbillies joke next.

“HOW DID SAMANTHA POWER MAKE ALL THAT MONEY???” Trump asked. It’s not a bad question, but let’s circle back here. The Russia Hoax, as the Trump White House is currently formulating it, predates December 2016, when The Shady Bunch apparently convened in the Oval Office in an attempt to destroy The Donald. But I seem to recall the Hillary Clinton campaign deploying the same methods, as people online were using the word kompromat in a way that’s almost as annoying as their use of the term “stochastic terrorism.” And it worked, too. Before I took the red pill, or at least the purple one, I recall myself shrieking “RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA!” like some deranged member of The Shady Bunch, at an incredulous colleague who didn’t believe everything he read in The Daily Beast. The Trump-As-Russian-Agent brainworm that the Dems were trying to infect us with was in place long before December 2016.

Those days are past now, and I’m able to objectively see that Trump wasn’t an agent of Russia, that the Steele Dossier was fake, that he’s also probably in the Epstein Files and is certainly guilty of many things, though we don’t know exactly what. Also, Joe Biden was senile in office and used the autopen, and Barack Obama was hardly the morally pure good-government saint that his marketing told us. All presidencies sit atop a pile of bones.

But it’s also clear that too much of our government is wrapped up in lawfare now, in trying to make the case against our ideological enemies, long after they’re out of office. It goes beyond suing and countersuing and getting to the truth. We live in a highly sophisticated universe of name-calling. Can’t we let it drop? Trump is winning. He has won. Let the defeated Dems glower in their lakeside houses, drinking their lonely whiskies at dusk, heads bowed, like Michael Corleone at the end of Godfather Part II.

Or let’s just make today’s politics about 10 years ago, in the spirit of grudges. While we’re at it, let’s relitigate the case about the campaign to persuade the world that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons. I’d like to see some people held accountable for that. Or let’s reopen the Whitewater files and investigate the death of Vince Foster. Is there anyone still alive who was involved in the Watergate coverup? I know that there’s still talk about releasing the JFK assassination files. The truth is out there! 

Why not go even further back? The great-grandchildren of the men involved in the Teapot Dome scandal must be held accountable for the crimes of their forebears. Justice for the victims of Crédit Mobilier! Why won’t the government release the Zimmerman Telegram files? What about the XYZ Affair? What are they trying to hide? Who was actually behind this scandal that rocked our fathers to the founding? I bet you dollars to babkas it was Russia. There was kompromat. I can see it from my house.