We are now just five days from the Trump inauguration, so the last bits and pieces of the Biden administration are winding down and preparing for the orderly transition of power to the new Trump team. The confirmation process for his cabinet has begun with the open Senate confirmation hearings on Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense being held yesterday. Full and complete partisanship was on display and much of the Hegseth dirty linen was put on the public record for any American who cares to see. His and his Republican defender’s responses ranged from characterizing all concerns about him as a “smear campaign” to arguing that it was about time that someone with “dust on his boots” took over the 3 million members of the U.S. military and the $800 billion dollar budget the Department of Defense commands.
At the same time, the Department of Justice released the final Jack Smith report (137 pages long) summarizing the investigation, indictment process and legal machinations that the prosecution had to endure in the case of Donald Trump v. the United States of America. The report was scathing in its unvarnished telling of the deceitful and (according to the report) clearly criminal conduct of our president-elect after his clear and incontrovertible election loss to Joe Biden in 2020. This is a document that will live in the annals of American history and that Republican forces and Trump wanted desperately to quash, just as they both wanted Trump’s criminal conviction on 34 criminal felony convictions to be extinguished. The truth is left there for all future generations to ponder when they review the unusual and almost inexplicable events of our times against the backdrop of history.
Trump’s response on social media to the report was not to address its content or veracity, but rather to slam and taunt Jack Smith like any self-respecting schoolyard bully might do by saying, “Jack is a lamebrain prosecutor who was unable to get his case tried before the Election, which I won in a landslide,”. That response should embarrass every American who voted for Trump, every politician who has defended his actions and 6 members of the Supreme Court that aided and abetted Trump in avoiding the proper adjudication of the election interference charges brought against him by issuing a perversion of the Constitution that has guided this country to greatness over 236 years. As dramatic as this report is in substance and as impactful as it will be in history, for now it will be overshadowed by the populist momentum that is carrying Trump on its shoulders to his inauguration. As revealing as the Senate hearings were about Pete Hegseth’s character flaws and unpreparedness to guide the U.S. military, I’m sure that the confirmation process will equally carry him on its shoulders to the Pentagon soon. The fires that might otherwise stand in the way of these events are mere embers at this stage of the political cycle. The responsible members of the current administration and Congress cannot and will not jeopardize the tradition of the peaceful transfer of power (very unlike what Trump and his minions attempted four years ago) and will step aside, handing their swords to the victors even as those less responsible people threaten to and likely will thrust that sword through some of them. Such is the lot of strength and honor at various times in history.
But wait. Underneath all the pomp and circumstance of the transition of power, there remain the embers of truth in the form of what is now a part of the public record. Such embers likely get buried deep in the archives of a showmanlike administration, but they do not disappear and I doubt they will go out. Rather, they will slowly burn in the deep background and perhaps get revived and reexamined as current events unfold in some inevitable moment of crisis or setback to the attempts by Trump and his followers to govern some ungovernable situation of their likely own making. Maybe it will be a natural disaster like the L.A. wildfires or the next Florida hurricane that crushes Mar-a-Lago. Maybe it will be a foreign crisis or Putinesque aggression that leaves more than the 13 American dead from Afghanistan on the tarmac. Or maybe it will be the outrage that comes the first time Pete Hegseth tries to court martial someone like General Mark Milley or has a national guardsman shoot some protestors in the leg, all at the behest of a crazed and vengeful Commander in Chief. Something that these embers foretold and was ignored will fan those flames and people will resurrect the public record and wonder aloud why we didn’t pay more attention to the warning when it was given. At that point the slow burn will burn down some houses that have weak foundations.
I have now spoken to and seen evidence that a great many people (I will stop short of suggesting it is anything like a majority, but it probably is a majority of those I would consider truthfully informed) are worried about, wondering about and trying to sort out how they plan to navigate the next four years. When I hear those comments I stop and wonder if the timeframe calibration is correct. Will it be just four years? Might it be much shorter if things start to fall apart? Is this less a respite in Democracy and more a sunset thereof? We thought COViD would change everything and it didn’t. The buoyancy of the system righted us faster than we could imagine. COVID is now almost resigned to whatever place the 1918 Spanish Flu inhabited for 100 years of obscurity. Are we worried for no reason and the system will equally rebalance itself after this distressing Trumpian episode? Hard to say.
For many weeks now, I have watched far less daily news (Typically MSNBC) than I used to. But every once in a while, I’ll be driving in my truck and I’ll turn on MSNBC to get an update on what’s going on. Yesterday was just such a day and I listened to parts of the Hegseth Senate confirmation hearing. I feel I was somewhat more balanced in my perspective in that I agree that he assiduously avoided answering valid questions from the Democratic senators, but I also felt that some of the questions and comments that came from the Right were not entirely unreasonable for a country that might want or need the most effective military weapon available. When I watched the Roosevelt documentary, I was reminded that during World War II, FDR deemphasized his social programs in favor of the most effective military to end the War. I was less offended by the Hegseth issues regarding women in combat, which while misogynist, seemed less urgent in our current state of affairs, than issues of the use of military to quell domestic protests. If there was a silver bullet for Hegseth in that hearing, it should be his inability to state clearly that he does not believe the military should be invoked against US citizens.
Quite frankly, I am tired of being inflamed by everything being suggested by the Right. I am sure people around me are equally or more tired of my outrage. I’m not sure any longer that railing against a candidate like Hegseth is as important as standing strong against and railing about specific actions that are taken assuming he does so. What this has made me realize is that like the public record whose embers stay bright deep beneath the pile of other current events, perhaps my liberal wrath should be put on a low boil or slow burn until an act or event can justify it’s reignition to the fullest. I guess I’m becoming a creature of California, just like the wildfire.