What a Difference a Day Makes

What a Difference a Day Makes

Easter Sunday is meant to be a day of rebirth. I’ve never been a strict interpretationalist when it comes to the Bible, so you won’t see me talking about rising from the dead so much as mentally doing some major Spring cleaning. We do all have our “come to Jesus” moments in life and I feel as though thanks to AG William Barr, who could have given this report several weeks earlier, we are using the symbolism of Easter/Passover weekend to read the Mueller Report and reflect on what it means.

As I drove around Millbrook, New York this morning looking for a New York Times I listened to all the opposing views on the radio. They range, as we all know by now, from the report being cause for celebration in its complete vindication of Mr. Trump to shock and awe about what the report shows we have sunk to as a nation with a man surrounded by liars who must rely on them to keep him from executing on his most deplorable instincts. The report has done little to decrease the disparity in our nation, though it does, at the margin, seem to have eroded the support for Mr. Trump by an initial 10-15% of his base.

I have downloaded the full 438 pages in two pieces to my iPad and have skimmed through it once and am doing a deep read right now. From its very introduction, an objective reading cannot avoid the assessment that it is damning of both the degree and danger of the Russian interference targeted to help Mr. Trump win the Presidency and the amoral approach used by Mr. Trump in the conduct of his campaign and his very presidency. I am among those who believe this report very definitely does not vindicate Mr. Trump of either collusion or obstruction. Instead it seems to want to scream to the heavens by putting this story all in one chronological tome that none of this is OK.

I have a theory. I believe Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is amongst the shrewdest politicians we’ve ever seen in this country. Her on-screen gestures and sideways looks alone give evidence that she is always thinking, always communicating and always judging. She is the cat to Chuck Schumer’s dog, who can barely keep from wagging his tail when Mr. Trump stumbles headlong into taking full responsibility for shutting down the government. So I’ve been wondering about Nancy’s firmly established view that impeachment is not for the Democrats. That may have prompted AG Barr to do what he did in disputable summarizing and spinning the Mueller Report and then further crafting it for consumption by the American people in his press conference. If he took the chance to summarize it for us, maybe we wouldn’t bother reading about it further. You might take this reputational risk if you thought all you were dealing with was the cable news rehashing (the base and the vast majority never pay attention to that crap anyway). You might not take that risk if you thought an impeachment proceeding would get advanced because people would listen to that. Think Nancy the spider saw Billy Barr as a big old fly, trying to buzz around for one last power trip?

It took a day after the release of the redacted report, but there it was, the word impeachment. Even Tom Streyer had stopped calling for it in favor of calling for a full release of the report. But now there it was, it was back like Terminator II. I must have heard the word impeachment 100 times yesterday. The common thinking goes like this: Yes it’s a political process, but it is more a constitutional and moral imperative. Let 2020 chips fall where they may, what has happened in the past three years is the worst abuse by any President in our nation’s history and it cannot go unchecked and unlitigated. We have a map for the impeachment proceeding compliments of the Mueller Report, and we must follow through and complete the task that Mueller started, but had to leave for us, the American people, to finish.

It has taken my breath away that Elizabeth Warren and others have so quickly read the report and declared it a horrific story that must be read by every American. The talking point is that we now have the sheet music and we need the music and lyrics themselves to be played out for all to see, hear and feel. I love the fact that this weekend every single person I’ve heard discuss the report says some version of, “I’ve read through it once and now I am reading it again and finding more and more important detail and meaning in every page.” I can’t think of a book other than the Bible that more people are claiming to have read and reread while admonishing others to read it. The Mueller Report is new age scripture. It is the New New Testament of the Bible. It certainly tells a story of biblical proportion. It is as good a portrayal of our times and the evils of society that we must stand up against as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel or even Apostle John could have written. Maybe we should start calling it The Book of Mueller instead of the Mueller Report.

Everyone seems to be piling on to the impeachment bandwagon with the holier-than-thou approach that we are now beyond politics and into righteousness. When detractors suggest that there is more important governance business at hand, the standard Democratic response has now become, “we can walk and chew gum at the same time, you know.” I think the stronger argument is that there is nothing more important than our founding principles and restoring the rule of law and sobriety to our government. Even the founding fathers understood that taking time away from growing crops, forging musket balls and clearing roads west in order to set things down and get the country flying straight was an important use of time. We certainly need to do some remedial ethical and comportment training in Washington. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Washington needs to be house-broken or toilet-trained all over since we seem to be in the daily pattern of shitting the bed.

So, now I expect Nancy to hedge herself ever so slightly and begrudgingly accede to the notion of impeachment on the grounds that she and her colleagues are simply horrified by what they read in the Book of Mueller. And yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of political death, we should fear no evil, for God and righteousness are with us and surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives as one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, including and especially the man in the White House. So much for the separation of Church and State.

Back to Easter. We have a self-professed God-like person in the White House (well, actually, this weekend he is at Mar-a-Lago playing golf). He feels he has been unjustly crucified by the Fake News, especially the Failing New York Times, who he so desperately courts for redemption. I would try to further liken him to Jesus, but he wouldn’t want to admit he inherited anything from God and he certainly wouldn’t want to share the stage with some flaky Holy Ghost, whoever the hell that is. And Mary Magdalene was cute, but hardly enough to fulfill the earnest needs of such a powerful man. But remember what happens after Easter, the guy wanders around for a few days before going off to sit at the right hand of God. Several angels (Kelly Ann and Sarah?) tell the world of his great wonders and then the Apostle Mitch says he saw him for real and for sure. I somehow think that if I had a son like Mr. Trump I would probably want to keep him close by just to keep an eye on him, so it all makes sense to me.

And as to the prophecy that there will yet again be a next coming, I feel that is a reasonable assumption. After all, when you go down through history; Attila the Hun, Caligula, King John the Bad, Ivan the Terrible, Torquemada, Vlad the Impaler, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Pablo Escobar, Osama Bin Ladin, Donald Trump, the one thing we know is that evil will rise again. The key is to stomp on it as hard as you can and make an example of it so as to remind people that it cannot be tolerated no matter how bad you thought Hilary was.