March 7, 2018
On any given day in Trump’s America, we cycle through the emotions of rage, fear and hope. We consume the news with a strong sense of gallows humor filtered through a lens of incredulity. On some days, we experience all of those emotions simultaneously, as we did on Monday, watching the slow motion trainwreck of Sam Nunberg’s series of increasingly unhinged, defiant interviews on MSNBC and CNN. While stating his intention to flout the Special Counsel’s subpoena and openly court being thrown in jail, Nunberg intimated that Trump was guilty of obstruction of justice and conspiring with the Russian efforts to interfere in our elections.
While we were mesmerized by the Nunberg freak show, we may have overlooked the bombshells in Jane Mayer’s report on Christopher Steele. In a detailed article, Mayer laid out the depth of Steele’s Russia expertise and revealed alarming details on how entwined Trump’s entire circle is with a host of shady Russian characters. By far the most explosive nugget was Mayer’s revelation of Steele’s intelligence (not yet verified) that the Kremlin blocked Mitt Romney’s appointment as Secretary of State, insisting that Trump appoint someone more likely to undo the sanctions imposed by President Obama. While there’s no suggestion that the Kremlin explicitly recommended Tillerson, the fact is that he and Trump have failed to enforce the additional sanctions imposed by Congress after the election (Source: “Christopher Steele, the Man Behind the Trump Dossier,” by Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, 3/12/18 issue).
We have also recently learned that Trump’s corruption is hydra-headed and involves more than just Russian collusion. Yesterday, The New York Times reported that unregistered foreign agent, George Nader, was Mueller’s latest cooperating witness. Nader, an advisor to the United Arab Emirates, apparently brokered and was present at a secret meeting in the Seychelles among the Emiriti Crown Prince, Erik Prince (founder of Blackwater and a Trump emissary) and Putin emissary, Kirill Dmitriev, in the Seychelles, shortly before Trump’s inauguration (Source: “Adviser to Emirates With Ties to Trump Aides is Cooperating With Special Counsel,” by Mark Mazetti, David Kirkpatrick and Adam Goldman, The New York Times, 3/6/18).
The continuing Republican inaction in the face of irrefutable evidence that Trump is defiling the presidency by selling the country off piece by piece to the highest bidder is damning indeed. Even Trump’s recklessly stubborn determination to wreck the economy by engaging in a trade war with our allies cannot move Congressional Republicans to do more than murmur their faint disapproval.
It is increasingly evident that the only way our country can be saved is if we save it. That is why the news of the victory of the teachers in West Virginia was so heartening. After striking for nine days, West Virginia teachers (who are 48th lowest paid in the nation) finally won a 5% increase in their pay, not just for themselves, but for all state employees (“Back to school: West Virginia teachers end strike,” by Ron Allen, NBCNews.com, 3/6/18). It turns out that the inspiring labor activism of West Virginia is contagious. In Oklahoma, the school district officials are explicitly supporting their teachers’ consideration of a strike, passing a resolution, supporting “any steps necessary to improve conditions for our teachers — including a district wide suspension of classes,” (Source: “Oklahoma teachers may strike,– and Tulsa schools officials say they are okay with it,” by Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post, 3/6/18). The students of Parkland continue to inspire us, harnessing the teenage talent for relentlessness to bring corporations to heel, troll the NRA on social media and prevent adults from turning the page on the issue of gun violence.
Although the Republican controlled government seems committed to betraying everything this country stands for and inflicting misery on everyone in it, the good news is that everywhere you look, ordinary Americans are fighting back by organizing, voting and striking. Every day it becomes clearer that there is no room on the sidelines. Turn off the freak show and get to work!