Mea Culpa
These are not in any way, shape, or form, 'normal' times.
Listening to Michael Cohen, the president’s one-time personal lawyer and fixer, is not reassuring.
You may have seen him on the Rachel Maddow Show or Jimmy Kimmel, but I have been listening to his Mea Culpa podcast - a Latin phrase that means “through my own fault” - where he dissects the man who would be dictator-for-life, the people around him, the family run business and the administration that couldn’t shoot straight with the skill of a Bronx-accented surgeon.
Think about it. And, we need to think about it, because there are 60 million Americans who are out of their minds goo-goo eyed over someone they honestly view as some kind of twisted savior.
He’s trapped. Michael Cohen says he never expected to become president. He saw his run for the presidency as the “greatest infomercial in the history of politics.” A majority of his wealth was due to his name brand. As for the infomercial, he succeeded far beyond his wildest dreams.
He’s trapped not only by the fear of going to prison, but by the fact that his empire, built on sand, may totally collapse once he’s out of office and hounded by District Attorneys and state Attorney Generals.
From where we are right now, it appears America’s news organizations heavily depend on this man creating news. Many of them probably fear the day he is no longer in the news cycle. And that is a fear I have voiced more than once. News organizations need him to stay afloat. They need him to sell papers, digital subscriptions, magazines, advertising.
You know those tiny tick birds that sit on top of cows? And the cow and tick bird have this symbiotic relationship? The news organizations are the tick bird. Our cow-sized president is their sustenance.
The man’s trapped and because he feels trapped he is going to do everything that is humanly possible - with the full weight of the American government at his beck and call - to remain in office shielded by “executive privilege”.
The man’s a criminal. White collar crime means absolutely nothing to him. If it means anything to him, white collar crime is synonymous with the price of doing business. That’s why he has legions of lawyers. We’ve already heard him musing out loud about things he has considered to keep he and his family protected by being in the White House. We’ve already witnessed the lengths he’s willing to go. Like appointing one of his criminal acquaintances to dismantle the United States Postal Service.
Cohen describes DeJoy as - basically - ‘mobbed up’.
He’s kept his taxes and his financial records hidden from the public eye for four years, despite, of course, being videotaped and recorded as saying he would produce them if elected. He can’t show them. They’re a stew of contrivances and laundered money and scams and under-reported numbers and they would implicate others besides himself.
We’re witnessing in real-time how corrupt things are behind the curtains and the depth, breadth and general widespread taint of the corruption.
What you should also be curious about is why the Internal Revenue Service wasn’t on his ass for decades.
Cohen warns that the man he came to know has no boundaries when it comes to his family and his own personal ego. If Michael Cohen was the sole prominent former member of Dear Leader’s inner circle to voice these concerns, it would be easy to wave off. If we hadn’t seen and witnessed the many and varied means with which Dear Leader will cling to the throne - and by that I mean if he had been your typical two-faced, underhanded, duplicitous politician - then there might be some reasonable doubt that he actually will, when the time comes, abide by society’s norms.
I wish I knew why Republicans are willing to go down with the ship or choose to goose step into leading positions in America’s First Reich.
I wish I knew why leading Democrats talk a good game, but play poorly. They seem to be armed with nothing more powerful than their Twitter feeds.
How many times have we heard the two words “Constitutional Crisis” over the course of four years? I thought every single elected person had to swear to protect the Constitution?
I’m afraid that nothing short of the Electoral landslide that George McGovern, the anti-Vietnam war candidate, suffered will compel enough patriotic Americans to convince him to leave the Oval Office without a knockdown dragged out fight. None of the checks and balances we’ve come to count on mean anything to someone who believes ‘executive privilege’ makes him invincible and has well-placed and powerful enablers who share his belief.
Sixty million Americans elected a monster and then the monster was handed the keys to the kingdom even though he had no more idea of how to govern than the character in the movie Being There, Chauncey Gardiner.
Or, actually, Chance the Gardener.
I’ll leave you with how Cohen’s guest, Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci, described the making or the creation of our covidiot-in-chief, who both of these wise guys say is as racist as you would imagine him to be.
He said it would be like “if Joe McCarthy had a baby with Huey Long or Charles Lindbergh and the baby got raised by Roy Cohn and then the baby grows up to be the 45th president.”
If you don’t want to search, that description can be distilled into “a xenophobic has a child with a populist racist and the child is raised by a mob lawyer who once said “don’t tell me the code, just tell me who the judge is.”
Vote. We’re going for an electoral landslide loss not seen since George McGovern had the temerity to speak out against the Vietnam War.
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Also, since the pandemic is still with us, the CDC has issued an advisory about Halloween. It doesn’t look good for all of us cosplayers.
It may be 5 o’clock somewhere, but it’s 2020 everywhere. Drink up!