On the Russia Imbroglio
If you're anything like me, it has been difficult to get things done in the last few months, as the Russia probe slowly unraveled. Like roadside drivers slowing down because they can't take their eyes off a disastrous wreck, I have followed the newspapers, the posts, the tweets, and even been to the studio a couple of times to comment on key moments of the scandal (the Comey testimony had me holed up at KTVU for four hours.) Glee and furor about the discoveries turns into despair at the slim prospects that some of our Republican lawmakers will grow a backbone and strip the Emperor of Trumpistan of his new clothes.
A couple of months ago I had some friends over for lunch and a viewing of Coppola's terrific All the President's Men with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. The intrigues on screen are absorbing and evoke a feeling of paranoia and a chase. But the movie also left me dismayed at how our naiveté has evaporated. In the seventies, a president who spies on his opponents' campaign and tries to cover it up was a scandal that shook many Americans to the core (though I'm told by my older friends that many did not understand, even at the time, what all the fuss was about.) We have grown so accustomed to unscrupulous politics that none of this surprises us anymore.
It very well may be that we've become inured to bad behavior as a consequence of consuming too much fiction and nonfiction that makes corruption and self-serving behavior the rule, rather than the exception. House of Cards comes to mind. But to be honest, I oscillate between shock by the Russia collusion discoveries and a deep recognition that this probe is merely a coat hanger for me, on which I have hung all my discontent with this criminal government and all my hopes for its unraveling.
It is especially ironic to cry cries of woe about interference in the election when the United States has actively interfered in at least eight elections that I know of (and likely many I don't know of.) And I think that my discomfort with this stems from shreds of defensiveness, fed by years of watching Mission: Impossible on TV. The government in Mission: Impossible does all the things that the U.S. really did - depose rulers, place puppet rulers in their place, rig election machines, run campaigns, and sometimes just plain assassinate people, but we are comfortable with these because we assume that the government's deeds promote an objective good that allow citizens of the free world to sleep safely in their beds. It takes a dark teatime of the soul to realize that we are not the unqualified benevolent rulers of the world.
It's not that I don't care about the Russia interference. I can make Putin jokes just like everyone else, and I go to all the protests and make all the right sounds. But the truth is that my hopes in this affair are not so much to clean the shadow of foreign interference, but rather to bend the arc of justice, that has taken so many wrong turns lately, back toward justice, and to start repairing the damages that are not irrevocable (the ruination of families through deportation and travel bans, the resounding support for draconian criminal justice policies, and the environmental and international irresponsibility and colossal embarrassment that this administration has wrought are partly irrevocable.) If this is what it takes for him and his assorted band of criminals to exit the stage, I'll take it happily and with both hands, but this is not why I want them gone.
A couple of months ago I had some friends over for lunch and a viewing of Coppola's terrific All the President's Men with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. The intrigues on screen are absorbing and evoke a feeling of paranoia and a chase. But the movie also left me dismayed at how our naiveté has evaporated. In the seventies, a president who spies on his opponents' campaign and tries to cover it up was a scandal that shook many Americans to the core (though I'm told by my older friends that many did not understand, even at the time, what all the fuss was about.) We have grown so accustomed to unscrupulous politics that none of this surprises us anymore.
It very well may be that we've become inured to bad behavior as a consequence of consuming too much fiction and nonfiction that makes corruption and self-serving behavior the rule, rather than the exception. House of Cards comes to mind. But to be honest, I oscillate between shock by the Russia collusion discoveries and a deep recognition that this probe is merely a coat hanger for me, on which I have hung all my discontent with this criminal government and all my hopes for its unraveling.
It is especially ironic to cry cries of woe about interference in the election when the United States has actively interfered in at least eight elections that I know of (and likely many I don't know of.) And I think that my discomfort with this stems from shreds of defensiveness, fed by years of watching Mission: Impossible on TV. The government in Mission: Impossible does all the things that the U.S. really did - depose rulers, place puppet rulers in their place, rig election machines, run campaigns, and sometimes just plain assassinate people, but we are comfortable with these because we assume that the government's deeds promote an objective good that allow citizens of the free world to sleep safely in their beds. It takes a dark teatime of the soul to realize that we are not the unqualified benevolent rulers of the world.
It's not that I don't care about the Russia interference. I can make Putin jokes just like everyone else, and I go to all the protests and make all the right sounds. But the truth is that my hopes in this affair are not so much to clean the shadow of foreign interference, but rather to bend the arc of justice, that has taken so many wrong turns lately, back toward justice, and to start repairing the damages that are not irrevocable (the ruination of families through deportation and travel bans, the resounding support for draconian criminal justice policies, and the environmental and international irresponsibility and colossal embarrassment that this administration has wrought are partly irrevocable.) If this is what it takes for him and his assorted band of criminals to exit the stage, I'll take it happily and with both hands, but this is not why I want them gone.
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