Up to Us

There comes a moment when little Kevin McAllister realizes he’s home alone and it’s all up to him.

Authoritarian regimes don’t work as dramatically as The Wet Bandits. Step by step, lie by lie, they transform the abominable into the ordinary. The day arrives when you realize everything is corrupt, all the way down, and the only chance to recover freedom, truth, or dignity requires dramatic action. But here we are.

Donald Trump openly claims he has the authority to do whatever he wants, and whatever he wants has nothing to do with “America First.” It’s all about corruption. Trump always confesses his crimes one way or another, but now he’s wide open. It’s just that we’ve gotten used to it, and we tolerate it. We think we can wait till November, but maybe we can’t.

Maybe we didn’t notice because we don’t live in New York and we don’t plan to travel, say, this Saturday. Claiming it’s because New York allows undocumented immigrants to apply for drivers’ licenses, Trump cut off New York residents from the Global Entry program. Just a little Fort Lee inconvenience for frequent international travelers.

But of course it’s not about policy. Trump told us—yes, by tweet—he want New York to stop investigating his finances. Not that he has anything to hide. This isn’t entirely new: Trump has already gone after Jeff Bezos and Amazon, California, and Puerto Rico when their leadership has vexed him. But it may be the first time he’s openly suggested his behavior was a cover-up.

Who said cover-up? Did you say cover-up? Now Trump wants all the Mueller convictions thrown out, on the grounds that the investigations revealed the depth of his corruption are so compromised.

Nobody believes William Barr would really quit, and nobody trusts FoxNews on anything, but even the FoxWorld is asking “what the hell?” about the recent spate of pardons. How corrupt do you have to be to get one? My guess is, you have to be really rich, powerful, or famous to get one. More to the point: one set of crazy pardons softens the blow for the ones about to come (see above paragraph). But haven’t we crossed the line—like, for sure this time—when Trump pardons his TrumpRussia accomplices?

Oh, pardons. In a British court Julian Assange’s lawyer claimed there’s evidence Trump offered the WikiLeaks Russian agent a pardon if he’d just say Russia had nothing to do with the hacked material he released. And the judge will admit the evidence.

Remarkably, FoxNews keeps reporting Trump’s corruption, all in the name of calling out media bias. Now we have an acting Director of National Intelligence who has zero expertise in the field. He’s just a Trump tweeter. He’s done communications at the UN for the Bush 43 administration. Early in his time as ambassador to Germany, he announced he’d try to help “other conservatives” in Europe, a clear offense to his hosts. The only thing this guy will do is tamp down accountability. No America First here.

It’s the kind of world where Border Patrol special tactics teams might be deployed to sanctuary cities because, you know, there’s so much violence among undocumented immigrants there. (No, there isn’t.)

I’m all about the November elections. But given this level of corruption, why would we expect a fair election? Remember, Trump has already told us he doesn’t believe in fair elections.