Something Broke in America Last Week

David Rothkopf:

Something broke in America this week. We have been spiraling downward since Trump's election, but this week, we crossed a line. The President and his men began asserting that they were above the law--and effectively no one in our system did anything to stop them. 

The Attorney General sneered at the Congress and placed himself imperiously above its questions. He continued to arrogate onto himself what portions of the Mueller Report--paid for by the people, essentially in its totality to the Congress to do its duty--we would see. He asserted again that he was the final arbiter of whether obstruction of justice by the president had taken place. He even went so far as to imply that law enforcement authorities carrying out their duty to protect America were somehow "spying", perhaps illicitly... on the Trump campaign. (Ignoring that the reasons for the investigation in question were not only sound...but the core reason...that Russia had sought to aid the Trump campaign in the election had been proven again by Mueller.) 

At the same time, the Secretary of the Treasury and the head of the IRS determined to violate a law that required in no uncertain terms for them to provide the president's tax returns to the chairman of the House Ways and Means committee. 

At the same time a purge at the Department of Homeland Security took place and it became quickly clear it was because the president and his team were frustrated that officials would not act in violation of the law. 

We learned that the White House promised pardons... to those who break the law, encouraging a crime and abetting it. 

We learned that they considered an egregious abuse of power that would involve releasing illegal immigrants in sanctuary cities controlled by Democrats. 

We saw the president complain that our military would not rough up immigrants. 

We saw him continue the charade of an emergency at our southern border which was an excuse for him illegally divert government resources to an unnecessary, racist, vanity project. 

The president repeatedly called law enforcement officers who investigated him traitors, guilty of treason--a crime that carries with it the death penalty. 

We discovered that the president considered appointing his grossly unqualified daughter to be head of the World Bank. 

It is the stuff of the world's most dysfunctional governments. 

But rather than generating a response from within our system commensurate with the threat, nothing occurred. The GOP leaders in the Senate circled round the president and supported his abuses. In so doing, they sent a message that they would never challenge him much less convict him of the myriad crimes he has committed. 

The checks and balances our system was built upon are gone. Worse, the courts are being packed with Trump cronies--often unqualified. 

Agencies are being left to appointed caretakers some outside the normal chain of succession, many unconfirmed for their current posts by the Senate. 

Political opponents tip-toed around these crimes daring not to appear "too extreme." 

This is how democracies die. The rule of law is slowly strangled. The unthinkable becomes commonplace. The illegal becomes accepted--from violations of the emoluments clause to self-dealing to Federal election law crimes to serial sexual abuse. What once was black and white blurs into grey. Right and wrong, old principles, enduring values, fade from memory. 

Authoritarians arrive in our midst not in tanks but in bad suits and worse haircuts. 

I have long thought our system was better than this--more resilient. 

But candidly, I'm no longer sure. I remain hopeful...hopeful that the next election cycle can redress this manifold wrongs. But it will not be easy. It will be too close. 

Trump may be with us for six more yrs. Why? Because we allowed ourselves to become inured to the unthinkable. We are dying the death of a thousand cuts. 

Right now, this week, the president and his band of thugs are winning. They have become unabashed in their attacks on the law. They are daring someone to enforce it. But what if...what if the courts rule against them but they ignore it? What if the Treasury Secretary has violated a law and no one arrests him. What if the president steals and canoodles with enemies and he goes unpunished? 

Their crimes will only grow more egregious and their ways will only grow more ingrained in our system. Their violations will in fact become the system itself. 

Corruption will be the norm-greater corruption, to be sure, since it it was corruption that got us here in the first place. Our only hope is recognizing the seriousness of our situation. 

This is not politics as usual. This is not an erosion of what was. 

This is a full blown crisis, the greatest American politics has faced in half a century...perhaps much longer. It is not a time for equivocation. It is not a time for patience. It is time for those who seek to protect the rule of law to step up to protect it or the chance may not soon again return.

And Congress is out of session for two weeks, and will do nothing... so all this will be old news when they come back.

It's too fucking much.

I'll be damned if I let this country descend into pure authoritarianism. We need to fight this regime with everything we have.