Here’s what we know so far: a while back the National Archives raised the issue of whether or not former President Donald Trump took some documents he wasn’t supposed to have when he left the White House and the National Archives asked the Justice Department to look into it.
On a somewhat-related issue:
I recently helped my brothers clean up my mother’s garage and she had stored all kinds of crap in there like rugs so old they cracked when we unfolded them and one of things we found was a World War II Army pup tent that my stepfather supposedly brought home after the war which raises the question of just when the Army started allowing soldiers to take shit home with them and if that was their post-WW2 policy, why didn’t my step-father bring home something a little more useful like a jeep.
(I mean as long as you’re going to steal something.)
When you leave some jobs (and apparently President of the United States is one of them) you don’t get to take stuff home with you and I was there the day a minor league ballplayer from Latin America was cut from the team and he asked if he could take his uniform with him as a souvenir so he could prove he was once a professional ballplayer and was told he couldn’t because they needed to give it to somebody else to wear.
BTW:
Whenever someone gets overly-lyrical about the beauty of baseball, remember; that’s probably someone who never actually played baseball professionally because the guys who do quickly find out it’s a cutthroat business and don’t get all misty-eyed about “having a catch” with their dad.
Plus, I’ve seen a lot of dads throw and you sometimes play more “fetch” than “catch” and you probably wouldn’t have gotten all choked up if Kevin Costner’s dad threw the first ball 10 feet over Kevin’s head.
Anyway…
If a ballplayer is expected to follow the rules you might think an ex-President could do the same, but we’re talking about Donald Trump who has a long and rich history of cutting corners and doing whatever the hell he feels like and don’t forget this is the same guy who once said he could shoot somebody in broad daylight and get away with it and if you were famous enough it was OK to grab women by the vagina.
To Donald Trump, taking home some Top Secret documents probably didn’t seem like all that big a deal.
I made several attempts to recount the facts of this case (what were the documents seized, were they declassified, did Trump doodle in the margins “Putin is so manly, he reminds me of Angela Merkel”) but concluded you can find that information elsewhere because what I chose to focus on are the Republicans currently whining about unfair treatment from law enforcement, but don’t have jackshit to say when law enforcement shoots an unarmed Black man.
The Trouble with Bullshit
As you might have already noticed, politicians will say and/or do pretty much anything to get reelected.
And part of getting reelected is working potential voters and/or donors into a frenzy so they’ll be motivated to vote and/or donate, so right now you have Republican politicians claiming the election was stolen and the FBI is currently being run by Heinrich Himmler and the problem with making these bullshit claims is some people are going to believe them.
Tell people that they need to “Fight like Hell” or America will be taken over by Communists and degenerates and some of those people will believe you and try to take over the Capitol.
And after Donald Trump and the his Band of Republican Hand Puppets complained about the FBI’s actions, some knucklehead showed up at the Cincinnati, Ohio FBI office wearing body armor and tried to “breach a security screening area” and was eventually shot and killed in a standoff with police.
Threats against FBI agents have escalated and you can draw a pretty straight line from the politicians who used to be part of the Law and Order Party But Lost Their Way to the people threatening to kill government agents.
And speaking of bullshit and its ramifications:
Here’s Missouri Senator Josh Hawley raising a fist in solidarity with the January 6th rioters:
And here he is later that that day running from the mob he encouraged:
(Reportedly, Josh Hawley is writing a book called “Manhood” and I’d make a joke about it, but I’m guessing you don’t need my help seeing the humor in this.)
After the FBI searched Donald Trump’s residence for documents he wasn’t supposed to have, Mike Pence tweeted:
“No former president has ever been subject to a raid of their personal residence in American history.”
But as Washington Post columnist Colbert I. King pointed out, has any other former president given law enforcement a reason to do so? No other living former president – Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama – has been accused of illegally possessing classified documents taken from the White House.
Same thing with Salman Rushdie.
30 years ago someone decides Rushdie needs to die because he wrote the wrong words on a piece of paper and three decades later someone whose elevator might not go all the way to the penthouse decides Rushdie ought to be stabbed.
Something to think about
If (and here you get to pick the deity of your choice, but I’m going to use the Christian God) is All-Powerful and can create the World in Seven Days and part the Red Sea and Has a Plan We Don’t Understand and Shouldn’t Question Because He Works In Mysterious Ways and all the other things God is accused of doing, why do so many people think He (and/or She) needs their personal help?
Discuss.
P.S. The World is Ending
We have now entered the phase of my Diatribe Against Bullshit Because Some Moron Might Believe It in which I point out that in the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” story eventually there was a real wolf, but because the Boy had lied so often nobody believed him so they didn’t do jackshit about the wolf and in my version of the story the Real Wolf is climate change.
When I first heard about climate change it seemed like something a long way off that my grandkids would have to deal with and I was wrong on both counts because I don’t have grandkids and climate change seems to be happening right here, right now.
The news that severe droughts have dried up bodies of water which have revealed lost ruins and old shipwrecks led to the above cartoon.
Today’s lessons:
1. The Republicans whining about the FBI search are hypocrites.
2. Don’t make outlandish claims because some idiot might believe them.
3. And if you’re going to steal from the U.S. Army, steal something better than a pup tent.
I chuckled audibly.
“A man’s reach should exceed his grasp…” Robert Browning