A pool of fools
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One of the enduring characteristics of history is that it is merciless toward fools, and generous toward the people who saw clearly when clarity came at a price.
For more than a decade, the people who have been the most right about Donald Trump have been called hysterics, alarmists, lunatics and, my personal favorite, “deranged.”
The warnings were supposedly overwrought.
The danger was exaggerated.
The fascism was imaginary.
The corruption was normal politics.
The criminality was just Trump’s style.
Then came the insurrection, convictions, and the humiliation of the United States before the world.
Let’s not forget the wrecked alliances, the wrecked economy, the shattered institutions, the razing of historic Washington in service of a dictator’s vanity, and a war that ended not in triumph, but in humiliation.
The people who warned about all of this weren’t deranged. They were paying attention.
The derangement belonged elsewhere.
It belonged to the television propagandists who converted journalism into an infomercial for authoritarianism.
It belonged to the Republican politicians who surrendered their dignity one applause line at a time.
It belonged to the media careerists who convinced themselves that objectivity required pretending not to recognize an arsonist holding a can of gasoline and a lit match.
There’s another category as well.
It’s populated by brilliant people who somehow managed to become fools. Ross Douthat of The New York Times is an example.
There’s a particular type produced by elite institutions — a person of obvious intelligence who has become so insulated by abstraction that reality itself becomes merely another interesting argument to entertain.
The house is on fire.
The republic is in danger.
The Constitution is under assault.
The question before the country is moral before it’s political.
Yet somehow these observers float above the struggle, treating the defining conflict of the age as though it were a graduate seminar where cleverness is mistaken for wisdom.
There’s a profound difference between skepticism and detachment.
There’s an even greater difference between intellectual humility and moral evasion.
History isn’t interested in how elegantly someone described the collapse while refusing to choose a side.
History remembers whether they stood up — or whether they looked away.
Jon Ossoff understood something that too many Republicans never have. Trumpism is an exercise in self-abasement. Ossoff called Donald Trump a “national disgrace.” He has described Trump, Stephen Miller and JD Vance as “small men” who could never understand that America’s greatness flows from its ideals, rather than blood or ethnicity. He was describing a politics built on submission rather than character.
Self-abasement.
That’s the currency of Trumpism — not conviction, patriotism nor courage.
Only submission.
Over the years, I have talked repeatedly about the fact that Tulsi Gabbard was unfit to oversee the intelligence services of the United States.
Not merely because she traveled to Syria to meet Bashar al-Assad.
Not merely because of her appalling judgment.
Those were warning signs.
There was something deeper.
I argued that her longstanding association with the Science of Identity Foundation and its leader, Chris Butler, raised profound questions about her independence, judgment and suitability for one of the most sensitive national security positions in the American government.
Many people reacted as though raising those questions was somehow beyond the pale.
Notice what happened.
The outrage was directed not toward the prospect of placing someone with those unresolved questions atop America’s intelligence community. It was directed toward the people asking the questions.
That inversion tells you almost everything you need to know about the moral collapse of our political culture.
Now comes The Washington Post‘s extraordinary investigation examining confidential messages and documents concerning Gabbard’s relationship with Butler — described in the newspaper’s own headline as “her guru” — and the influence he and his circle allegedly exercised over her political development and career.
Read it carefully.
Then ask yourself a few simple questions:
How did this escape meaningful scrutiny during the confirmation process?
How did Congress fail to uncover what an investigative reporter uncovered?
How did the FBI and the intelligence community conclude that everything was satisfactory?
How did the Senate confirm her to oversee America’s intelligence agencies after the attacks of September 11, after two decades of hard lessons about infiltration, foreign influence, extremist ideology and compromised judgment?
How?
Every American who remembers watching passenger jets tear through the towers of the World Trade Center should feel a chill.
The Director of National Intelligence isn’t an honorary title.
It isn’t a reward.
It isn’t reality television.
It’s among the most solemn responsibilities entrusted by a free people.
Donald Trump doesn’t understand that.
He doesn’t understand the presidency.
He doesn’t understand the Constitution.
He doesn’t understand that appointments are acts of stewardship, not acts of personal loyalty.
This raises larger questions:
How could the United States Senate confirm Tulsi Gabbard?
How could it confirm Pete Hegseth?
How could it confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?
How could it confirm Kash Patel?
The answer is as depressing as it is obvious because courage has become scarce.
Integrity has become expensive, and self-respect has become negotiable.
The 118th Congress won’t be remembered for defending the republic. It will be remembered for accommodating its degradation.
As America approaches its 250th birthday, this Congress has distinguished itself as the lowest, most servile, most morally exhausted Congress in the history of the United States.
Donald Trump built a reflecting pool. Perhaps that’s fitting.
It’s the perfect place for this Congress to gather for its class photograph — not because it reflects greatness, but because it reflects exactly what they became.
Senator Ted Cruz spent the weekend attacking the masculinity of James Talarico.
When the Capitol was stormed on January 6, 2021, Ted Cruz was found hiding in a closet.
Yet Texas chose to re-elect him as United States Senator.
The pool of fools is large indeed.
Steve- one of your best!!!!