Introduction
The other day I wrote about the regrettable evaporation of Phase 2 on the Epstein case, and in that piece I listed a number of possible options for understanding it. These options were offered to you, the discerning public, as possible explainers for what the heck was going on. I offered them as a public service.
But since that time, and it wasn’t that long ago, Tulsi Gabbard declassified a number of documents that appeared to me to me to have weighed 30,000 pounds, that were delivered by B-1 bombers, and which went down the ventilation shaft of the Obama legacy. So to speak.
And so as a result of all those developments, that word serving as a good descriptor for all the chum in the water, another option occurred to me. And so I would like to add that option to my previous list.
The Source of the MAGA Discomfiture
But first . . . before adding to the list of possibilities of what Trump might be thinking and doing here, let me do a quick review of what was behind the MAGA push back on the DOJ’s announcement that there was no Epstein list, and that the case was now spit spot closed. I saw a representative meme float by the other day that was a map of the Gulf of America, with the gulf renamed Gulf of Nobody’s Been Arrested Yet. That about sums up the angst.
In the catalog of dirty deeds done over the last number of decades, the Epstein dirty deeds certainly need to be included that catalog, listed under Elite Pervs. They certainly rank right up there. But they were by no means the most gaudy or grotesque misdeeds perpetrated against the commonwealth. There are a number of others, a few of which were in plain sight, and which we will get to in a minute.
So out in the MAGA world, Epstein was not being considered as the worst criminal, he was merely being considered as one of the most obvious ones. Epstein was considered to have been low-hanging fruit, and the rhetoric of the Trump campaign and administration had greatly encouraged the idea that this was indeed low-hanging fruit.
So the consternation was not over the fact that there would be no prosecutions related to Epstein. Rather the fear was that this was signalling the fact that there would be no prosecutions related to anything or anyone, for any reason. And that was taken onboard as a worry that the Deep State had reasserted itself, and would be allowed to continue on merrily. Consequences are for the little people, and the dirtmeisters of official Washington are impervious to our low opinion of them. They care not.
So the announcement of “no charges” was taken, not as a particular point about Epstein, but rather as a signal that maybe Trump was rethinking that whole “drain the swamp” thing. And if you can’t run with men, how will you run with horses (Jer. 12:5)? If the Epstein bull snake case is too tough for you to pursue, how are you going to deal with the 28 anacondas?
So here is the other option I thought of, and it is a bit more cheerful than some of the other ones. “I don’t have time for the bull snake right now because in a few days we take on all the anacondas, all at once.”
So . . . Think About What Just Happened
Tulsi Gabbard has in effect announced that former President Obama was guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors, to use the language of the Constitution. Gabbard made a point of using the language of treason. In his follow-up discussion of the released documents, Trump reiterated the stakes by using that same term—treasonous, he said. And all the way up to Obama.
Tulsi’s declassification of these documents demonstrated that President Obama ordered the intelligence agencies to jigger their reports to him in order to provide a foundation for alleging that there was collusion between Trump and Russia to help him win the 2016 election. This was not normal political disagreement and opposition. This was unvarnished and seditious corruption, and at the highest levels of government.
Now think about this for a minute. Trump had to know that this move from Tulsi was coming. When commenting on it, he didn’t act at all as though some underling got ahead of herself, or opened fire early, or otherwise committed him to something he didn’t want to be committed to. No, he leaned into it. This was already in the works, and he knew it. So when he was turning away from the Epstein matter, he was turning toward something. In this view, he was a hunter turning away from the rabbit to go after the elephant. The push back was because his base was afraid that he was turning away from hunting altogether.
Now there is no denying that the announcement that suggested we “forget the rabbit” was badly managed. It was a bowl of hash, in other words, not done well, contradictory, and all the rest of it. But if they really are serious about going after all the big game, it will be a botched job that will be quickly forgotten. If they botched the shot at the rabbit because they were drawing a bead on the elephant, everyone’s attention will be fixed on the elephant hunt. So that’s the option. This might be happening.
But there is still room for caution. If the criminal referrals that have been registered with the DOJ do not come to arrests and trials, then the over-promising and under-delivering that the Epstein deal represented will be seen as simply the warm-up exercises. It will turn out to be the overture to that symphony called Lame Sauce in D Minor. They will have decided to go for the world record in over-promising and under-delivering. “Forget those Epstein clients in handcuffs! Think Hillary in handcuffs! Orange jump suit and all! No, wait, never mind!”
Death Matches
Now let me review something important. Back when Trump won in 2016, surprising everybody, including him, I urged in this space that Trump not go after Hillary legally. You remember that Trump campaign rallies had resonated with repeated chant of “Lock her up! Lock her up!” Now no one should ever want to discourage the spirit of such jollity and exuberance, and one takes the point. But it really is banana republic stuff when losing a election means going to jail or losing your life.
Of course you want accountability. Of course there has to be consequences for bad behavior, including bad behavior at high levels. Of course . . . wait for it . . . no one is above the law. I had not the slightest doubt that there were crimes that Hillary could plausibly be indicted for, but you still don’t want to see that kind of jitney politics. So I wrote that then, and in the abstract, I still think that.
However, but, comma, on the other hand . . .
So when a particular set of cultural expectations takes root, a culture of using the legal machinery of the government against any and all political opponents, you have already lost your republic. It is already gone. When one major political party, one that periodically has actual control of the government, adopts this as their standard operating procedure, you are not protecting your civic norms by refraining from this behavior yourself. What has happened is that war has broken out, and you announce your pacifism.
When they do this, they say they are “protecting democracy,” and that “no one is above the law,” and so on. But when this happens, the legal machinery is not being used to clean up elections. Rather it is ensuring that all elections will get progressively dirtier. Every election is now a death match, and that does not encourage a spirit of sportsmanship and fair play. So my argument back then was that the good guys should do whatever they could to keep our elections from turning into a death match.
That was my thinking back at the time. But what happens when the other side unilaterally makes the decision to make every election a death match? It makes no sense for the other side to refrain from some actions in order to avoid a death match when you realize that you are already in the middle of a death match. That would be like Admiral Nimitz ordering his ships at Midway not to shoot back because he didn’t want to “provoke a hostile reaction.”
During the debate over the Constitution, George Washington was chairing the meeting, and therefore was not participating in the debate. The topic was whether or not we should have a standing army, and someone proposed that we should have an army, but that the number of troops should be fixed at something like 10,000 men. Washington leaned over to a colleague and said that the motion needed a rider that stipulated that we would never be invaded by a force of over 15,000 men.
The deeper lesson in this dark and amusing anecdote is that there are many aspects of conflict that are not up to you.
Unilateral Death Match, or Attempted Murder by Another Name
So what do I mean when I say that the other side decided, and unilaterally, that this is the way we do things now. If you don’t resist them, then . . . this is the way we do things now. If you do resist them, then some warmed-over conservative types, yearning for the Eisenhower years, will complain that you are the one normalizing this death match behavior, that you are the reason that this is the way we do things now. You know, the way people overlook centuries of Muslim conquest and aggression in order to blame Christian Europe for the Crusades. Kind of like that. Actually, no. Exactly like that.
Indict Obama? You can’t arrest a former president. We don’t do things like that here in America, except for the time we just did it to Trump. You can’t have the FBI raid a former president’s house. Except for the time we just did it to Trump. You can’t expect high level dignitaries like Obama and Hillary to submit to the outrage of having their mug shot taken. Except, as I seem to recall . . .
Let’s not even talk about attempts to ban Trump from the ballot in multiple states. Let’s not talk about the attempts to circumvent the Electoral College with a popular vote pact between states. Let’s not talk about the two assassination attempts. Let’s not talk about all the other stuff.
All the civic norms that should be supported in an ordinary time, by ordinary people, in an ordinary country, have already been shattered, and are in thousands of pieces on the floor. If nothing is done with these criminals now, and they win another election down the road, then there will be nothing whatever restraining them. We will have established this pattern as our new normal.
Every political contest will be between a leftist who is an MMA fighter, and a conservative who has bound himself to abide by the rules of wrestling that he learned in his Hot Stove Wrestling League back in third grade.