And yet

David Frum has been admirable throughout the Trump catastrophe. He is a person of principle and intellectual honesty, and has the moral decency to condemn the indecent. His latest piece in The Atlantic provides further evidence of all that.

And yet, he's still living in a bit of an illusion. "To be a conservative" hasn't had much actual meaning for 25 years. There has been nothing remotely "conservative" about the GOP or its fellow travelers. The right has become increasingly radical -- the polar opposite of conservatism. They want to rip things up from the root (the root word of "radical"). Grover Norquist's bathtub long predates Trump's descent on that escalator. From Gingrich & co forward, the Republican Party had devolved into an anti-Constitutional, anti-American rolling coup. Trump has taken that coup to terrifying and disgusting places, but he didn't start the fire.

Battle of deep states

This seems entirely plausible. Even vile morons can be pawns in the Great Game -- maybe especially vile morons.

Profound perspective

I want to park this piece here, because it's a brilliant integration of feminism and post-modernism. It's unique in capturing the emotional impact of living under erasure.

Bye bye Bernie...

... or, at least, his bros. Good piece from Charles Pierce on the DNC chairmanship election.

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

What happens to the feelings, the mental health, the spiritual state of Trump voters when the circus tent comes crashing down -- as it will eventually, perhaps sooner rather than later? They will be exposed to the world as, at best, morons (at worst, vicious racists and misogynists). There will be no escaping from the knowledge that they were not only snookered into backing a disaster, but that the civilized world holds them in contempt. The Trump voter will forever be the Yahoo Laureate of Planet Earth. The shame and humiliation will be intense -- and will certainly be exacerbated by the we-told-you-sos from the media and the elites they thought they were defeating.

Where, then, do those feelings go? Is this the seed of shame that will, after some interval, grow into an American Reich? an American Al Qaeda?

Trump truly is a body blow to the American experiment -- one whose effect will not end when he is eventually gonged offstage. We may need some avatar of Lincoln and Mandela if we have any hope that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Stop spreading the news

Frank Bruni had a brief period of lucidity, but seems to have reverted to his wonted gossip column vapidity.

Observer-in-Chief

Well, this blog began with a perception that Hillary was the leader Obama could never be, and today's press conference seems to have brought us full circle. He's a decent man, but he is constitutionally (pun intended) incapable of rising to this occasion, of fulfilling his oath to defend and protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Barack Obama has faced many obstacles in his presidency, but only one true crisis. A foreign power has attacked our institutions in order to install its preferred leader -- a man whose low character, disqualifying ignorance, mental illness and lack of self-control will damage America perhaps irrevocably, and which threaten the safety of the world. He is an extinction-level event, but he's putty in Putin's hands. Institutions of the government were complicit in this scheme -- notably the FBI, a segment of which constitutes a treasonous fifth column. But rather than fulfill his oath of office, Barack Obama has retreated into his reflexive decorum. He declined to reveal the true nature of the Russian cyber attack during the campaign, though he knew what it was, for fear of being criticized as partisan. He declined to rein in Comey, both in July and in October, allowing the ego-besotted FBI Director to deliver the fatal blows to Hillary's campaign not once, but twice.

And today, rather than take decisive action -- or any action at all -- to save the country when it is under assault, he chose to throw Hillary under the bus, to laud his own electoral success, to whine about how badly he's been treated, to defend Comey and even Trump, and to prevent any steps that might be taken to avert the impending catastrophe.

Abraham Lincoln took America to war to save it. Barack Obama has chosen a different path. History will not judge him kindly, if there's any history left to relate, or historians to relate it. Once again, the best lack all conviction, even in the face of the worst and their passionate intensity.