Lost in Trumpland

From the beginning, the question was not whether Trump would lie but what the rest of Washington would do about it. And, on that point, I have long been struck by how successful Trump seems to be at getting others to go along with previously unthinkable plans (and in getting rid of those who do not). That “invasion” from the south may be fake, but those are real troops that the Pentagon agreed to send to the border just days before last fall’s midterm elections; it is now sending more than three thousand additional U.S. soldiers, for a deployment whose total cost, officials testified this week, will exceed six hundred million dollars by September. How is this not a bigger deal? We have deployed thousands of troops, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, for a nakedly political fake war, to combat an “invasion” on U.S. soil that does not exist.

  New Yorker

And this is the scary part. It's obvious to nearly everyone that the Emperor has no clothes, but the people who need to be pointing it out are playing along with his imaginary worldview.

[Fred Fleitz, a former senior official on Trump’s National Security Council,] who served as a C.I.A. analyst for nineteen years before briefly becoming the chief of staff on Trump’s N.S.C., last year, was sticking with that line the next day, when I called him to ask about the incendiary segment. Coats “crossed the line,” he told me, by “undermining the President in a public setting and grandstanding.” Still, Fleitz wanted to be clear, he wasn’t against intelligence analysts disagreeing with Trump but against the fact that they were doing so in public. He added, “I’ve been reading all kinds of things on the Internet that sound like I disagree with intelligence analysts that provide analysis that goes against the President. I don’t. I’m against public spectacles that are trying to judge the President’s policy, that are going to undermine the President’s policy.” For Trump’s embattled supporters, we may be reaching the shoot-the-messenger phase of the Presidency.

[...]

Events may be closing in on the President. Indictments and convictions and the Mueller report, whatever it is and whenever it is delivered, will be harder for Republicans on Capitol Hill to dismiss than much of the bluster that preceded them. Which is why I think the recent shift in the congressional G.O.P.’s mood is significant.

To be clear: these folks may still vote with Trump, they may stick with him to the finish, and they will undoubtedly continue to use him opportunistically for their policy ends. But they do not love him, and many will abandon him if pragmatism and the politics of the moment demand it.

What could be more pragmatic than stopping the expenditure of troops and treasure on a fantasy boondoggle? Will we ever again in this country address reality?

Check out this interview of ex-Governor of Texas Ann Richards, and remember, she lost a second term to George W. Bush.  How the hell did that happen?

I'd like to think the new crop of House Democrats signals hat we're ready to grapple with the real problems we have in this country, but I've been jaded.

 And, BTW, Ditch Mitch.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 2/22:  Ditch Mitch Fund