(***Spoiler alert: if you haven't yet read the book or seen the film versions of Agatha Christie's Murder On the Orient Express, stop right here.)
I wouldn't be surprised if the internal White House coup to effectively neutralize the presidency of Donald Trump also extends to the editorial being a group effort. Mirroring the plot of the above-mentioned mystery classic, maybe they all wrote it. Each of them conspired to destroy a malevolent old man by contributing a few lines to the essay, thus thwarting the software technology designed to expose anonymous authors.
So the self-serving kleptocratic Trump administration, anxious to keep their boss physically in office the better to neutralize the rest of us into a state of penury and submission, now purports to be protecting us from the designated villain in this thriller of a set piece. Unlike the revenge killers in Agatha Christie's story, though, they themselves are not the victims of the bad guy, but his co-conspirators. And unlike the killers on the Orient Express, they're all stabbing Trump from the right instead of from both the right and the left. They are, in fact, co-opting the Democratic #Resistance, which is also attacking Trump from the right via charges of Russian collusion and its defense of the police/surveillance state.
The internal coup and its anonymous manifesto are another variation on the unaccountability theme so beloved of predatory capitalists everywhere. If all of them are guilty, then none of them can be blamed. Like the cowards they are, they hide themselves within their fortified institutions as they do their dirty work.
My guess is that the real brains behind both the coup and the op-ed, with its self-righteous, rather jingoistic tone, is Trump's chief of staff, Gen. John Kelly. The gratuitous simpering nod to the newly canonized John McCain is one clue firing off the synapses of billions of little gray cells in this real life version of the game of Clue. Another possibility is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who graduated from West Point and is also a couple or four heartbeats away from the presidency. Since the Times says it offered the author anonymity to protect his job, that should also eliminate Mike Pence from the list of suspects. Since Pence is an official elected directly by the American people, Trump does not have the power to fire him - although, theoretically Pence could be impeached in Congress and convicted in the Senate under a Trump-beholden majority.
Trump's own express of a train wreck is now being described by the entertainment-intensive corporate media as a veritable puddle of twisted molten metal. Since he is still physically alive and still inhabits the Oval Office, he is desperate to find out Whodunit, gathering all the suspects in his closed room to intimidate and persecute, but never to solve. He not only is sadly lacking in the Hercule Poirot little gray cells department, he even lacks a Hercule Poirot investigator or any more "fixers" to help him out.
As Poirot replied to Ratchett, the beady-eyed and universally loathed tycoon of a murder victim in the Christie story who offered him "big money" to expose the enemies who were plotting behind his back: "If you will forgive me for being personal, I do not like your face, M. Ratchett."
So running out of friends, perhaps the paranoid Trump could do the obverse of the Orient Express solution. If his administration lackeys won't rat each other out, maybe he'll fire everybody.
But that's a thriller for another day. Maybe then we can crib a different Agatha Christie classic and call it "And Then There Were None."
If only.
Trump knows he is unqualified for his job and that is why he gutlessly keeps his alleged enemies close as he merely tweets his displeasure into cyberspace.
So for now, anyway, these are the versions of America we're stuck in:
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Revisionist academics say the Founding Fathers with their U.S. Constitution set up an oligarchic conspiracy: government for the rich, by the rich sold as democracy.
As more and more men––and finally women––gained the vote in the generations that followed, more conspiracies had to be formed to protect the original oligarch families in their privilege, along with their able collaborator functionaries who built their own bureaucratic conspiracies within the national conspiracy. The Dark State is merely an outgrowth of the original oligarchy surrounded by the adept fixers who help the big conspiracy run smoothly in the modern times.
Karen's view that Anonymous of the Times Op-Ed is not one but several people at the core of government is so persuasive. From Anonymous we learn that there is indeed an idea and action conspiracy within the larger national conspiracy. A Dark Knot at the center of the Deep State is doing or undoing Trump as it pleases. They are now in control at the White House (h/t Alexander Haig).
At least in appearance, presidents are usually central figures within the Dark Knot; but Trump, Anonymous "assures" us, has been excluded from the club. A coup, a tangible coup! Trump has been sidelined by a small group of shadows. Thanks to Woodward and Anon, everybody knows. Trump will flail around in greater fury than ever and appear more unstable and ridiculous than painted by Woodward (whose book has magically become a must buy thanks to Anon's timely revelations as it hits the bookstores).
Anon is not Trump's loyal friend. But is he our friend? Just about all the top Times commentators who reacted yesterday may have surprised both Anon and the Gray Lady's editors. Times readers distrust Anon just about as much as they distrust Trump. Why? Clueless, the Dark Knot publicly states he/she/it likes the most recent tax cut for the rich, Anon likes the Pentagon's new budget and continued meddling around the globe, Anon likes the deregulation that makes it so much easier for corporations to charge us for the air we breath and the ground we stand on. If Trump is as bad as the Dark Knot says, why not resort to the 25th Amendment? If not now, when? Instead, a soft-coup around our King George III.
Bernie called for a revolution of the middle class. Hedges did the same, somewhat Marx-like, calling for a no-fooling-around revolution of the masses. Well, as Anon told us yesterday, we got our revolution: the Revolution of the Senior Functionaries. Something akin to the revolution of the rich over here 242 years ago against the rich over there in the mother country. A Dark Knot within the Deep State has taken over, not to make fundamental changes but to keep things exactly as they should be in a smooth-running corporate state that guarantees the few the freedom to advance the disparities, the endless wars and a tighter control over hundreds of millions of nobodies. Thanks a lot, Anon.
I agree with JayOttawa and many of the commenters at the Times, I don't trust Anon any more than I trust The Donald. Trump is clearly a spoiled child with megalomaniacal tendencies but Anon is basically a Dick Cheney trying to put the more reliable Pence in power.
Bottom line - the Democrats created this mess by pushing Hillary onto a population that didn't trust her. While true believers voted for Trump and true Republicans voted the party line, the group that swung over to Trump simply didn't like or trust Hillary with her close ties to the banking industry and multi-nationals. They didn't know what to do, so they threw the dice hoping (magical thinking) that somehow, Trump would be their Roosevelt and turn on his own best interests for the good of the American people. Ordinary people know that Free Trade hasn't been good for them. Trump's biggest drawing card was that he against the TPP and promised to reform NAFTA - neither of which Anon would have supported.
I actually didn't think Trump would last this long. He has obviously outlasted his useful idiot stage. The Cheneyish power behind the thrown is now planning a coup. Just watch - the Fox commentators will start saying that Anon has some good points in the hopes of putting a bunch of "adults in the room" at mid-term.
The Democrats would be smart to run a bunch of anti-establishment candidates who really ARE anti-establishment. Dig out those history books and read some of Roosevelt's speeches and get on the bully pulpit. Get out Elizabeth Warren and put Bernie back on stage. Let's get that pendulum swinging in the other direction.
Just a little aside - Steve Bannon apparently has his eye on Australia. Aren't we the lucky ones!
I think it is Game Over for our democracy and country unless you are one of the 1%. We just don't know the details yet. The Supreme Court is going to be wrecked for decades to come. And I expect Trump to unleash a barrage of firings and pardons after the November election, regardless of the voting outcomes. The best I expect from Mueller's report is that a few thugs get convicted along the way and that we get to find out about Trump's money laundering and other grifting in more detail, without it actually changing anything about the national freak show.
Which reminds me, where is the physical wall that we are counting on and that Mexico is paying for? I wish at least that there were an Avenatti-like figure taunting Trump about that!
I've been off the grid for the past week so I missed a lot, including the whole OpEd, but I did catch a few quotes somewhere. When I read this one, I could clearly hear the voice of Nikki Haley: "Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more."
It was the 'Don't Get Me Wrong' that did it. One of her other favorites is 'Let there be no mistake about it.' The tone seems to be an indirect, covert aggression that makes me suspect it's a woman. The writer isn't being a cowardly, she's just being female!
I suspect Nikki wanted an promotion to Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State and didn't get it, hence Nikki's Revenge.
The Gospel according to the Times
So the Master dipped His hand down once again unto the twitter board and tapped: "One of you has betrayed me." And His entourage moaned and murmured before the cameras, each of them when cornered responding for all to hear: "Never [ ] not I, Lord," which Janus-faced avowals depended on where the comma is or is not.
Behold, it had to be someone on the inside among the Master's disciples. The multitude outside tried to figure it out for themselves. Could it be Nikki White Suit, the woman scorned? Was it the Dark Knot of shadows who continued to carry the Master upon their shoulders? It was they who promoted His great works of doings and undoings. But it was also they who feared his chaotic management style, which made their heads to spin.
Could it have been the Intelligence Community: the CIA, the FBI, the NSA? Or the Unintelligent Community: the DC Republicrats, the Pentagon? The Anon Op-Ed was in nobody's style with a pinch of everybody's style. How clever. Was it the issue of the latest AI program, Beelzebub at his best?
So many strange happenings befell the nation that fateful week. The Woodward tome hit the bookstands, the IED Op-Ed was detonated, Will stepped forth to comment here once again, and how about those scrambled primary results across the land? Then, lo and behold a great light shown forth from Hawaii. It was the Second Coming of Obama to the endorsement speech circuit. It was the best of the Times, it was the worst of the Times.
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