After years of non-stop virtue signaling as the party of “truth, justice and equality,” the Democrats are slowly, inexorably being revealed to be the reverse. They are being hoisted on the petard of their own moral narcissism. It has made them blind.
So convinced of their own righteousness were they that it allowed them to participate in, even instigate, the subversion of our justice system to the extent of lying to and deceiving a FISA court in the name of what they assumed was “good.” They did this in concert with people who claimed to be Republicans or “independents” working for that system in the supposedly noble cause of upending Donald Trump, before and after his election, but ended up being the deluded agents of government corruption the likes of which we have never seen in this country.
It comes down to something as crude as this: Trump’s a bad guy, therefore I’m a good guy and can do or say anything I wish to destroy Trump. This is moral narcissism taken to a pathological extreme.
Practically with each passing day, as more and more largely arbitrary redactions are pried away from documents that were deliberately hidden from public view in the first place by endless stonewalling, the venality of their true motivations — and of their cohort’s actions — becomes more evident.
The ramifications of that unmasking (note the word) will be more extensive than expected and will reach into every aspect of our culture, even to the last lines of liberal/progressive defense — the media, entertainment and education. The results won’t go in a straight line — they rarely do. And many will remain true believers, no matter what. That’s what true believers do. Their defenders will also become increasingly shrill as the wagons continue to circle. But the Democrats — and I strongly suspect many of them are starting to realize it (hence that shrillness) — are headed for a world of hurt.
They have much to fear. They have to deal with ongoing congressional investigations from Messrs. Johnson, Grassley, Goodlatte and Nunes, among others, that continue to reveal information highly damaging to the Democrats, the FBI and the DOJ. Unlike the missteps and hypocrisy from the Democratic side of these investigations, in not a single instance has the information revealed by these Republicans been factually disputed with success, despite endless spin. This is because the Democrats are relying almost exclusively on dubious leaks augmented by slavish regurgitation from media ideologues (see Michael Isikoff and David Corn). The Republicans are relying on those actual documents, most of which have to be extracted from the DOJ/FBI with legal crowbars, but eventually surface. More are on the way, slowly but surely, probably through summer and into the fall elections. The timing couldn’t be worse for Democrats.
Meanwhile, the only substantive collusion between the Russians and the U.S. is clearly on the Democratic side. The Uranium One whistleblower spent three hours Thursday speaking with staff of three congressional committees. This scandal is under investigation again and much of it, we already know, is founded on facts — real money, millions, that exchanged hands while American uranium went into Russian hands. More details should be emerging soon.
And, almost as opera bouffe, it also emerged Thursday that Senate Intel ranking member Mark Warner was himself colluding with a Russian oligarch in an attempt to get a secret interview with the notorious Christopher Steele. In humiliating texts, Warner urged his contact to tell his oligarch buddy to keep the negotiations on the down low because Mark didn’t want a “paper trail” if things went South. (Incredible that a senator could be so clueless as to put that in a text in this day and age.) If Warner was so concerned about an “interview,” perhaps he should have asked to talk with Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer, both of whom are undoubtedly lawyering up but would have a considerable amount to say about the contents of various dossiers. (In Hollywood, we call it the auteur theory.)
“Are you aware of any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government?” Carlson asked.
“No, none,” Cohen answered. “But, there are two documents that became the foundational sources for the Kremlin-gate narrative. It was first the Steele dossier which surely informed the so-called intelligence community assessment in January of 2017. We were told that was the judgment of 17 intelligence agencies. It now turns out to have been the judgment of no intelligence agency, just a few guys at the top. So that’s all that’s ever been produced and it’s not credible.”
Cohen said the intel community used FISA surveillance warrants for Carter Page and Paul Manafort to actually spy on Donald Trump
“Why did they, for example, get a warrant on Carter Page who on the very surface of it is no threat to American national security and then on Paul Manafort?” Cohen asked. “We might assume they did it because they thought these two men would be close, even in the same room as Donald Trump and wanted to surveil him.”
And where did this idea of 17 intelligence agencies putatively working together but in reality giving the imprimatur to a lie come from? Barack Obama, as we all know, who initiated that approach at the very end of his term. So we further know where all roads point
AG Jeff Sessions has been mostly silent through all this. Some on the right have complained about that. It’s easy to understand why. We want justice and we want it now, especially as the situation has become so obvious. Many have already resigned or been sent to the FBI’s version of Siberia, but we would like to see them indicted.
But taking a step backward, if you really seek justice, it’s best that the attorney general remain in the background until the appropriate moment when the investigation is complete. It’s probably also smart to allow as many parties as possible to testify on the record for the congressional committees first. Get this all out in the open — then put them in jail.
Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His latest book is I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already. He tweets @rogerlsimon.
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