I don’t know how many of you have been following the impeachment trial of one Donald John Trump. I’ve watched some of the proceedings, and it has been at various times hilarious, painfully dull, and infuriating. It seems now, though, that it has come down once again to the question of whether or not to allow relevant witnesses to testify before the Senate; particularly former National Security Advisor John Bolton, whose forthcoming book has been strategically excerpted and propagated by anonymous reviewers in the White House. With respect to this, I find myself in rare agreement with Ezra Klein, who this week commented on how crazy it makes him that we’re all focusing on witnesses when we already know what the President did …. he said it himself. Whether or not you think that’s enough really just comes down to party affiliation.
Just a word about Bolton. This man is an ideologue and a warmonger. His views are so toxic regarding war and peace that he failed to win confirmation from a Republican Senate back in the 2000s. I don’t know him, but I believe he is neither a Trump acolyte or a never-Trumper. I think it’s likely that he merely saw in Trump an instrument of power – the belief that, though Trump, Bolton could climb higher than he had ever done before and push his policy agenda forward in a way that had been unthinkable previously. Over his brief tenure as NSA, he supported coups in Bolivia and (attempted) in Venezuela, helped carry us to the brink of war with Iran, derailed detente with North Korea, and quite a bit more. Quite a roster of grisly accomplishments in just a few months. Dream come true for that guy.
So to all of you center-leftists out there who may be singing the praises of John Bolton just lately, don’t forget – he is a walking disaster, book passages or no. His prescriptions for foreign policy would have us plunging into war again and again. It may be, though, that he doesn’t feel one way or the other for the President, thus his willingness to spill. What is obvious is that Bolton got himself hired by doing a little Trump dance on Fox News, then took up a position that allowed him to affect the course of American foreign policy in a meaningful way. That’s all he cares about. Trump can be damned, or not … it depends on what’s best for Bolton’s agenda.
Iowa Votes. Big week ahead, people, and I don’t mean impeachment. Barring disaster, I’ll do a post on the Iowa Caucuses. Stay tuned.
Who’s the moderate in that race? Christie? Don’t say Christie. He’s vehemently anti choice, wants to provoke war with Russia, and has all the racial sensitivity of Nixon during his drunk period (to say nothing of being a shill for the Peterson Institute, which advocates for privatizing Social Security). Forget Jeb Bush. He’s easily as bad as his brother on the issues, only with less raw political talent. Rubio? He’s the bold “young” candidate who seems to have his head stuck in decades-old Cold War strategy like a bug in amber. Frankly, any one of these candidates would be an unmitigated disaster as president.