The gist of the argument is that regardless of what Mueller’s probe ultimately uncovers, we already know enough to know that Buttercup is owned by Putin. In fact, I would say, we’ve actually known that since before the election. Hillary Clinton certainly knew it. Here’s the infamous “no puppet, no puppet, you’re the puppet” exchange from the debates:
Every single thing she says in this clip is true now and it was true then. Putin’s ownership of Buttercup hasn’t become any more true or less true between that moment and this one. What’s happened is that the mounting evidence that Buttercup is Putin’s puppet has simply become harder and harder to explain away. Clinton mentions that Buttercup is willing to break up NATO. Well, since this exchange, we’ve seen Buttercup go off on these apparently unmotivated attacks on NATO and our European allies. What Clinton is saying here, before we went through any of this heartbreak, is that Buttercup if elected will go after NATO because that’s what Putin wants and he does what Putin wants him to do.
Of course, not enough people believed her. This is frustrating. But this is what always happens. When you have a piece of unwelcome news–like, say, that the planet is being cooked by greenhouse gases, or that the case for the war in Iraq was built on lies–nobody wants to believe you. Hillary Clinton really did her best in these debates, but she couldn’t break Cassandra’s curse.
Cassandra was cursed with the ability to foretell the future–without ever being believed. It’s a very frustrating position to be in, and it is a position that the American ‘left’ often finds itself in. We don’t have enough media exposure or cultural power to make people believe the inconvenient truths we’re trying to tell. But here is one thing I learned from the George W. Bush era: eventually, when enough actual evidence piles up, that curse gets broken. In 2003 you couldn’t find a single mainstream politician or pundit who would say that the Iraq war was unjustified and unnecessary (and a super bad idea). By 2008, the fact that Obama had not voted for the Iraq war resolution (because he wasn’t in Congress at the time) was partly responsible for his primary victory over Clinton and his victory in the general election. Public opinion had turned. The reports from the UN inspections of Iraq’s supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction program had exposed the central lie on which the case for war had been based. It became clear that we were accomplishing nothing and committing atrocities to do it. Eventually people realized what a disaster the war was and eventually it was ended. After a tragic and completely avoidable waste of human life.
It’s frustrating how bad things have to get before people start to accept the bad news. But we may be seeing, in the media response to the Helsinki press conference, the first cracks in Cassandra’s curse. The idea that our current president is controlled by Moscow is no longer unthinkable or unspeakable even for mainstream media outlets. It is on its way to becoming common knowledge.
The problem, Klein’s piece argues, is that there’s no obvious remedy for this: the Republicans won’t go after Buttercup and the Democrats can’t. But as I was explaining to PJ this morning: most politicians do what they think is best for them. If it gets to the point where the Congressional Republicans think that sticking with Buttercup is worse politically than turning on him, turn they will. And that all has to do with where public opinion is.
I don’t know. There have been so many points in this administration where you think, surely, surely this is the end. And then things go on. But I think we may be starting to see a kind of cumulative effect. For instance: having determined that Comey is not a loyalist, and therefore likely to pursue ‘the Russia thing’ to its limits, he fires him. To buy time, basically, the Congressional Republicans agree to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Russian interference. That’s where the Mueller investigation came from. Buttercup has since then been trying to discredit everyone associated with it, even the FBI itself. That’s appalling; it’s appalling that it has worked as long as it has; but the Stzrok hearing, circus that it was, has exposed the absurdity of Buttercup’s claims about this. Mueller’s Friday indictments laid the ground for the Monday evening questions which elicited the most shameless performance so far of Buttercup’s beholdenness to Putin. We’re all thinking, this is insane, nothing ever sticks to him, why not…but it does stick to him. It does, over time, slow him down.
Take this thing about separating families applying for asylum. So much about that situation is still awful; but there is also the fact that Buttercup reversed his position in response to public disapproval. I had just assumed that would never happen with this president; but it has. (Perhaps because Putin doesn’t actually care too much about US border politics.) And that shows you something I never thought I would see: he’s worried. Regardless of what he projects, he’s afraid that if he pushes too far, it’s all going to collapse.
Why would this matter when the last thing didn’t matter? Because this is an additive process. Last thing + current thing matters more. Last thing + current thing + future thing + (however many future things it takes) will eventually matter.
Last night there was an impromptu protest outside the White House over Helsinki. According to The Hill, there’s another one planned for tonight. There’s some talk about keeping it going until Buttercup resigns. Monday night’s group was small, but maybe tonight’s will be bigger. Maybe the answer to the question “why aren’t Americans in the streets?” is about to become “we are.”
Hearseeno 