Things definitely went off the rails in 2016

The Senate has started the impeachment trial. I’m relieved that there’s almost no chance of the Senate impeaching the president. I believe Trump used taxpayer-funded resources as leverage for personal political gain, which is a lousy thing to do. But I think our best chance from getting out from beneath Trump and signal a move away from the nihilistic nationalism of his base is to vote him out. A drama free election (fingers crossed) would also help us get past Comey’s and the FBI’s disastrous performance in the Trump era and the media’s shoddy work covering all things Russia.

Unfortunately, I don’t think any of the Democrats can beat Trump. I hope I’m wrong. But I think the Senate voting to impeach would cause a level of violence that we’d have a difficult time recovering from. There’s also just no chance that the Republicans will impeach him. My guess, my hope, is that a lot of Republicans know that Trump’s behavior was corrupt as hell. Many (most?) of them just don’t care, but most of them also probably view it as linked to corrupt FBI behavior.

I can’t fault them entirely on that last point. Comey and the FBI did so many things wrong. If, like me, you’ve found the chronology, links, causes and effects, and personalities involved in the past four plus years of investigations confusing as hell, I recommend reading Commentary Magazine’s “The FBI Scandal”. I’m not a fan of Commentary, but Eli Lake does an excellent job of methodically walking through the timeline.

Lake provides a scary thought at the end.

That folly has deformed our politics. Now, in 2020, voters are faced with a choice between two parties led by conspiracy theorists and gaslighters. Instead of saving America from Trump, the Resistance may have reelected him.

(I wonder if some smart graduate student will one day tie a lot of this back to the decision to aggressively push NATO further and further east. That was a dumb idea.)