“Mueller Time, “Act Two: Trump as Putin’s Boy”

I went home with a waitress the way I always do
How was I to know she was with the Russians, too?— Warren Zevon

Back on 21 February 2017, I wrote a piece under the headline, Deep State Set To Dump Trump. To wit: “As the security services gather evidence and subvert the triumphant Trump, it appears that the American establishment, media and governing classes, including the permanent American bureaucracy, are preparing to `Dump Trump.’”

Historically, I have not been a fan of the FBI: remember Cointelpro aimed at the anti-war protesters and Black Panthers, all revealed in the Church hearings? Similarly, J. Edgar Hoover kept a “dossier” on presidents, elected representatives, and saw dissidents as “communists in every pot.” Whether it was Craig and Jenny Vincent up in San Cristobal (think: Salt of the Earth) or hippies at New Buffalo, J. Edgar’s three agents kept watch on tiny Taos. Since the days of Padre Martinez and Manby, Mabel and Dennis, Taos has harbored black-sheep Americans lacking in fealty to the “state.”

After all the native culture is Brown, and despite their patriotic participation in WWII, “they” still talk of “sovereignty” and/or the land-grant rights guaranteed by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The hybrid-naysayers encamped west of the Rio Grande who appear long side Highway 64 are just the latest manifestation of the “anti-establishment” character of the place.

Today, when the headlines in the New York Times, Broadcast and Cable News, including Fox begin to sound like The Nation or Rolling Stone of forty or fifty years ago, life begins to imitate “art” but in the form of “farce.” So-called progressives and liberals have joined with the security apparatus in trying to revoke Trump’s license to do harm. Politics makes strange bedfellows.

The republicans in charge of HUAC (House on Un-American Activities) of the fifties have reconstituted in the U.S. House of Representatives as the “intel” committee or something while the Freedom Caucus chases the DOJ and FBI, the “Deep State” but ignores the “Russians, too.” While Trump and his GOP followers genuflect at Putin’s altar, one can’t help observing the most amazing political party turnabout (and betrayal?) in American history. Now reports say even the NRA has been infiltrated by the Russians.

Previously, foreign policy was a bipartisan effort. Despite his other flaws, Nixon outflanked and frightened (according to Kissinger) the Russians even as Reagan outspent and forced them to “tear down that wall,” the wall behind which Germany’s Angela Merkel grew up. Trump’s devastating attacks on NATO, Merkel and Britain’s May have turned foreign policy into another farce.

The politically-economic self-destructive policy of immigration is another betrayal of republican economics. GOP farmers, contractors, corporate food-purveyors of all sorts (think slaughter houses) need immigrants to do the work Americans can no longer perform. While these establishment republicans (like Trump) need immigrants and employ same, they bad-mouth and punish them. Separating children from parents is an anti-family juggernaut of cruelty that belies the former party of “family values.”

A wise fishing guide reminded me of how “hypnotists” used to visit school assemblies and demonstrate the art of mesmerizing back when we were kids. Sure Putin, the trained KGB agent, has hypnotized Trump in addition to exercising the black arts of blackmail and bribery (see the Steele Dossier).

Back in February, I mentioned how Mr. Edgar Allen Poe “In The Purloined Letter, the inventor of the literary detective form based the mystery on the concept of a letter “hidden in plain sight.” What could be more obvious than Trump’s refusal to release tax returns or watching the Trump family profit from the patriarch’s position as president,  while he exhibits all the signs of a cornered rat during act II of “Mueller Time.”

While denying “collusion” Trump colluded behind closed doors with Putin as exemplified by the press conference in Helsinki.

In addition to being “cruel” and “immoral” the Trumpers are proving self-destructive as they follow the TV reality star over the cliff. In Act III of Mueller Time we are likely to see indictments of Trump’s family and a report on the man’s criminal activities.

Politics doesn’t get any better or more dangerous. We live in interesting times.