Does the media actually want to know the truth?

 

The controversy surrounding the “Steele Dossier,” which apparently is now “central” to the John Durham taxpayer waste of an investigation, reminds me of the controversy surrounding CBS News and its reporting about George W. Bush’s record in the Texas Air National Guard from 1968-1974, which cost Dan Rather his job. In a September, 2004 60 Minutes II show—while John Kerry was under attack for blatantly false accusations about his Vietnam War record—Rather reported that the deceased superior of Bush at the time, a Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, had composed memos in which he charged that he was pressured to alter or cover-up Bush’s poor service record by his own superiors.

The memos came under fire not because they told a false story; Killian’s secretary, Marian Knox, verified that in substance this was Killian’s true beliefs. But Knox claimed that she did not believe the specific memos had been typed by herself, although she did admit that she had typed out memos that said essentially the same thing, which of course would call into question her memory after more than three decades.

A decade later, as Paul Rosenberg observed in Salon as had other commentators, the essential facts of the case were not in question: Bush’s record in the National Guard failed to pass the smell test, that had the his superiors followed regulations, Bush would have been required to report to service in Vietnam; it was clear from the evidence that Bush was given preferential treatment to avoid both his required service in the Guard, but that his failures were not just overlooked by his superiors, but were purposely papered-over with false service reports.

While CNN and others was busy attacking Al Gore in 2000 about his “claim” of being the “inventor” of the Internet, Rosenberg noted that the cable news media was surprisingly uninterested in reports such as that of the Boston Globe in 2000, which found a one-year service gap in Bush’s six year enlistment in the Guard. Walter Robinson, who wrote the original story, followed up in 2004:

Bush fell well short of meeting his military obligation, a Globe reexamination of the records shows: Twice during his Guard service—first when he joined in May 1968, and again before he transferred out of his unit in mid-1973 to attend Harvard Business School—Bush signed documents pledging to meet training commitments or face a punitive call-up to active duty. He didn’t meet the commitments, or face the punishment, the records show. The 1973 document has been overlooked in news media accounts. The 1968 document has received scant notice.

Rosenberg noted that in 1972 Bush attempted to “transfer to a non-flying unit—a back door way of breaking his signed service agreement approved by his Texas superiors, but rejected at the federal level. He then failed to take a mandatory flight physical and was suspended from flying, stopped attending drills for at least six months, and was not observed by his superior officers for a full year (he never took another physical again, and was, apparently, never disciplined for it). A hurried spate of training unlawfully packed into a brief two-month period was then followed by his discharge from the Texas Air National Guard, but he never fulfilled his obligation to finish his service at a unit in Massachusetts when he returned to New England to get an MBA at Harvard Business School.”

There is much more to this story, but the essentials is that Bush joined the Texas Air National Guard to avoid service in Vietnam, and seemed to take his service obligations with all the seriousness you would expect from a pampered, privileged member of the “elite” who expected “daddy”—Prescott Bush—to take care of any “discrepancies” in his son’s service record. Even after his father passed away, Bush’s superiors apparently felt he was too “privileged” to be force to complete his service obligations—technically, he was AWOL during the periods in question—or to exact the same military punishments they would on any other service member.

Yet all that is remembered or given any “credence” was the allegedly “fake” Killian memos. Today, there is no “consensus” that the memos are in fact “fake,” and their general substance are clearly factual. And now we have CNN again reporting that in the Durham investigation some players are facing a “reckoning” over their role in putting together the Steele Dossier, which we should recall was not itself used as justification to begin the Russia investigation—meaning the Durham probe’s interest in this means they have reached a dead end in finding any more “culprits” in the FISA case, and is now off on a fishing expedition to find something more to justify itself.

So what exactly is in the Steele Dossier, whose central claim was that Trump campaign officials “cooperated” with the Russians to insure his election? It has been regarded as a “joke” in most quarters, and given little credence by most news outlets. Its sources have been called second and third hand, and “rumor.” The dossier was originally compiled by Fusion GPS for anti-Trump Republicans, and then passed on to the Democrats after Trump was nominated. Fusion, with information gathered by former intelligence agent Christopher Steele—who had a reputation for being a credible source of information with two decades of experience with Russia—was reportedly “alarmed” by what had been found and continued to employ Steele to gather information when it received funding from Democratic sources.

It is easy to pick apart the details of the Steele Dossier; what isn’t so easy is to pick apart its substance. Much of its “raw data” turned out to be true; while the Mueller Report only mentioned the Steele Dossier once, to disclaim its information in regard to Michael Cohen, the fact is that it backed many of the charges that originated in the dossier.

Among them was that Paul Manafort sought the “cooperation” of Russian interests in the Ukraine, to serve as “go-betweens” for the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Whether there was a “conspiracy” to do so or not seems irrelevant. The Mueller Report did conclude that there were a “myriad” of “secret contacts” between at least individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russians to help Trump win. As even CNN reported at the time, the Mueller Report’s collection of Manafort’s communications with Russian operatives to damage Hillary Clinton were “remarkably consistent with the raw intelligence in the Steele Dossier.”

The Steele Dossier also correctly revealed the payouts to Manafort by the pro-Russia Ukrainian businessman and Putin ally Oleg Deripaska in order to influence the election and policy toward Russia. Manafort had also worked with pro-Russia former president of the Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych, before the latter was forced to flee to Russia before he could follow up on an "untraceable" $12 million payout to Manafort for his “services”; a "black ledger"that was discovered appeared to show that Manafort did in fact receive some of that secret money.

In regard to the Steele Dossier’s claim about Russian hacking of DNC servers, again it proved to be mostly true. The Mueller Report confirmed its essential findings that the Kremlin and Russian intelligence was behind the hacking, as well as supporting the WikiLeaks dumps, and that Trump was supportive of continuing leaks behind the scenes. In fact, it was reported that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange conspired with Russian hackers in the timing of the dumps to embarrass the Democrats. In 2017, Trump sent pro-Russia Rep. Dana Rohrabacker to offer Assange a pardon if he agreed to cover up Russian involvement in the leaks.

Roger Stone had at least some first-hand knowledge of the leaks before they were even leaked, suggesting that there was “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Wikileaks—and thus with the Russians. It should be noted, however, that the Mueller Report was remarkably coy about the infamous Trump Tower meeting attended by Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, brushing aside the illegality of the intention to gain information from a foreign agent to disrupt the election.

Allegations against Carter Page in the Steele Dossier was problematic, but only because of the perpetrator, Page, was less than forthcoming about his contacts with Kremlin and Russian business figures like Putin’s right hand man, Igor Sechin. Page was fanatically pro-Russia and pro-Putin, and was rightly suspected of being open to espionage by the Russians. Although he was “hired” to provide information to the CIA in regard to his Russia contacts, this came to nothing. When Page’s Russia-love became known to Trump, he suggested that he would be a good foreign policy “advisor”—meaning Page would say whatever Trump wanted to hear about Russia. Page was apparently initially seen by the Russians as a conduit to Trump, but he soon revealed himself to be an incompetent bungler, and was cast aside by Trump when he was viewed as an embarrassment and no longer useful.

The so-called “golden shower” incident in the Presidential Suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow in 2013 was a claim open to doubt if not ridicule. Steele claimed to have received this information from seven sources, although Steele himself suggested he was only “50-50” about this actually happening. Did Trump hate Barack Obama enough to have prostitutes “pee” on the bed he slept on? Knowing how vindictive and petty-minded Trump is, it is somehow far from fanciful; after all, he was the principle supporter of the “birther” hoax.

The hotel itself was “staffed” by intelligence agents and sex workers, and the rooms all had secret recording devices. Trump apparently was “concerned” about a possible tape of him with three prostitutes in an elevator at the time. An alleged tape of a “pee” incident in the hotel room does show such occurring, but it is regarded as “fake” because it is not clear that Trump is present, or that it was recorded during the time Trump was at the hotel.

Nevertheless, the belief that Russia had “compromising” information on Trump led many to suspect that it was the reason that Trump caved in to Vladimir Putin’s obvious lie that Russia had not been engaged in widespread election interference at the Helsinki conference in 2018. Putin is a professional liar, so his denials mean nothing. However, a 2020 U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report stated that it could not prove that the Russian did have “compromising” information on Trump, although it could not be disproven either, given Trump’s apparent preference for Slavic women, Russian or otherwise, and his disturbing, suspect behavior at the Helsinki conference.

Also problematic was the allegation that Trump fixer Michael Cohen was in Prague to payoff hackers and cover-up evidence of Trump campaign officials colluding with the Russians. The Mueller Report basically took Cohen’s word that he was not there, although it is interesting to note if he was there, those would be the kind of things he was tasked by Trump to do. If there was no proof that Cohen was in Prague for that purpose, Steele has insisted that while Cohen may not have been in Prague, he was certain Cohen was somewhere in Europe at the time.  And would Cohen really want to admit to something like this? This went far beyond his usual tasks of paying off porn stars and Playboy models.

The recent reporting of CNN’s Marshall Cohen appears to be after the “big story,” but it seems to be more focused on the involvement of Democratic operatives in funding the Steele Dossier rather than examining whether it contained actual truth. The fascination with the “credibility” of the sources has obscured the general truth of the information they gave. In an interview with ABC News recently, Steele vehemently defended his dossier; while much of it admittedly contained “raw,” unverified data, in fact very little of it has been proven to be entirely false, and most it to be mostly correct. Steele blamed much of the criticism on the dossier on the lack of experience or knowledge of the nuances Russian society or politics by the FBI and news reporters. He admitted that some of the information he found “hasn’t stood up,” but the basic tenor of the dossier has.

Critics of the Steele Dossier should remember how the media handled the Bush case, and how wrong they were to dismiss the allegations about Bush simply because of questions about the Killian memo—when everything in it was essentially true. As Rosenberg pointed out, the Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee did not cave in to criticism when Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward were accused of a tiny “fib” concerning a grand jury inquiring if H.R. Haldeman was in control of Richard Nixon’s slush fund. They hadn’t in fact asked that question, but the undeniable truth was that in fact it was true that Haldeman was guilty. Bradlee stood his ground and did not fire Bernstein and Woodward, and their reporting on Watergate was allowed to continue to its conclusion—the resignation of a president.

Today, the media—and cable news in particular—doesn’t seem to have the same backbone to pursue the truth to the end—or even have the capacity to do so. The media just seems to be fearful of their corporate sponsors and the extremist right to find out the truth—and that includes not recognizing that the purpose of the Durham investigation is not to uncover the truth—but to conceal it.

The defense “rests” in Packers' loss to Vikings

 

Is it possible that a 75-yard touchdown pass can come at the wrong time? It certainly did for the Packers. Despite a toe injury—which probably was the result of that two-week lay about because of his COVID bullshit—Rodgers had on paper a decent enough game, 385 yards passing and four touchdowns. But the large chunk of the production came after the Packers had fallen behind 23-10 in the third quarter. The defense, which had only given up 52 points in the previous five games, had just given up a touchdown on a long drive and a two-point conversion for the Vikings to take a 31-24 lead with 2:17 to play.

That was not a lot of time left to score a game-tying touchdown, but the strike to Marquez Valdes-Scantling took only nine seconds off the clock. 2:08 left to play and the defense having but little rest time before finding themselves back on the field. An apparent interception was wiped out by the replay official, but then Kirk Cousins completed back-to-back passes for 45 yards, and then a 12-yard run by Dalvin Cook led to the inevitable field goal and a 34-31 Viking win.

The Packers racked up 467 yards of offense in the game, and had only one three-and-out. But Mason Crosby missed another relatively short-range field goal try that proved critical. Crosby has now missed 8 of his last 17 attempts, and three of those misses were the difference between potential overtime and losses in this game and against the Chiefs.

But the majority of the blame should still fall on that supposedly great defense, “resting” on its laurels after shutting out a Seahawk team that was clearly hampered by the injured play of Russell Wilson. The defense—coming into this game third in the NFL in yards and points allowed, and has kept the Packers in a position to win when the offense was only averaging 20.4 points a game over the last five, had its worst game since the opener against the Saints, allowing touchdown drives totaling 162 yards on just 13 plays in the first half, and in the second half on three scoring drives in which the Vikings offense simply picked its spots while going seemingly effortlessly down the field, converting on all five third-down plays.

The Packers have one more game before their bye, at home against the Rams to face Matthew Stafford in a new uniform. Stafford seems to have a career “rejuvenation,” while his old team, the Lions, has yet to win a game all season with Jared Goff. Obviously that means the Rams are just a better put-together team than the Lions, and it could be another long day for the defense.

There is nothing "reasonable" about the Rittenhouse jury's acquittal of this murderer on all charges

 

The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse on all charges in the killing of two people and wounding a third during the Kenosha protest over the police killing of a black man, Jacob Blake, can only be described as incomprehensible and repulsive, and gives any far-right extremists the idea that it is perfectly acceptable for them to carry a loaded assault rifle into a city they don’t live in and in another state, and shoot and kill people if they try to stop them from using it against unarmed people whose political beliefs they don't agree with.

It seems utterly appalling that a jury could believe that the first victim, Joseph Rosenbaum—who apparently had been hospitalized for mental health problems—could be “dangerous” merely for vocalized threats that he had made to other people that night but had otherwise had caused no harm to. The jury appeared to believe that a person carrying and posturing menacingly with dangerous weapon was less a threat to public safety than someone chasing him and throwing a bag that contained personal hygiene items. Rittenhouse could have just kept running—or better yet, not have been there at all—but he turned around and shot an unarmed man multiple times. Sorry, but that is murder, not self-defense. No “reasonable” person would have acted the way Rittenhouse did.

Anthony Huber, who observed the murder of Rosenbaum, apparently tried to “disable” Rittenhouse in what reasonably could be described as his right to do in a “citizen’s arrest” scenario (the one the defendants in Ahmaud Arbery case are using). Huber supposedly used his skateboard as a “baseball bat,” but in fact never touched Rittenhouse; if he had lived, Huber could also have claimed “self-defense” against the armed Rittenhouse—who after all, was pointing his weapon at him after having just killed someone who had no weapon at all.

The third victim, Gaige Grosskreutz, who had just seen Rittenhouse murder two people, decided this “active shooter” needed to be stopped. All he did was point his gun at Rittenhouse to convince him to stop. Any reasonable person would have acted the way he did—draw his own weapon—when confronted with a killer. If someone else had confronted a shooter with their own weapon to stop him from more killing, wouldn’t he be declared a “hero”? Not in this case, not by this judge or jury.

Did Rittenhouse act in a way that any “reasonable” person would? The problem was that Rittenhouse was just some at the time 17-year-old punk who was too immature to think as a “reasonable” person would. His family should never have allowed him to even have an AR-15 without supervision, let alone leave the house with it. His immaturity only made him more dangerous, because he couldn’t make an “adult” determination about the actual “danger” he posed to others, and his response to the actions and mere verbal threats by others were not those of a person making a reasonable determination that his own actions were being viewed by others as threatening and dangerous.

The judge in the case was clearly biased in favor of the defense. His instructions to the jury were despicably broad. Rittenhouse was “authorized” to kill if he “believed that there was an actual or imminent unlawful interference with the defendant’s person,” that he “believed that the amount of force the defendant used or threatened to use was necessary to prevent or terminate the interference,” and that “the defendant’s beliefs were reasonable.” Again, is it “unlawful interference” in the case of Huber or Grosskreutz to stop a man they had just seen shoot an unarmed man multiple times? If the answer is no (which it clearly is), then the other two instructions are not applicable. Even so, no “reasonable” person could believe that the amount of force used by Rittenhouse was “necessary” or “reasonable”—except that there were no “reasonable” people serving on that jury, who were no doubt more “disturbed” by the protesters who killed no one.

Yes, I did expect that the jury would find Rittenhouse guilty of at least something, but they acquitted him of every charge. What this means is that this country, under the influence of Donald Trump and Trumpism/fascism, has taken itself a step closer to justifying any violent action by far-right armed Brown Shirts who feel they are now to wade into unarmed social justice protests, kill, and claim “self-defense” despite the obvious evidence that their intention was to use their weapon under only the slightest provocation. You can even find such people in Seattle:

 

It was the protestors who were killed, it seems, who were on trial here, not Rittenhouse. Has this country come to that? The outcome to the Arbery case should make that clearer.

Just how close to the precipice do voters want to go with Trumpism and fanatics like Michael Flynn?

 

The numbers from the recent Virginia governor’s race seem to suggest that people have a very short memory, and are willing to “forgive” and “forget” what Republicans—with few exceptions—allowed to happen to this country. It is clear that the continuing embrace of Trumpism shows that few Republicans have learned any lessons from January 6, and many voters don’t appear to realize that you can’t erase the evil of Trumpism overnight. This remains true when you have a “Fuhrer” who just won’t go away, someone with the personality of a juvenile bully who nevertheless has honed a cult following that counts seemingly half the country hypnotized, with the hypnotizing device hate and paranoia.

Trump has of course empowered many fanatics who might otherwise see their evil controlled by “normal” civilized mores. Have you ever wondered what the most infamous, blood-thirsty Nazis would be if the Nazi Party did not exist? Heinrich Himmler was a life-long anti-Semite, had an obsession with “racial purity,” and German mythology became his “religion.” But he had earned a degree in agriculture; before joining the Nazi Party, he did odd office jobs and apparently tried his hand at chicken farming. Reinhard Heydrich was a naval officer until 1931, when he was removed for “conduct unbecoming an officer” in regard to his fiancé, who was a fanatical Nazi and persuaded him to join the party. Adolf Eichmann worked as a sales clerk for a radio company, and then as an agent for an oil company. Julius Streicher before and after World War I was an elementary school teacher, before his violent anti-Semitism found a home in the Nazi Party.

We can also wonder what retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn would have become, had he not had been born in a family with high-level military connections, and to eventually have the opportunity to “rehabilitate” himself in the Trumpist party. Throughout his life Flynn exhibited “poor judgment” and disregard of rules and the consequences of it—and yet he always seemed to receive a “get-out-of-jail-free” pass. As a teenager he apparently served a night in juvenile detention for “serious and unlawful” behavior, but whatever that was would be expunged from anyone knowing what that was about. Flynn was popular in high school, which apparently allowed him to get away with being a thoughtless hellraiser.

Flynn was incomprehensibly given a three-year scholarship by the University of Rhode Island ROTC despite his seeming intention to drop out after posting a “D” average grade his freshman year. Something “fishy” was going on there, probably intervention by his well-connected family. He eventually received a degree in something called “management science,” which is like getting a degree in Phys Ed. He went on to get a “master’s” degree from Golden Gate University, the kind of school where corporations and the military send people who didn’t learn the requisite skills when they were in a real school. 

While in the military, Flynn rose through the ranks to become a three-star general (his brother became a four-star general), his chest covered with ribbons awarded for just “being there”—he never was actually in a situation where he had to use a weapon, not even in that unlawful farce that was the Grenada “invasion” where he was “awarded” a reprimand for unauthorized actions—a continuing pattern that his superiors would look the other way from throughout his rise through the ranks. 

Flynn has provided plenty of clues of what he might have become had his family just let him quit school because of lousy grades and that “unlawful” behavior, perhaps just another white nationalist. In his last years in the military, he was assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), where Flynn’s friendly contacts with Russians of a questionable sort was raising eyebrows. In 2013 he was “trustworthy” enough to the Russians to be allowed to become the first U.S. military officer to visit the headquarters of the Chief Intelligence Office (GRU, the successor of the KGB). The nature of this “visit” was questionable enough that Flynn was denied a return visit by James Clapper, who at the time was the Obama administration’s Director of National Intelligence.

An American intelligence informant named Stefan Halper suspected that Flynn’s relationship with a Russian woman and suspected spy was too “intimate” for comfort, and the possibility of Flynn giving away state secrets could not be ruled out. That “management science” degree apparently didn’t help control Flynn’s disruptive “management” style at the DIA; he ignored orders by his superiors, and he concerned colleagues that his increasing fanaticism about the “connection” between of Islam and terrorism was clouding his judgment. He was subsequently removed from the DIA; his “retirement” from the military was probably less “voluntary” than people suspect.

This pro-Russia, anti-Islam fanatic was a perfect fit for the Trump administration, but Flynn was forced to resign as National Security Advisor for lying to the FBI about his unauthorized, and unrecorded, meetings with the Russian ambassador. This wasn’t anything new; Flynn’s “friendship” with the Russians had long been open to question, and who knows what more mischief the Russians could have done if Flynn had remained as the NSA, given Trump’s denial of Russian election interference and ongoing cyber-attacks. After that, Flynn’s behavior continued to be not only suspect, but possibly treasonous; in 2015 he was paid $45,000 by the Russian government to take a seat next to Vladimir Putin and give a speech honoring RT—“formerly” the Kremlin’s anti-American propaganda arm known as Russia Today.

The assertion by a former commander on Flynn’s military intelligence acumen—that he was “tireless, focused, serious, and thought about how he went about connecting dots”—has been something completely absent in his character when it comes to his political philosophy, if it can be described as such. Flynn has at least twice, at a QAnon rally and on the far-right network Newsmax, suggested martial law should be imposed, with the military confiscating voting machines, and the 2020 election overturned and a “redo” of the election to take place.

But unlike Burt Lancaster’s coup-plotting general in the film Seven Days in May, Flynn doesn’t even have the fig leaf of self-righteous “morality.” As usual with far-right fanatics, Flynn only sees the world on his own narrow-minded terms. “There is no way in the world we are going to be able to move forward as a nation. He (Trump) could immediately, on his order, seize every single one of these machines,” he has said. This is not “forward” thinking: this is reactionary, fascist, cult-worshipping thinking. 

The idea that this man could—at the “right” time and place—actually consent to lead a coup on the orders of a deranged president (if in fact Flynn isn’t all bluff) should not be simply dismissed as fantasy. Flynn has again courted hyper-partisan division recently at a conservative “Christian” rally by proclaiming that in order to be “one nation under God,” there must be only one religion, without exactly stating how we are supposed to be such short of “ethnic” and religious “cleansing.”

Carl Bernstein said that “It’s stupefying that we had a president of the United States that would entertain these knaves, fools, and dangerous authoritarian figures…Donald Trump looked for people (like this) to facilitate his authoritarian impulse.” Clapper himself claimed that this is not the Flynn he knew at the DIA, but that clearly was not the case; he was fired from his position because of this kind of “unhinged” behavior.

Trump had given the authority to do evil to extremist fanatics like Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, Steve Bannon, Mark Meadows and many others eager and willing to carry out his orders, with the Joseph Goebbels wannabes at Fox News serving as his Ministry of Propaganda. We have to remember who Trump was before he became president: a megalomaniacal, narcissistic liar who cheated and swindled business partners, often refused to honor contracts, and repeatedly avoided paying for his failures as a businessman by filing for bankruptcy, in which those who trusted him were the ones who always lost their shirts. 

Trump was a man who as president was guided by just two principles: hate of the race, ethnic and religious kind, and whatever he could do for tax avoidance and to enrich himself and those of his “class.” Well, actually there is another, far more dangerous “principle”: Once tasting power, Trump is now corrupted by it “absolutely” beyond what anyone can imagine.

There are those like Eugene Fidell who think we should “get real” about dangerous fanatics who are Trump’s most devoted disciples; for example, we should “get a grip” on how we view Flynn, who is just a loudmouth expressing an opinion. But then again, such “loudmouths” inspired all those people we saw on January 6, and continue to bring shame and discredit on this country in the eyes of the world. By the way, Trumpist Lauren Boebert is proof that it is possible to be at least as psychotic as Marjorie Taylor Greene, who House minority leader Kevin McCarthy is vowing to give more important committee assignments if the Republicans retake the House in 2022.

Of course voters with their heads in the sand are going to say to themselves that a “real” insurrection will never happen. But let’s remember what happened in Germany in the 1930s: the social and political “elites” thought that the Nazis were no more than a useful “outlet” for the frustrations of the “common” people, and the Nazi leadership could be “controlled.” What happened instead was that the “elites” either lost control of the Nazis or joined them for their own “protection,” and the “common” people didn’t want to be bothered with the vagaries of democracy; they were perfectly accepting of violent dictatorship as long as the “others”—such as Jews—were the ones whose freedom and right to exist was violated.

This country “probably” will not come to that. Trump (who is also suspected of passing state secrets to the Russians to show his "good will") apparently thinks Putin is "just like him," according to Chris Christie. If that also means that Trump admires Putin's anti-democracy, authoritarian tendencies, then we must ask ourselves just how close to the precipice do we want to go by allowing Trumpism to continue unmolested, instead of banishing it forever as a dark and dangerous political and social ideology that once threatened democracy in this country.