My Questions about Bob Mueller -- and Collusion

Here's what I want to know, in the aftermath of Special Prosecutor Mueller's Parthian shot at President Trump.

What was the quid pro quo that led to Special Prosecutor Mueller's late great statement that he could not "exonerate" President Trump on obstruction of justice?

Was it that, if he tossed that grenade at President Trump, that the Dems would not subpoena him to testify before various House Committees?

Was it that it avoided answering the question: "when did you know that President Trump and his campaign hadn't been 'colluding' with Russia?"

Oh, and the next question: "why did you continue your investigation for x months afterwards?"

There are other interesting questions about the whole Trump Russia business. One of them stares right out of Mark Steyn's interview with low-level Trump campaign operative George Papadopoulos. Just what exactly were the Brits doing in the middle of all this? And the Aussies? And this guy Joseph Mifsud who seems to have been an instructor at the CIA's school for spying in Italy. Really? The CIA has a spy school in Italy?

So to the next question: will the declassification of intelligence community documents extend to communications between the US intelligence community and their good Anglophone friends in the intelligence communities in Britland and Oz? And if not why not?

And what about the question of Christopher Steele getting all his anti-Trump dossier material from the Russians? What's that all about, given that the British Steele talks to Hillary's US campaign folks and US intelligence community folks and Russians? And Uncle Tom Cobbley and all? Collusion, anyone?

Really, if you ask me, we need an embarrassing declassification that embarrasses everyone from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton to the US intelligence community to US media to the Brits and the Aussies. Because if you ask me they were all in on it: the effort to entrap and embarrass and October Surprise the deplorable candidate Donald Trump.

And if it damages our relationship with our allies: who cares? Maybe it's time they learned a hard lesson that if they get mixed up playing sides in domestic US politics then they could get into a heap of trouble.

Really, when you think about it, we need a wall-to-wall embarrassment of our ruling class about once a generation, on principle, so that all the up-and-coming deep state actors know of some mentor that got caught in the undertow and therefore have determined that the price of glory in the higher echelons of the deep state is too high if it means doing what the Brennans and the Clappers and the Comeys and all the small-fry Strzoks and Pages did.

And, the question remains, and probably always will remain: what did the President know and when did he know it?

Because my experience of men and affairs leads me to believe that none of this would have happened without a nod from President Barack Obama.

Oh sure, there will never be a paper trail that leads right into the Oval Office. That's the whole point of having aides and assistants and law firms and cut-outs.

But for those of us that weren't born yesterday...

Nationalism, Socialism, Patriotism, and So On

What is the Brexit/Trump/Populism revolution trying to tell us? That is what everyone is trying to figure out, whether you are a far right nationalist, a far left socialist, or some kind of squishy moderate in between.

The answer is pretty simple, and it has been right before us for decades. The guy that got it right was Hitler. He just said to the Germans: whether you are a nationalist, a socialist, a German patriot, or a worker, come and get your identity and your protection right here. I'm your man. Or leader as he liked to say.

Let us delve into Mein Kampf and figure out where he was coming from. Before World War I Hitler was a twentysomething in Vienna -- a millennial of the 20th century if you like -- and a rabid consumer of social media, known in those days as "newspapers." And as a German living in Vienna, capital of the Austro Hungarian Empire, he was really pissed off at the multicultural politics of the Hapsburgs, because it made German-speakers into a minority, just one group in the multicultural mix of the Hapsburg realm. He hated this multiculturalism because the Hapsburgs, in his view, kept short-changing the German speakers in order to keep the non-German speakers from rebelling and bolting out of the Hapsburg-ruled empire. The German speakers, he thought, always had to pay to keep the empire together. Hitler was all in favor of unions, by the way, but strongly opposed unions getting mixed up in lefty politics and the Jewish intellectuals that ran it.

The answer, for a German-speaking guy like him, was to redraw the borders of Europe so that all the German speakers could be in a Grossdeutschland of the German speakers. The Austrian Germans would no longer be a minority in Austria-Hungary and the Sudeten Germans would no longer be a minority in Czecho-slovakia, and the Germans in the Danzig corridor would no longer be a minority in Poland.

Oh well. The plans of mice and men.

That's why I say: You get idiots like Hitler, Trump, Farage, & Co. when the usual idiots have screwed up.

Any questions about the usual idiots screwing up between 1918 and 1938?

Of course, after World War II the usual idiots decided that they weren't the problem. The problem was the voters that had been bewitched by the evil H-word. The only solution was the rule of the usual idiots, now called educated Europeans, and various checks and balances to make sure that the wise ones would be in control and that the people could never elect a Hitler again.

Hey wise ones! How's that grand political and cultural strategy of yours doin', pal?

Oh, I see. What is needed is to silence the racists and the sexists and the xenophobes of the "far right" to make sure that only approved ideas are allowed into the public square. Yup, that's turning out to be a real winner, isn't it, especially when the racist sexist Nigel Farage can win an election in Britain with a Brexit Party three months after its formation.

But let us return to the Nazi Party, the National-Socialist-German-Workers Party. I'm willing to do a deal if you wise ones are up for it -- and if you can prove you can be trusted, which you can't, not right now. I suggest that we dump the "national"and the "socialist" part of it. Those two bits are what you lefties might call the "far right" and we righties would call the "far left." Let us reduce our politics instead to a party called the Patriotic Workers Party.

In Germany, I dare say that this party could be called the German Workers Party. In Britain it could be called the British Workers Party, and in the US the Keep America Great Party. These parties would all be about, first, the protection of the homeland from un-assimilated immigrants, and second, the economic protection of the people with a modest but effective set of government programs to help people when they got into economic trouble.

Nothing really radical here: just the basic things that people expect from their government in return for submitting to the government's taxes and sending their kids to go for a soldier when the nation is threatened by foreign enemies.

When you think about it the "far right" nationalism of which we've heard tell is all about making the national community into something of a national cult: a quasi religion, if you like. And I'd say that we level-headed folks don't want that level of enthusiasm. But equally the "far left" socialism, which today seems to include a rigid censorship of non-lefty voices, a huge administrative state, a quasi-religious greenie cult that demands we save the climate by surrendering ourselves to the Green New Deal, and the racist sexism of identity politics, is also something of a cult, a quasi religion that believes that certain people, prophets of race, gender, and climate, should lead us to the Promised Land, and you better shut up if you know what is good for you.

Over at the British Unherd site they describe the Brexit voters like this:

These are the aspirational ones, the hard-workers who lean Left on economics but lean Right on culture and identity, who want to level the economic playing field, want people and business to play by the rules but who also desperately want to leave the EU, slow immigration and get tough on crime. They feel that a way of life is slipping away, they loathe nothing more than being made to feel like they have been duped, and they have had enough.

If I had my druthers I wouldn't "lean Left on economics," because what I want for the workers is a non-system where get to combine private insurance with private wealth-building through paycheck deductions that would not go to the government but to voluntary social organizations -- from fraternal lodges to Fidelity and Vanguard -- that were not trying to buy votes with other peoples' money. But I recognize that most people feel safer with a comprehensive and mandatory approach through government. I don't like it but I get it.

But I would "lean Right on culture and identity." I think that the nation state is the best way of ginning up what I call a "fake tribalism." that makes people feel part of a community. I certainly think it is better than the racial identity politics and the gender identity politics of the left. Really it is "language tribalism."

It makes sense, you know. Politics and culture operate through language, and I'd say that it is ludicrous to believe that people can form a political or cultural community without sharing the same mother-tongue. That's what makes us hu-man, rather than ape-man: the fact that we can exchange ideas and knowledge and friendship through speech rather than grunts and body language and social grooming.

Notice that the global elitists feel like a global elite because they can all talk to one another, probably in English. I am sure that all the elite in Germany is fluent in French and the French elite is fluent in German. But the average German and the average Frenchie? Not so much.

Now I believe that everyone ought to have a religion. I just don't think that anyone's religion should get its paws on the powers of government. As I understand it, about 200 years ago, some crazy white supremacists thought the same thing.

Memorial Day: When We Remember the Fallen

Veterans Day is the day we remember all who served in our nation's wars. Memorial Day is the day we remember those in the military that were killed in the nation's wars.

In my view Memorial Day, that began as a movement of Southern women decorating the graves of the Southern soldiers in the Civil War, is more important. That's because history is told by the victors, by the survivors. It is hard enough to remember those who died fighting for the winning side. But those who died for the losers!

History is written by the winners, we are told, and of course those who supported the losers, or who died for the losers, get very short shrift in the narratives of the winners.

We like to brand the soldiers with the virtues of our side and the vices of the other side, but in truth the young men called to serve their governments have little choice in the matter. They must serve and they must fight, and many of them must die. The victors usually brand the loser soldiers as villains, for fighting for the bad guys. But who really has the wisdom and the virtue to know who is in the right, and who indeed possesses the insane courage to kick against hearth and home when the call to the colors is made?

So what about the young American men that fought and died for the Brits in the Revolutionary War? What do we know of them? The soldiers that fought and died for the slaveholding South in the Civil War? The young Germans that fought for Hitler?

The truth is that those that died in the losing cause are lost to history and to memory, for it cannot be that the winners were wrong. And as we see, with the recent demolition of monuments, there are plenty of people that want the inconvenient past to be obliterated. And young men are scooped up to fight in today's war whether they will or not.

This was brought out to me by a tourist guide in Guatemala, who told how brothers could be found fighting on opposite sides in the long civil war that lasted from 1960 to 1996. Why would they do that? Because young men could be drafted by the government or the rebels: whichever was in town on the day that a young man would be scooped up and set to fight. And once you are drafted and enlisted, desertion is desertion.

Let us all remember the young men chewed up in the government meat-grinders since time immemorial. The politicians don't care; the generals don't care. Only the families care, so long as the family even survives in this murderous and merciless world.

Villainous: Nancy You Made My Day

One of the things that our Democratic friends are learning to do beautifully is to provide folks on the "far right" with wonderful memes.

First there was President Obama and his "bitter clingers." He was speaking to some educated, evolved folks in San Francisco.

Then there was Hillary Clinton and her "basket of deplorables." She was speaking to a group of gay activists. Remember that glorious moment? The next day some wag put up a meme with "Les Deplorables" playing off a poster for Les Miserables, the musical.

And now Our Nance has come out and branded President Trump as "villainous."

Nancy, I love it. I don't know if I've been so jazzed since... Oh, I can't remember when.

It made me think about who really is villainous. Not Hitler or Stalin or Mao. They were just evil.

Because when you are talking "villainous" you are talking about some cartoon villain twisting his mustache with a villainous grin on his face. Villain is the other side of Hero, and you gotta have both in a good story.

And anyway, I thought you lefties only dealt in "hate." Either you are a woke lefty that believes in Activism and in Peaceful Protest -- not forgetting the occasional situation where the rage for social justice creates a situation where the peaceful protest is Mostly Peaceful Protest -- or you are a "hater." Period, full stop.

Anyway, Nance, you made me think about who really is "villainous."

And the answer was not long in coming. Of course! Matthew Compeyson in the BBC Dickensian series! Dickensian, for those of you that haven't yet streamed it on Amazon, is a prequel to a bunch of Dickens novels, from Christmas Carol to Bleak House. The villain of the piece, without question, is Compeyson. And believe me, Compeyson has some competition in the villainous stakes, because the series includes all our favorite Dickensian villains, from Fagin to Scrooge. And even Bill Sykes.

The reason that Compeyson -- the beast -- is villainous is that he is trying to win the love of the young rich heir Miss Havisham of Great Expectations so he can strip her of Daddy's money. And knowing what we know about what will happen to Miss Havisham by the time she turns up in Great Expectations we have absolutely no sympathy for the villainous plans of Matthew Compeyson.

But is President Trump really "villainous" in the mold of Matthew Compeyson? Because he wants to tempt the Dems to impeach him in the House of Representatives? Come on Nancy. You grow up, girl. Remember? Politics ain't beanbag.

Look, I grant you that Trump is being a bit of a naughty boy for riling up the Democratic faithful with his "hateful" tweets. And everybody knows that hateful tweets are solely a problem on the right, and that when anyone on the left proposes doxxing the kids of some pro-life protester that is an understandable reaction to the unadulterated "hate" of the "far right," which Twitter and Facebook know is completely against their Community Standards.

But Nance, honey. This current problem is Your Fault. It is Your Fault for a simple reason. You chaps and chapettes in the Democratic Party violated Rule One of democratic politics.

What is Rule One?

Rule One: When you lose a change election, you concede the election. Period, full stop.

A change election, in my book, is any election after one of the parties has won two in a row. So, if you are the party that was in power for the last two presidential terms, you concede the election if it looks like you lost.

Why is that? Because the whole point of democratic politics is to be able to Throw the Rascals Out without resort to violence and armed conflict, otherwise known as civil war. And it seems, according to the scientists, after about a century or so of democratic politics and/or universal franchise that the voters tend to want to Throw the Rascals Out after about eight to ten years of one party being in power.

And to start whingeing about the popular vote, or voter suppression, or whatever, is missing the point. Even if the Out party stole the election, you still concede. Rule One. Period. Full Stop.

Remember 1960, Nance? That was the election that the Dems probably stole in both Illinois, Richard Daley, proprietor, and in Texas, Lyndon Johnson, proprietor. Remember what happened, Nance? Richard Nixon -- Richard Nixon -- conceded the election.

No, Nancy Pelosi. President Trump is not "villainous." The problem in America right now is that you Democrats, liberals, lefties, whatever you call yourselves, are fools and knaves. You are fools and knaves because you have forgotten Rule One of democratic politics.

And President Trump is giving it to you straight, Nance, right in the solar plexus. I don't really know what the solar plexus is, but I know it is something you aim for in boxing when you are not aiming to punch your opponent in the jaw. And I know that nobody likes being punched in the solar plexus.

By the way, Nance, I expect you know that Bill Sykes' girl-friend Nancy makes a significant appearance in Dickensian. Unlike you, Nance, Dickensian's Nancy was not born to a prominent Baltimore political family that then married up by marrying money. She was, by her own admission, dead poor, and would have died if Fagin had not picked her up and fed her. Of course, Fagin didn't do that out of the kindness of his heart. He pimped Nancy out, including to the violent Jacob Marley, junior partner of the world-famous moneylending partnership of Scrooge & Marley. But Nancy seems to have been grateful to Fagin for rescuing her, even if there was a price for his assistance.

Makes you think, Nance, doesn't it. There are worse things in life than having a President of the United States twirl you around his little finger, and twist his mustache, and dare you to impeach him.

I know. The Noive! The nerve of a low-rent real-estate guy presuming to mess with the noble scion of the noble political famiglia Pelosi. There oughta be a law!

But I am going to be dining out on this "villainous" thing for months and months.

And for that, Nance, I shall be eternally grateful!

When Prophecy Fails: The Muellerites

In another proof of God's existence, I have just obtained the book When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter. It's about a millennarian group prophesying the end of the world in the early 1950s.

These researchers were investigating end-of-the-world groups when all of a sudden a report of an actual group prophesying the end of the world got reported in the paper. How could they get so lucky! Now they were not just researching second hand using other peoples' reports of historical end-of-the-world movements. Now they could get the straight scoop. They could get right into the middle of a millennarian group and see how it worked. And, most important, they could see what happened when the prophecy failed.

But first researchers Festinger, Riecken, and Schascter treat us to the story of an earlier group predicting the end of the world: the Millerites, who predicted the second coming of Christ in 1843, after the prophecy of William Miller, a New England farmer.

Let us call these Millerites the Muellerites.

The interest of the researchers in When Prophecy Fails is this: What happens after the predicted Second Coming of Christ or Day of Judgement comes and nothing happens? When, as we would say, the Mueller Report is published and No Collusion?

The answer is perfectly simple. The fervor of the Muellerites is doubled and redoubled. That's because they all talk to one another. They agree that, well, good old Bob just got the day wrong. Hey! Maybe it wasn't Collusion, but Obstruction. Yeah! That's it!

But now, you'll notice, we are onto the third possibility, offered by Our Nance, prophetess extraordinaire. It's "Cover-up." Yeah! That's it. At her age, it is easy to get confused by all those C-words and O-words. I know, 'cos I'm only 5 or 6 years younger than Speaker Nance.

What is going on here? The researchers tell us. What we have is "disconfirmation" and the disconfirmation produced "dissonance" in the minds of the believers: the dissonance between the predicted End of the Trump and the fact that he is still here!

[T]he central belief and its accompanying ideology are usually of crucial importance in the believers' lives and hence the dissonance is very strong -- and very painful to tolerate.

At some point the believers are going to have to abandon their beliefs. But not yet. So what happens in that the Muellerites talk to one another and tell each other that all educated and evolved people like themselves cannot be wrong. Why everybody who is anyone agrees that there must have been Collusion -- no, Obstruction. Wait! It's Cover-up! Yeah! That's it! Cover-up!

If more and more people can be persuaded that the system of belief is correct, then clearly it must, after all, be correct.

The point is that increased proselytizing after the disconfirmation of the prophecy puts off the evil day when the whole world of the Muellerites collapses in ruins.

So you can understand what is going on in Muellerville. We are in the early stages after the first disconfirmation of the prophecy. And so the Muellerites are doubling down.

Of course, when the original Mueller prophecy was disconfirmed back in 1843-4, the scoffers had a grand old time.

The world made merry over the old Prophet's predicament. The taunts and jeers of the "scoffers" were well nigh unbearable. If any of Mueller's followers walked abroad, they ran the gauntlet of merciless ridicule...

The rowdy element in the community would not leave them alone.

You'd have to say, in another proof of God's existence, that President Trump is just the "scoffer" or the "rowdy element" needed in our national hour of need.

And I am afraid that it is not likely that he is likely to leave Our Nance at peace in her dissonance. He is going to continue scoffing. The naughty boy.

But for the True Believers, there is still Climate Change. Only 12 years to go, says Prophetess AOC.

Fortunately, the Climate Change Believers always predict the End of the World about 10 years in the future. So the future never comes.

Take Your Pick: Impeachment or Infrastructure?

So now President Trump has kiboshed the glorious $2 trillion infrastructure pork-fest because Our Nance insulted him with an accusation of "cover-up."

Yah Boo Sucks! Or whatever angry politicians yell at each other these days.

The amusing thing to me is that "collusion" and "cover-up" is an apt description of all politics-as-usual. Politics is the game of cutting deals by colluding with your political pals to carve up the loot. What is the difference between  colluding with Putin (over what exactly?) and the renewable energy subsidy barons? And of course it is essential to cover-up the gory details of the collusion because, well, every politician is supposed to be a man (or woman) of the people, and innocent of all collusions and cover-ups. I believe that the universal procedure for hiding collusions and cover-ups is the cut-out. If you want to gin up a dossier of sensational accusations you don't hire someone to gin them up; you hire someone to hire someone else to hire another guy to gin up the accusation dossier. That way, like Sgt. Schultz, you know nothing!

But, of course, every politician is always sniffing around for the despicable goings-on of the colluders and cover-uppers in the other party. Because.

To which one has to say: it takes one to know one.

I suspect that the bigger picture is that Our Nance is batting on a bit of a sticky wicket. After riling up the partisans for three years of collusion and conspiracy theories, the Democratic faithful expect blood. How to let them down gently?

I wouldn't know, because I'm not a politician and I don't know how the experts do the riling-up and the riling-down.

I suspect though, that the job of Hillary Clinton on the day after the November 2016 election was to concede the election, rile-down her supporters, declare that we are all Americans, and wait until next time.

But she didn't, and now Our Nance and Our Chuck are stuck with figuring out what to do with the riled-up partisans with still 18 months to go before the 2020 election. Do you tell them to take a nap for 6 months and worry about waking them up again for the election? Or do you keep them all at fever pitch for the next 18 months and hope that they don't fall asleep from exhaustion on Election Day 2020?

Honestly, I have no idea, none at all. All I know is that President Trump seems to have a certain instinct about how to play this game, and so far, he has come out ahead in the Trash-Talking Stakes.

And there seems to be a certain low cunning in the notion that we can't talk about handing out the loot from infrastructure spending until you chaps stop harrying me with your investigatory yap-dogs.

Mind you. I am very uncertain about this infrastructure spending idea. I am afraid it will all be spent on mass transit and bike paths for gentry-liberal twenty-somethings, renewable energy and subsidies for electric cars and replacement blades for wind farms. Instead of good old roads, bridges and freeways for the deplorables and bitter clingers driving to work in their SUVs.

But what do I know.

Think of Big Tech Censorship as an Opportunity

Everyone is worried and riled up about social media censorship and data harvesting. Not to be endured.

It's a problem. But not the one we think it is. For instance, I am coming to think that the mindless censorship of conservatives by Facebook and others is a strategic mistake for Facebook and its pals in the ruling class. It puts the question of free speech on the radar. And since, right now, it is hurting us deplorables, then it is likely to enrage more of us deplorables to the point that we might do something about it.

I was reading about the inclusion of Candace Owens on a mid-level Facebook "hate agents" list. The article shows her hate list entry on a secret screen image. Really, Facebook censors? Really? The anodyne center-right Candace Owens? She is a threat to our "community standards?" Hey, Facebook: I gotta bridge to sell you. And Owens was suspended for a message where she says that "White supremacy is not a threat. Liberal supremacy is." You think?

Look, I get that you Facebook censors are young millennials that have never read a book, and that, in the words of Ben Rhodes, "literally know nothing," But you really could do a better job of hiding it.

But in accordance with my maxim, that "there is no such thing as justice, only injustice," I say: Get it on. The more you dumb-as-posts SJW millennials censor and marginalize us the angrier we will get. And the more elections we will win.

I've been thinking about free speech, partly in response to reading Voltaire's Bastards, a flawed book that really doesn't get it. Author John Ralston Saul (a fan of IPCC founder Maurice Strong) knows that there is something wrong with the faith in reason bequeathed to us by the Age of Reason. But so far, he is flapping around at page 425 and counting and completely missing the point. Rather like his hero Maurice Strong, the real author of "we only have 10 years to live before the climate kills us all!"

The thing about free speech in the age of Voltaire was that the Enlightenment intellectuals needed free speech to get their message out and to cow the ruling class into letting middle-class scribblers acquire more status. They were a rising class and they thought that they didn't get no respect from the nobles and the courtiers in the ruling class of the age, that were as dumb as posts. Reason was a club with which to beat the nobles and the courtiers into admitting the scribblers to polite society.

Fast forward and what do we have? Ordinary middle-class deplorables that don't get no respect from the gentry liberals and the Democratic operatives with bylines in the media. We notice that the first reaction of today's educated ruling class is to censor our speech and marginalize us as the "far right."

Of course they do. The natives are restless and the first response of every colonial governor is a show of force to teach the natives who is boss.

But what our ruling-class pals have not done is think about their responsibility as rulers. Like most rulers down the ages they cannot think very far beyond the notion that, by golly, the purpose of society is identical to the class interest of us, the rulers. In our day this class interest of the rulers is the class interest of the educated class and their political clients. Back in the day, our evil slaveholder Founders recognized that the continuance of their rule involved accommodating people that didn't agree with them; there should be a public square in which all views could get heard. But they were slaveholders; what did they know?

A similar problem is the erosion of privacy due to big media data harvesting and government surveillance, discussed by the Zman.

Let's not think of privacy as a problem, but as an opportunity.

Think about privacy this way. Back in the day, when everyone lived in agricultural villages, there was no privacy. The women knew everything that was going on, and they used their knowledge to control things. But there was an out. If you got in trouble, you could always leave and disappear. Because there was no global online database of miscreants. If you were in New England back in the day, you could just disappear and head "out west."

Then came the industrial city and its anonymity. The telling point is that, in response to the social chaos, society invented the urban police force to control the uncontrollable youths and gangs that were terrorizing honest citizens. You can read Dickens to get a flavor of the colorful mixture of anti-social characters that urban anonymity set free.

Now we are returning to a society where everyone knows everything about you. OK, fine. That means that we are going to have to codify rules about privacy into law and into the unwritten law of the culture. I don't know how it will end up, but it is coming, and it is coming because various victims of the lack of privacy will get riled up and demand justice.

Of course, we won't get justice, but we might get a reduction of injustice.