It's been a while since we quoted Matt Taibbi here, not because of his leftish political views [Free speech for everyone! Ed.], and certainly not because he's not funny. He is a fine writer and I can't help but chuckle as I read something like Insane Clown President. The thing is that I wait for Mr Taibbi's books to appear, because I refuse to read Rolling Stone. So I was pleased to discover, today, that Mr T pens (or types) Untitledgate, a newsletter (or "serial book", as he calls it"), which will be delivered to you by e-mail... if you subscribe, of course. Even better news is that some parts are available to cheap Charlies [like Walt! Ed.] who want to read before they shell out the spondulix. The most recent offering, headed "We're in a permanent coup", is subheaded "Americans might soon wish they just waited to vote their way out of the Trump era". Eh? Must read! Here are some excerpts.
We have long been spared this madness [change of government by coup] in America. Our head-counting ceremony was Election Day. We did it once every four years. That’s all over, in the Trump era....
The men who are the proxies for Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani...are asserting that "official channels" have been corrupted. The forces backing impeachment, meanwhile, are telling us those same defendants are obstructing a lawful impeachment inquiry.... We are speeding toward a situation when someone in one of these camps refuses to obey a major decree, arrest order, or court decision, at which point Americans will get to experience the joys of their political futures being decided by phone calls to generals and police chiefs.
My discomfort in the last few years, first with Russiagate and now with Ukrainegate and impeachment, stems from the belief that the people pushing hardest for Trump's early removal are more dangerous than Trump. Many Americans don't see this because they're not used to waking up in a country where you're not sure who the president will be by nightfall. They don’t understand that this predicament is worse than having a bad president.
The Trump presidency is the first to reveal a full-blown schism between the intelligence community and the White House. Senior figures in the CIA, NSA, FBI and other agencies made an open break from their would-be boss before Trump's inauguration, commencing a public war of leaks that has not stopped....
The agencies' new trick is inserting themselves into domestic politics using leaks and media pressure. The "intel chiefs" meeting was just the first in a series of similar stories, many following the pattern in which a document was created, passed from department from department, and leaked. [Examples are given.] ...
I don't believe most Americans have thought through what a successful campaign to oust Donald Trump would look like. Most casual news consumers can only think of it in terms of Mike Pence becoming president. The real problem would be the precedent of a de facto intelligence community veto over elections, using the lunatic spookworld brand of politics that has dominated the last three years of anti-Trump agitation.
CIA/FBI-backed impeachment could also be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Donald Trump thinks he's going to be jailed upon leaving office, he'll sooner or later figure out that his only real move is to start acting like the "dictator" MSNBC and CNN keep insisting he is. Why give up the White House and wait to be arrested, when he still has theoretical authority to send Special Forces troops rappelling through the windows of every last Russiagate/Ukrainegate leaker? That would be the endgame in a third world country, and it's where we're headed, unless someone calls off this craziness. Welcome to the Permanent Power Struggle.
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