People
like Sally Yates are catalysts in dishonest governments. She is, in
her case, a whistle blower, a despoiler of conspiracy. She's a
hallmark to what's right and decent in an administration that was
corrupt at least 18 days before it began. She was a profile in
courage and refused to endorse an unconstitutional order even if it
meant her own termination. She plays by the rules, follows the book,
takes oaths at someplace more than hyperbole.. If not for her, I have
little doubt that today Muslims from 7 countries would be banned from
America. Either that or it would be more of an uphill battle to
reverse it. Sally was Rosa. She was in the right place at the right
time doing the necessary thing. If Sessions had been AG then, Trump
very likely would have succeeded in putting “a temporary ban on
Muslims...until we can figure out WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON.” That
suspended suspicion always troubled me. Is there a gray area, a
chance that whatever element he wants “temporarily” removed my be
up to something that is not illicit? Well the courts, and Sally
Yates, boiled it down and found the scaly white residue of racism.
Monday
May 8, 2017 a senate hearing convened. On the block was the head of
the man who, if you read your history, really flouted the parameters
of the circle he chose to be in more than Benedict Arnold. Michael
Flynn is like an annoying insect, a mosquito who lays eggs in the
tall wet grass. Obama warned Trump not to hire him. Flynn did not ave
good character. He had accepted money from foreign governments
something, apparently, as a military personnel he was forbidden to
do. He was caught in a lie to the vice president and, after 24 days
(following Bannon's sudden departure from the position) was removed
by Trump himself as national security advisor. Are these functionary
government wanna-bees stupid or is there a method to the madness. Do
the knights at King Arthur's round table tweet irredactible codes
that in some convoluted way will in their vision “make America
great again?” Indeed, it is a fantastical, mystical dystopia, but
perhaps also a parable that will be remembered as when America hit
rock bottom. It may be a time to take a look at the grand scheme, the
hyperbolic memoir maxim that once coined the phrase “government
for,” and maybe even, “by the people.”
From
Vietnam to the Challenger disaster, from Watergate to Lewinsky the
government has tendered the way it disseminates information to its
constituents. Yates played to the benefit of the rules. She was a
player, not a dissident, and was true to her oath. But when does
playing become dissension and being a player become playing along
with dissension? Too much classification prevents honest people from
doing entirely the right thing. Why is it classified in the first
place? Is our government, composed of our elected officials,
legislators who in recent times have had to touch base with their
grass root more than any time in history, a bunch of fraternities
with secret handshakes? Two reasons for such sequestration, for such
thorough gestation, of tempered incubation of information come to
mind. 1), and most likely, the government wants to maintain the
upper-hand in its relationship with America. 2), I cite just to give
them a benefit of a doubt, raw data is too erroneous, alarming or
bombastic for constituents to digest. The former deeply disgruntles
me. It flys in the face of and denies its very reason for being. It
is like the entire mechanical operation of a typewriter somehow
working, producing text, without a ribbon.
When
Rex Tillerson says “no comment,” or consistently evades
journalists, leaving his dealings with our world subject to
speculation I am angered. I want my money back. He works, in the end
for us, for America and has a implied commitment to be as transparent
as those sheets our teachers put on the opaque projectors. There
should not, or need not, be any “SCIF” rooms. The clandestine
cloak Washington insists on wearing creates a hostile, partisan,
debatable environment fertile for dishonesty to take root. It creates
the necessary lieing down to truth atmosphere that allows a Michael
Flynn to go unnoticed until he has shared his influence on the
counter-culture that, in a bizarre irony, is the Trump
administration. However most administrations have smesome degree of
distrust, some element of conspiracy, of making hiding the facts so
common-place that an interloper blends in sublimely. By LBJ's final
year in office an interloper was as camouflaged as Charlie in tall
grass. Simple arithmetic, the dissection of human conscience, the
basest human need for acceptance among peers leads to subverting and
deception. In 1968, a week before the general election, is an example
of the end justifying depict. LBJ knew Nixon was a peace manipulator.
He discouraged North Vietnam's president from making a deal to end
the war. Nixon insisted he could do better as president. Johnson
chose not to share this outright treason with America. Nixon likely
would have lost and Humphrey would certainly have ended the war and
saved thousands. All of Johnson's cabinet, including Defense
Secretary Clark Clifford, found a story written in the Christian
Science monitor detailing the sabotage to be too “inflammatory”
for the American people. They thought that the idea that a
presidential candidate would play games with a war (the least
supported war in history) would shatter any future trust in
government, in their guardianship.
Every
once in a while a voice, a conscience, someone with courage to play
the right game, comes along. But when they do they can't say
everything. Therein lies the problem, the enticement to be
“problematic.” Yates should be bound by nothing, free to tell
everything as she saw it, free to not have to declassify anything. A
game player, a truth teller among a POTUS who tells untruths or
alternative facts with the placidity with which he lies in bed at
night. Many more than the presidents men, those four who went singing
into infamy, went to jail for Watergate crimes. They went for purger
y or obstruction of justice. It is ironic that Flynn first, at the
RNC last year, led the crowd pleaser “lock her up.” Flynn,
Kushner, Page, Nunez, Bannon, probably even straight faced Pence
should all be tossed in the jug. That has not changed since 1974.
What is long overdue to change, and technology that allows people to
surveil 10 ways, to create tweets and indelible dossiers only makes
matters worse, is the concept of classified. The communication
between, to begin very simply, the POTUS and the people that he swore
to serve should not be subject to anyone, least of all Sean Spicer.
Did FDR have press secretaries lie for him over the radio? I doubt
it. You have to go back 80 frickin years to find a time when the
government was what it is, what makes it work as an institution. My
god, back to the fire-side chats by which—I guess—some people
listened to to know if their next meal was going to come. But then
there's Edgar Bergen doing ventriloquism on the radio, undoubtedly
making a clear path for the future of double-speak and the man behind
the curtain.
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