Like waiting for Santa, this is a magic time for the Resistance, when belief and wishes make logic and reason disappear.
PETER VAN BUREN:
“…When our kids were little, we would make Santa’s magic boot prints from the front door to the Christmas tree by sprinkling baking soda around a crude cardboard cutout. This explained how the presents showed up on Christmas morning, since we didn’t have a fireplace. It was cute to watch our daughters react back when they believed it was all true. But as they got older, logic began to creep in—how did Santa get past the locked front door? And why didn’t the dog bark?
That’s how the real world works, sad as it can be to see them grow up. Logic overcomes belief. Otherwise you’d be 45 and still wondering why Santa didn’t eat the cookies you left out.
The bad news is that magic is back, at least in terms of politics. And it isn’t the good kind, the one that makes holiday marshmallow memories. It’s the bad kind, which turns rational people into blithering idiots ready to believe anything that supports their point of view. Accusations become evidence, for impeachment or harassment or Islamophobia or a society gone white nationalist wild, and the more accusations, the stronger the evidence seems to be. Simply filling a bus with people claiming without evidence that someone did something should mean nothing, but it now means more than ever.
So even as the hive mind agrees that a flippant remark is “demanding foreign intervention” or “a national security threat,” or that an investigation is “interference in our democracy,” or with even less evidence that Trump is a Russian agent, Tulsi a Russian plant, Facebook a Russian tool, Jill Stein a Russian something or other, it does not make it true. Adding “-gate” to a noun does not create a crime. Believing a phone call is bribery, or a tweet is witness intimidation, does not negate the need for the law degree that allows you to use those words accurately. This is about the law, not about writing marketing copy. And kids, I’m sorry, I know how much you wanted to believe in the elves, but it really was Mom and me buying the presents all those years.
It is sadly no surprise that the one semi-favorable witness Democrats allowed to testify at the Impeachment Gladiatorial Thanksgiving Spectacle, Gordon Sondland, was soon accused of misconduct by not one but three women (so it has to be true). The alleged incidents took place years ago, there were no witnesses or physical evidence, and none of the women found reason to bring the accusations forward until Sondland emerged as a possible weak point in the Dems’ case against Trump. What they said is fully and forever unprovable, and can only be “believed” because anyone who supports Trump must be on the naughty list.
Watching those accusations front-paged by a believing media, and with memories of the ugly Kavanaugh confirmation still fresh, one can only view Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s deteriorating health with concern. We all know that whomever Trump nominates as the Ghost of Christmas Past’s replacement will be accused of terrible things. For a male nominee, it will be more sexual harassment incidents than Jack the Ripper. For a female, something “racist” she wrote in junior high. And that doesn’t even include the hidden horrors in their taxes, decisions from their days on the traffic court bench, and so on. It is as inevitable as Santa’s yearly visit…”