It’s Complicated

In a move that set the political world into a frenzy and the blogosphere on fire, Trump fired FBI director James Comey yesterday. Chaos ensued. Skyscrapers collapsed. Earthquakes swallowed Tokyo, San Francisco, Manila and Jakarta. Tidal waves wiped out low-lying areas. New York, Paris, London and Moscow are in flames.

Not exactly, but you might be inclined to think so by the level of hyperventilation over the firing. Well, not so much the firing itself, but the “why” and “when” of the firing.

My brother shot me a text last night, asking me what I thought of all this. I didn’t have a ready answer, and that in itself set me to pondering what the tempest over the firing tells us about the state of political discourse today.

First, the firing itself. There are many data points (I won’t call them facts, as some are correlations or conjecture) to consider. Here are just a few:

• AG Jeff Sessions passed on a recommendation from recently confirmed Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein that Comey be fired.
• Trump has reportedly been mulling firing Comey since the day he was inaugurated, and that mulling elevated to reportedly raging intent this past week.
• Comey reportedly asked for additional money to investigate the Trump administration – Russia thing.
• Trump asserted, in his statement, that Comey assured him that he wasn’t being investigated (an artful dodge, by the way).
• Comey’s handling of the Clinton email thing has drawn both praise and criticism from many angles, and has contributed substantially to the deep partisan divide over both the election and politics in general today.
• Trump’s aides reportedly warned him about appearances regarding the timing of the firing.
• Every legal opinion I’ve read on this from a reliable source says that Trump had the absolute right to fire Comey, for any reason or no reason at all.

Then, there’s the frenzy, the guessing game, the finger-pointing, the partisan [call-and-response][]1], the battle for the moral high ground, the inevitable hypocrisy ping-pong, and peak-outrage.

My Trumpkin friends are having a field day rolling out old quotes from Democratic pols, pundits and talking heads that called for Comey’s firing, while ignoring their own mixed history on Comey. My Trump-skeptic are raising eyebrows and denouncing the “shit-show” that is this administration, while generally (but not universally) feeling tempest-in-a-teapot about the firing itself. My liberal friends are demanding impeachment, and are in high dudgeon and overdrive-anger as they explain that it’s not hypocritical to be angry over the firing despite having called for it in the past. The libertarian pages I follow are being accused (yet again) of being stealth-Republicans because their level of outrage is deemed insufficient by the Left.

There’s a funny moment from Stephen Colbert’s show, where he announces Comey’s firing, hears cheers from the audience, then has to talk down the crowd’s cheering because, apparently, his left-leaning crowd isn’t supposed to be happy about the firing. It suggests that at least some of that crowd needs to be told what to think about the issues of the day.

And, there’s an amusing meme that’s making the rounds that claims liberals would suddenly come out pro-gun if Trump announced he wanted to repeal the Second Amendment, which suggests (not entirely without justification) that the Left’s outcry is pure reflex.

What does all this tell us? First, the obvious. That people will look to bend high-visibility and potentially controversial actions to their advantage. That some people will say anything to resolve cognitive dissonance. That it’s more important to have an immediate, loud, sanctimonious opinion than to reserve judgment.

Second, that the Russia business won’t go away any time soon. This action, which may or may not have been intended to do… something… about the FBI’s handling of the Russia connection investigation, has further convinced the already-convinced that there’s something there.

Ultimately, that’s what this is all about – the Trump-Russia kerfuffle. Is there “something there?” Does Trump’s firing of Comey, surrounded as it is by all sorts of intrigue and eyebrow-raising addenda, add anything to our knowledge (not the competing narratives, but our actual knowledge)?

It’s complicated.

Thing is, it’s OK to admit that it’s complicated. We don’t have to jump to conclusions, and we can wait and see how things unfold going forward.

But, as to that, as to the Trump-Russia business, I am increasingly worried about what it might precipitate. Already, we’ve seen that Trump’s not as cozy with Putin as some presumed he’d be. Already, we’ve heard concerns that Trump’s non-coziness might precipitate World War III, with Syria as the flashpoint. Already, we’ve heard that, any time Trump seems to say something nice about a Russian, that it’s proof of something nefarious.

Given that Trump is demonstrably someone who’s concerned with appearances, shouldn’t worry that he might be pushed into being more belligerent than he might otherwise be, just to “prove” that the allegations about his Russian ties are false? Isn’t excessive AHA-ism on the Left’s part almost a dare to the untethered orange id to prove them wrong by going tough-guy on Russia? Wouldn’t that be a really, REALLY undesirable negative adverse effect of excessive TrumPutinist hyperbole?

Back to the original point. I still don’t have a full opinion of this Comey business. As I said, it’s complicated. It’s OK to admit that.