News that the Department of Justice is dropping charges against Gen. Michael Flynn, who was briefly national security adviser in 2017, came the same day that the Washington Examiner ran a story about House Democrats packing their coronavirus oversight panel with anti-Trump partisans.
The juxtaposition brought to mind those Bugs Bunny cartoons in which the eponymous rabbit steps blithely onto a secure footing just as the one he’s leaving is collapsing. Then, he unwittingly escapes the next disaster by turning on his heel an instant before walking onto a patch of ground where a plummeting anvil would have hit him.
In my mind’s eye, Bugs embodies the Democrats’ efforts to oust President Trump. The Flynn debacle is the latest (but won’t be the last) smashing blow against the intelligence community’s Russia hoax. One hopes that when the entire edifice is reduced to rubble, the public will see every detail of the disgrace and corruption in its architecture.
But at precisely the moment “Russia collusion” finally failed to trap Trump, his enemies switched to Ukraine, and proceeded without skipping a step along their predetermined path toward impeachment.
Then impeachment, too, flopped, so Democrats now pin their hopes on the coronavirus plague, which has more potential to end the Trump presidency. The oversight panel will inevitably decide, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi already has, that the president’s response to COVID-19 cost American lives. It will say his initial downplaying of the pandemic was a fatal failure, as are his current efforts to restart the economy to avoid a Depression-scale disaster. Joe Biden, the Democrats’ hapless champion, has already suggested Trump will sacrifice lives to stoke the stock market.
But Trump can feel the public mood changing, and in favor of a return to normality. People have had enough of seclusion. Our cover headline is “Let Us Out.” Editor Jon Brown writes of growing civil disobedience, including his own, as people refuse to endure unnecessary confinement.
Armin Rosen writes that Zoom events show how much we miss real company. And we have a trio of features on how three great religions cope without congregations.
Desmond Lachman, of the American Enterprise Institute, looks at the ugly fundamentals of the coronavirus economy. And Elisha Maldonado exposes China’s silencing of whistleblowers who’ve revealed its culpability for the pandemic and cover-up.
I hope you enjoy this week’s offerings — and I haven’t even mentioned excellent reads in Your Land, Washington Briefing, Business, and Life & Arts, plus our great columnists.
Before I close, I must thank all who sent in reading suggestions. In my little remaining space, I’ll mention Korean War veteran Harold Schnell, who recommended Escape From Camp 14; Richard Crouch, who chose P.G. Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh, especially Vile Bodies and Scoop, two of my favorites; and Tom Mehl, who steered me toward Bill Bryson’s memoir, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.
I’ll get cracking.
