I wouldn't normally pay as much attention to Michael Wolff's claims about Robert Mueller and his claims about Mueller's investigation but watching on while Mueller let his thug mafia lawyer pal, William Barr trash his work, obstruct Congress, ATTACK THE INVESTEGATORS ON BEHALF OF THE PRESIDENT WHO MUELLER CERTAINLY KNOWS OBSTRUCTED JUSTICE AND VERY LIKELY IS PUTIN'S INSTRUMENT IN THE PRESIDENCY! makes me far more open to considering if the celebrity journalist has a more realistic picture of Mueller and the weakness that Trump and his thugs have been able to take full advantage of. I think the biggest question isn't that Mueller's public persona of integrity made him the right man for the job, I think think the bigger question is the borders and soft edges that are certainly there. Real people, such as every human being has ever been, is not a damned granite statue, they're not movie-TV cartoon heroes, they're not goddamned Atticus Finch-Gregory Peck* or Albus Dumbledore. We all have feet of clay and if not feet some other part of us will crumble or wash away. That's especially true of anyone who could have remained a member of the Republican Party of the United States in the last several decades as it has descended ever more rapidly into the edges of fascism where we are now.
I don't remember who wrote or said in the past week that if Wolff's picture is even close to accuracy - I don't have any doubt about Wolff's weak spots - then one of the most vulnerable things about Mueller is his devotion to institutions, his devotion to the FBI, the Department of Justice and, as Wolff has said, his own investigative team's existence. I have already, several times, mentioned Mueller's decades long habitation in the habitat of insider DC as a source of my skepticism about him. He may, indeed, be the best of his local sub-species but he is still of that species.
There is a very real difference between a person put up as a hero and an actual hero and one of the real differences is in how much they are willing to sacrifice to do the right thing. Real heroes would sacrifice the appearance of stability in the rotted out edifice of the law and the institutions of government that have been becoming obvious since the turn of the century. The Bush v Gore imposition of one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States THROUGH THE MOST INSTITUTIONAL OF INSTITUTIONS OF ALLEGED JUSTICE, THE SUPREME COURT, held up by the establishment media as well as the gutter, Murdochian media, was certainly enough to indicate that anyone who could be called "an institutionalist" as a compliment likely was in on that other corruption to some extent. Now, with Trump imposed on us through the Supreme Court striking down every attempt by elected officials to protect our very electoral process from the kind of corruption that has produced a Trump that title, "institutionalist" is, itself holding corruption up as a virtue.
Mueller's own history is a mix, included with actions in law enforcement that are uncontroversially seen as positive, he has been associated with dubious actions. He was involved with the prosecution of Manuel Noriega, after George H. W. Bush invaded Panama to abduct him - killing, by credible estimates, more than six hundred People, many of the civilians - the cover up of which Mueller's friend William Barr conducted, That is something I have little doubt that Mueller knew about at the time, certainly he knew it after it became public. His appointment to head the FBI was done by the illegitimate president, George W. Bush. He gave Senate testimony that was clearly part of whipping up the invasion of Iraq, though it was hardly the most extreme example of lying, of the kind that another monument in simulated granite, Colin Powell engaged in, it was clearly part of it. I see his appointments by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as little more than their acceptance of institutional Washington, parts of their choice to be weak presidents hankering after the title "bi-partisan," a title the virtue of which seems to be held out as exclusively applying to Democratic presidents.
His actions which are pointed to as admirable, his refusal to go along with the worst programs of torture and dubious prosecution during that time, look to me, in retrospect, mostly done in the interest of protecting HIS institution, the FBI. And, no doubt, it was done to protect his own reputation with respectable Washington and the respectable press, some of those who, now that it is in service to the center of power in the Trump regime, are turning on Mueller as the gutter press that is the more explicit branch of the media doing the billionaire oligarchs ground work, already has.
As to Mueller's position as a hero, I don't buy it. His service in Vietnam was him choosing to be a part of the military that was rare for those of his class at the time, I don't know his motives. He was certainly no more heroic for that than many of the kids I knew who were drafted and sent there, some of whom suffered a lot more than Mueller did, any of whom I have to wonder about how they'd have been treated by Mueller the law man as opposed to someone like Barr.
I have to form an image of Mueller based on his entire record, most of all on how he has acted as a public official and as the leader of his latest investigation and in his handling of Barr's obstruction. And in that, in his continuing reticence at openly testifying about what he found and, most tellingly, how far he was willing to try to go and why he might have chosen not to, I can't say that I respect him.
I think the adulation given to Mueller and the faith that was put in him have been far too much and that naive trust, itself is a symptom of the denial of reality. I think what we are seeing in this as in all aspects of the Trump regime, the Republican-fascist ratfucking of our elections, including their refusal to protect the United States from Putin and other foreign gangsters, the Supreme Court's decades long assault on the integrity of our elections in favor of big money, Republicans gerrymandering to prevent democracy in ways that I think would make the Brits nauseated, the widespread dissemnination of overtly fascistic propaganda to directly corrupt the morals and minds of The People, the first and last target for those who want to kill legitimate government, egalitarian democracy by an adequately informed People OF GOOD-WILL, consideration of all of that might be the lens to view Robert Mueller through. It is, I am convinced, the only one that will give you an accurate instead of a phony show-biz view of the world we live in and will likely die from.
* I will always remember how when Harper Lee's first version (second published) and far more true-to-life Set A Watchman incarnation of Atticus Finch as an upper class racist of the 1950s as seen by a more evolved adult daughter facing his real character for the first time was met with such hurt outrage, even legal attempts to suppress its publication - EVEN BY THE ALABAMA STATE GOVERNMENT!. That the peddler of mid-brow civic piety Aaron Sorkin has redone To Kill a Mockingbird for Broadway is probably not a good sign. I read the books, I won't be seeing the Sorkin version. I found Watchman Atticus more believable than Mockingbird Atticus. That in the one it was the child Scout who saw him and in the other it was the adult Scout who did is certainly relevant to how Harper Lee wrote him. As Flannery O'Connor noted, Mockingbird is a children's book. I wonder if Atticus - Gregory Peck, most peoples' version of him - might not contribute dangerously to the delusional construction of such heroes as Mueller instead of looking realistically at the extent to which they are compromised by the privileges they enjoy.
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