I refuse to think that our democracy is over due to the actions of a con man and wanna be dictator. We kicked the King of England out of our country, and we can surely kick this presidential imposter out of the White House. As Kirsten Gillibrand said, it will take a lot of cleaning, but America will remove the stain of this horrible man from our country, if not from our memories.
185
As usual, a fine column by Dowd. Too bad that the president doesn't know how to read.
133
Maureen, One of your best. Please also remember that "he" left junior high school in Queens to go to ilitary school upstate because he punched out a teacher.
117
Ignorance of history is useful when creating puff pieces like this one....To say America in 1937 was "naive" to corruption is ridiculous. This type of analysis presumes that the people of the 30's were stupid. They were not. It may have been useful for the author to read a 30's version of the NYT! I think it can be presumed that the many scandals after the market crash of 1929 were still fresh. As well as Teapot dome, trust busting, etc...The author is only an opinion writer, not a journalist, one would think she has some basic knowledge of journalistic history. Newspapers lived off scandals then, even more than today! Though I will admitt, the NYT is doing its part to bring back the glorious years Yellow Journalism.
26
Is anyone else as discouraged as I am? Even if Trump isn't re-elected, I fear the damage he has done and the fact that legions of Americans believe him rather than their eyes and ears. Even out of the White House, he and his brethren will continue to sow discord and falsehood. Trump seems to mesmerize people much the same way as did Hitler. What a sad period of American history when so many care more about the economy than values and goodness. I'm a grandmother so I care about the world that my children and grandchildren will face when this lying finally comes to a head, whatever that will mean. Please tell me I'm just being alarmist.
105
Trump, for a lack of a more descriptive term, is evil incarnate!
90
“Trump doesn’t know that people who don’t confront their demons are destined to be confronted by them.”
Generalize this to the GOP. They have been selling "Government IS the problem" otherwise known as "The Freedom Delusion," since in the US "Freedom" MEANS "freedom from government."
Thus the self proclaimed "leader of the free world" leads the march to world anarchy.
Anarchy--freedom from law and order-- means de facto rule by Moneylords--warlords and mafioso godfathers.
But even they need government, since wealth is a creation of property tax and labor law. Without it, even Moneylords are destined to be confronted by their demon--poverty.
Alas--this is more film noir! Some people really get away with murder--on small and holocaust scales.
Government bashing hatred is now Americanism--see NYT "In the Land of Self-Defeat"
The civilized world had better protect itself FROM "the leader of the free-from government world"
35
Trump is pure evil. Petty evil, to be sure, but still "pure" in the sense of "nothing else but" evil. I think of him often as our Hitler. Some might say "but he hasn't created a holocaust or a world war." The response back to that is "not yet." It would be interesting to compare the rise of Hitler to the rise of Trump. Where are we now, 1934?
79
Trump is evil. For a moment in time, evil triumphs. Evangelicals who claim to have a personal relationship with Jesus and God have sold
their souls to the Prince of Darkness. My deep sorrow is that our country will be broken, left without dreams or illusions, or foundational
principles or anything to believe in. The Republicans lost their beliefs, they are lost, Mitt Rooney stands alone, speaking fearfully against this monster
who is moving steadily towards Bethlehem. Democrats are being savaged by this evil minded ridiculous, full of vanity man and his idiotic family. They will destroy the country. Perhaps our only hope is on divine intervention? May I remind myself that Trump is very overweight,eats bad food for his age, is in a constant state of rage, he screams and sees his people as his enemies, he is losing his mind....are these good signs?
62
Brilliant. How sad that life imitates art. Dowd selects Chinatown, Bruni Faust. As evil as Trump is, I think his enablers are even more so. So what are the artistic manifestations of Pompeo and Barr? Tweedle Dum(b) and Tweedle Dee? Of McConell? Nurse Ratched?
48
So, Maureen: What does your brother, Kevin, think of trump now? Is he capable of understanding what you have written in this column, or is he in denial?
55
A stunning piece of prose, Dame Dowd. You are the dame Raymond Chandler toasts with a beer in heaven agreeing that Trump is “low-grade...with the morals of a goat, the artistic integrity of a slot machine, and the manners of a floorwalker with delusions of grandeur.”
27
His consequence-free life is about to come to an end. In less than a year the congress will impeach him. Though the senate will probably not impeach him, he will be forever stained and next November he will lose "bigly."
36
Blow the whistles and save this country.
40
Good essay, Maureen, but it's a pity you didn't figure it out BEFORE his election. 65,000,000 of us saw it coming, while you were still blasting Hillary Clinton and cuddling Trump like he was your adorable new puppy.
118
Ken
MT Vernon, NH | Pending Approval
Oh, Maureen.
The Bidens don’t need anyone to be bringing up China right now.
A few million dollars from arm twisting some Ukrainians is one thing.
Now, China....
How do you know it is all collapsing?
The NYT today posts several articles about what Barr is up to.
While true, the NYT did use adjectives like “unfounded theories”, “pet theories”, “conspiracy theory”, etc. in front of each interesting tidbit they revealed, they are presenting the audience coming attractions.
The trick for them is how to act surprised when it goes from whack job conspiracy theory to possibility, to likelihood, to probable, to documented fact as we pass the next few months watching the Democrats dissemble.
8
After reading this article then reading some, not all of the readers comments, I was puzzled over persons who wrote in that they are with trump all the way. And another wrote that the democrats coup will fail. I wondered why are republicans reading the New York Times? Then it hit me! These are trolls probably from troll-land.ru. And here I was thinking all those monster and science fiction movies were scary. Yikes! What was that!
54
Maureen, I cannot wait to read your columns castigating Elizabeth Warren and propping up Trump in 2020 so you can continue to write columns such as this one through 2024.
33
There just was a horrible and fatal homeless rampage in New York's Chinatown, albeit a continent away from the one referenced in this editorial.
Couldn't the editors have delayed publishing for a few days out of sensitivity or compassion for the souls who died?
9
Trump IS a narcissistic sociopath and how he behaves shows
how blatant his disorder affects all of his behavior. Some believe he may be a psychotic, but psychotics are said to feel no fear.Trump shows his fear in his anger but his sense of knowing right from wrong may be debatable.
I think anyone who knows, or has been around, this man for a period of time would honestly agree that his behavior IS abnormal.
36
And yet... Maureen you supported this sick twisted person over Hillary. You can take writing to an art form. You can evoke such memorable scenes with just your pen. You have a great talent to be sure, but I will not forget or forgive you for your support of Trump. This man, his congressional lackeys, and his ridiculous supporters sicken me to the point of disillusionment. Maureen why not take pen in hand and apologize for how wrong you were. I’m sure you could state such an apology far more eloquently than most.
94
America is growing more like Pottsylvania - all hail Fearless Leader.
12
A frog was looking for a way to cross a wide river. An Alligator appeared and said, " Hop on my back. I'll carry you across." When they got to the other side, the alligator promptly ate the frog. The frog squealed in protest. The alligator said, "Why are you so surprised? That's what alligators do." Maureen, in 2016, you, week after week, drove another spike into Hillary Clintons heart. So don't lecture us now about complicity. Who did YOU vote for?
80
I keep hoping that you will do some actual journalistic work and uncover something about trump, but you do a movie review. So typical of you.
22
Either this comments thread has been infiltrated by Russian trolls or this country is in worse shape than I thought. This many NYT readers seemingly so ill informed of the facts and spewing republican defenses of Trump is suspicious. Chinatown indeed!
32
Ms. Down - thanks again for another spot on column about Trump’s Washington. You made my Sunday again. Now to the business of cleaning up this sickening cesspool ...
15
Maureen's essay starts slow but builds to a great ending.
3
The only way ignorant trash like Donald Trump can build themselves up is by dragging others down to their level. And lower.
Surely the majority of Americans are smart and worldly enough to realize this.
15
Even John Gotti, the aptly named “Teflon Don”, ended up in prison.
19
Woke up in the middle of the night thinking "we are living in Germany in the 1930's". The fascists are destroying our government which will leave us unprotected and vulnerable.
The GOP appears to be taken over by these fascists who are encouraged by the Murdoch's of the media. This descent into a modern political hell is funded by our very own Oligarchs and with funding help from Russia through the NRA.
The really scary part is that huge number of Americans who have fallen into this diaspora and support Trump in spite of all of his obvious evil. But, we can't forget the McConnell's and Graham's who support the disassembling of our government.
Is it hopeless? It appears, at this moment, that what is standing in front of this nightmare is a very strong, capable 70 year old woman. Thank God for Nancy.
34
Ms. Dowd: You need to write an analysis of your column titled: "In Paris With Boris, Donald and Lemon Tarts". July 2, 2016.
18
Maureen, you, and your fellow journalists have an important role in creating the “Chinatown” we are living through. Your savaging of Hillary in the run up to the 2016 election, helped enable this monstrous administration to exist.
Trump simply couldn’t have done it without you and the other “journalists” that made Hillary “Crooked Hillary” on a daily basis. Have you started remaking Joe Biden “Crooked Joe” over unfounded claims of corruption in Ukraine as the RNP wants? Or are you sticking with “he’s too old”, “too out of touch”, “not electable”? Towne’s vision is only possible with the complicity of others: Mcconnell, Pompeo, Miller and Dowd...
49
Donald Trump in two words: Roy Cohn.
21
What will you say when the "idiotic conspiracy theories" you mention turn out to be not so idiotic?
8
The eminent historian Fritz Stern's book The Politics of Cultural Despair describes a Weimar Germany, devastated by the post war depression and ripe for the taking. Hitler capitalized on it and the rest is history. Fast forward to 2016. Trump tells the country it is in dire straits and he alone can fix it. He has the incredible fortune to run against a person complacent that she's a shoe-in. Trump wins and proceeds to treat the presidency as an extension of his business enterprise, trampling over the emoluments clause, obstructing justice, and attempting to extort a country imperiled by Russia at their door. With McConnell having his back, Trump proceeds with total impunity, thumbing his nose at Pelosi. Once again, Trump leads a consequence free existence. We initially said the Trump era would be an aberration but if he's reelected it will be eight years of hell.
26
Ah, so much I want to write: that the US watched our European allies getting pummeled for years before we entered to help - party due to actually trying to curry favor with Hitler (sound familiar?)
Then this: "Nothing good was going to happen when the spoiled attention addict was put in a position to demand the attention — and favors — of the whole world, or else."
So, Maureen, if you knew this why did you work so hard to trash Hillary Clinton during the campaigns? YOU are part of the "corruption, real evil" so don't play naive.
39
So Ms. Dowd is your brother still a Trump supporter?
18
Will more immigrants help?
4
"Abandon hope all ye who enter here".
*******
Ms. Dowd's article almost instantly brought this into my mind.
If those who oppose Trump and those GOP congress people who cravenly support him publicly while, perhaps, they know he is the wrong man in the WH, do nothing and Trump wins another 4 years in office, we may as well enter and give up all hope that America will ever fully recover.
13
Did the Times investigate him during the many decades of his grift in the Times' own backyard? You yourself barely lifted a finger to write critically of him before the election. The Times helped elect him, dear. So did you. Be proud.
46
Trump is the persona of the typical New Yorker as perceived by most Americans. So Maureen, get over it. You live there. You thrive there!
11
Today’s situation reminds of the TV serial? What’s my line? where at the end the host asks will the real xxx stand up? That’s what the Republican party is or has become? The real Republican Party has stood up
8
The Presidency is totally debased by this filthy, crazed moron. Some time ago my 58-year old son related how distressed he was to realize that he actually hated the President. He leaves me exhausted and in despair that he will never shut up and go away.
32
Brilliant Op-Ed Maureen Dowd. Washington D. C. is Chinatown alright. Let us hope Hollis Mulrey's murderer is brought to justice and impeached.
8
Nice piece but "Chinatown" is a movie. It's not an analogy to our economy and politics unless you assume our economy and politics are only what our media tells us they are. "Chinatown" is also about a deeper, darker, and far older corruption than the power conferred by money. It is about sexual incest, one of the darkest of dark matters, also tragically common. Common enough that the zealot Republicans hell-bent on banning abortion are ensuring that even a child conceived in incest shall not be aborted. The entire plot and action of "Chinatown" turn around Jake's discovery of incest as the true crime being hidden and awfully being exposed and punished. It's what raises this film to the level of ancient Greek tragedy. By comparison, Trumptown is a shabby B film. We have seen worse: Depression, WW II, Korea, Vietnam, the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and King, Nixon, and the wars in the Middle East we can neither stay out of nor leave. We will get past the four or eight years of Donald Trump, correctly called by J. K. Rowling, "that little, little man." We don't know what comes after but we can influence our future if we don't give in to shallow despair and, instead, give our better selves the air and strength we need to rise up. It's not about money. It's about belief in the Constitution and the rule of law.
14
I get the dark feeling that we are being sucked into a trap Trump has set in a plot worthy of Chinatown. He’s much cleverer than he appears and devious enough to present a persona that he knows sends all good liberals into a frenzy while all the time pursuing a relentless and focused strategy. In our blindness we miss the obvious.
Trump’s MO is to divide his enemies, always attack and never admit weakness. He is fearful of facing Biden, who would certainly take the moderate vote and beat him, so he has taken a huge risk to eliminate Sleepy Joe at this early stage knowing that some mud will stick, but that it won’t matter to his base. It’s a move straight out of “The Art of War”. Who’s left (literally) are and Sanders and Warren and serendipitously Bernie has eliminated himself through ill health.
He has been gearing up to fight against Warren from the beginning and started his campaign against her 18 months ago with the Pocahontas jibe. He will paint her as the loony socialist left and that evil word will bring in a good few independents.
The more we liberals froth at the teeth the more we play into his narrative.
Beware America, of the wolf in a fool’s clothing.
14
You will call it hyperbole. You will call it irrational and hysterical. You will say ‘it can’t happen here.’ But folks, this is how Hitler became Hitler; and this is how he harnessed the evil that lies dormant and constrained beneath the veneer of an orderly, civilized society to create the fascist, genocidal Third Reich.
Perhaps this time things will not descend to the same depths. But don’t count on it; and don’t expect this to stop if we just look the other way and wait for it to end. Thus far, someone has been there to say ‘no’ when Trump says ‘just shoot them.’
What happens when he has purged the naysayers and no one is willing or powerful enough to stop him?
22
Metaphors, Metaphors, and Metaphors -- from C-town to Overtown to Ourtown -- and the Mo' the merrier, from readers wokened early today. "Russia has figured out how to rig our elections..." I still don't see this. What is "rig," anyway? To "interfere?" Like we've been interfering in Iron Curtain and USSR and Russian politics since 1946? As they've been doing their best to undermine values etched in ink upon our oldest parchment? Are there not a thousand Dark Web denizens of democracy sequestered away in apartments from Vladivostok to Moscow to St. Pete this minute hell bent on destroying the bedrock of free-world liberties for no apparent reason? Intrinsic creeps who have zero connection to Putin, the NKVD or the KGB? Of course there are. Just as there are such malcontented zealots here, there, and everywhere with nothing better to do. There's the real story. It's a fact of the Next New World we're living in, with no escape. Bad news? For sure. But it's reality. No-one's exempt anymore -- and not even Mo and her maudlin metaphors. To send Trump to the hangman will take more than this endless assertion of overseas oligarchial electoral "rigging" with intercontinental ballistic ballyhoo -- it's a tit-for-tat in the Great Game. Putin watches on with amusement, as have presidents here for 70 years.
Everything Trump has ever done is quid-pro-quo, and I'd too hunt down every detail on bad-son Hunter's exploits at $50K per month. Follow the moolah.
5
"Chinatown" is as good an analogy as any I suppose. However, we're still making the same mistake Americans have been making for years. Don't attempt to find a unifying framework through which we can understand Donald Trump. It's like trying to put a picture frame around a black hole. We might find comfort in the gesture but we still don't know what's really going on inside.
The man is disturbed. You'd have better luck understanding our era digging through case files at Arkham Asylum. Trump is a good example of criminal insanity without the intellect. You probably don't want to get too close to the glass if you know what I mean. You might sucked-in.
12
I feel like we are drowning in a dark, polluted river. The more we struggle to find sense in what is happening, the more we try to see the sunshine of reason, we are being dragged down into unthinkable depths of depravity. The more I try to understand the unimaginable behavior of the people whom we've elected to keep our Democracy strong, I just want to crawl under the covers and cry. Even worse, I still can't believe that so many citizens who are truly being hurt by this horrible man and all his cowardly sycophants, will continue to angrily defend him as we all sink to hell together. We were the luckiest people ever to live on this earth and we are deliberately throwing it away.
21
"Hey, this ain't no reality TV!" "Chinatown".? No. In '67, I was commissioned to protect, defend the Constitution & Honor Code.
Alienated, I've had it with Tmp & family-years of mocking law & veiled THREATS of retaliatory VIOLENCE on opponents-all WARRANT REMOVAL-
Hey cowards and GOP/BASE-WAKEUP!
21
"Even if Donald Trump is impeached, we know now that the Russians have figured out how to rig our elections — and our dictator-loving president doesn’t seem too disturbed about that."
And equally disturbing is that approximately 35% of the country doesn't care either, so long as Trump is irritating book-learned liberals, minorities, immigrants and others they don't like.
26
Too many people voted for, and CONTINUE to go along with, these liars and crooks. We cannot underestimate the brainwashing machine FOX NOISE has created..
23
Many compliments for this article.
However, Maureen Dowd was busy criticizing Hilary Clinton and ignoring / playing softball with Trump before the 2016 election.
Evil happens with facilitators and Dowd was one of them.
42
If Ms. Dowd had spent as much time and effort exposing Donald Trump's corruption, racism, misogyny, narcissism and dishonesty as she spent vilifying Hilary Clinton, we wouldn't have this abomination in the White House.
Yes, Maureen, there are still consequences.
41
Our enemy? About 30 senators.
21
We need to change the very name "America". It is a toxic European name only related to DESCENDANTS OF EUROPEAN SETTLORS OF AMERICA. Actually in another 30 years three out of all five person here will be non-European descendant. Change the name so that in near future no body can deceit people with slogan MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.
3
After WWII scholars found the vast majority of Nazis remained unrepentant Nazis. There was no reckoning until their children demanded it. There are two parts to this: removing the evil from office, then dealing with the evil, criminal lack of education that is the engine for it. This is a generational process. The thought is exhausting.
28
Mo, go back and read those columns from before the 16 election! Someone got played. What was clearly going to happen has happened.
33
The big money has gone global and over to the dark side. Who is the wealthiest Person on the Planet? probably not an American like Jeff Bezoz it is most likely Vladimir Putin. head of a major international crime syndicate with a second job as a head of state. Trump and the Republicans clearly want to be aligned with Putin's gang and those in his slip stream like the Saudi crown prince MBS, high five! No loyalty to country, no fidelity to the American people, and no patriotism, no more America.
21
I expect Trump to continue doing whatever it takes to retain his power and protect his ego. Hence, he is perfectly capable of calling for his supporters in the military, police, motorcycle gangs, right-wing militias, and unaffiliated gun-nuts, racists and other right-wing rabble to rise up against the "liberals" of the "deep state", "fake media", Congress, judiciary and elsewhere and either silence them permanently or lock them up like Erdogan of Turkey does to his critics. Anyone who truly believes he can shoot someone in broad daylight on NYC's Fifth Ave. and get away with such an act is clearly capable of treating the Constitution like toilet paper.
14
You live in an “if then” world. You assume, your if, that Trump intentions and action are evil and you interpret everything he does or says in that light. Example Charlottesville, Trump did not say or voice support for white supremacists, but the press has repeated this falsehood ad nauseum, such that it has become your reality, that is the left’s reality. Now a phone conversation, where Trump asks the President of Ukraine to investigate corruption becomes a shakedown by Trump to get Ukraine to investigate Biden and his son. This paper, your column, make this connection but it is not true and was never said, yet you report it as fact. You obsess over Trump’s so-called corruption and ignore the flagrant corruption of Democrats. These aren’t conspiracy theories, Biden, the Clinton Foundation, the Steele Dossier, the abuse of power by the Obama administration in seeking FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. It is shocking the size of the mote in your eye. I get it, you hate Trump, and can only see evil. Meanwhile, we have lowest unemployment recording in our history, we are finally confronting the Chinese on trade and asking our sleepy allies to step up and pay their fare share. Take a deep breath, and look around at all the good that is happening. You are living in a delusional world.
4
Only, Maureen, Trump makes Noah Cross look like Pat Boone.
6
The documentary, "Where's My Roy Cohn," now showing at a small number of theaters, offers great insight into Trump's now-deceased (of AIDS) lawyer and mentor. Cohn was a foul-mouthed take-no-prisoners attorney who advised clients like Trump never to admit wrong or to apologize for their indiscretions. Cohn was ultimately disbarred; let's hope Trump is impeached.
19
DT says this is an era of patriots. Summoning all patriots to Faneuil Hall to declare common desire to Make America Demicratic Again.
6
In this never ending saga of American torment by a man gone mad - where are the women? Weren’t they billed as having the capacity to have an effect on the character or behavior of Trump? Was Melania’s ‘Be Best’ and Ivanka’s ‘moderating’ influence a kind of ‘pouty posing’ to go with the all those hyper paranoiac tweets???
11
Trump knows one thing. He gets away
with crimes. He is the law.
The Dems are watching with dismay:
the Reps are made of straw.
Nobody can quite comprehend
how Reps associate
with evil. How they do defend
a fraud as head of state.
History will show that at their core
they’re lackeys of sheer greed.
Trump and his henchmen and some more
are moral crooks on speed.
14
The Liberal Press/Socialists have been relentless in their muckraking efforts to get something, anything, on this Republican President even before he was elected to office. Why? Because he had the courage to stand up to the news manipulators and they hate him for it! He has slowed the “ open borders/free-stuff “ party and exposed them for what they are as well. For those of us with a job and some savings, This President is right for our pocketbook! Pray this latest swamp inspired spitefulness blows up in the faces of the finger pointers, once again!
4
Somehow the Times and its op ed columnists, its reporters and its analysts have all forgotten how much they distrusted Hillary and how much they gave Trump the benefit of the doubt. The Times remains convinced that devoting MORE than 2000+ hours to investigating and reporting about Hillary Clinton's email methods and procedures and LESS than 200 hours to investigating the crimes of Trump and Trump's family before the election was wise.
Dowd herself is proud of what she did in support of Trump's election. She has never apologized for that. She never will. She protected us from Hillary Clinton. Aren't we lucky to have her as our friend?
32
This is too depressing for a Sunday morning. Just what Trump likes. We have to address him in the manner he deserves- with fun and ridicule.
How about this: there was a comic strip character introduced in the early 1950s who was about 5 years old at the time, making him about the same age as little Donald. He has a ruddy complexion and a swoop of hair over his head. Like little Donald he terrorized everyone and everything around him and has never grown up. His name wasn’t Donald, but did begin with D.
Let’s picture and talk about Donald the Menace to dispell this gloom. (Jim Carrey, I am sure you can give us an appropriate caricature!)
Remember- Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity. Never attribute to stupidity that which can adequately be explained by dementia. He may act evil, but he is just a dumb, demented old man. I may not outlive him, but the Union will.
14
Combine "Chinatown" with "True Confessions".
2
All those months that Maureen pushed Trump's run for the presidency, chatting him up and laughing with him about his wives and funding for unknown numbers of abortions. Now Maureen seems to have a different outlook. It seems that, whoever is in office, Maureen's disdain is 100% on display. Maureen should be ashamed of her alacrity in helping to elect Trump.
29
I hope when they serve Trump up, they leave his head on. To paraphrase Noah Cross.
6
This "Touch of Evil" is just a Trump revised version of the now four mafia-wise monkeys--The Don, Rudy "The Mouth" Giuliani, William "No Obstruction" Barr, and Mike "The Intimidator" Pompeo--saying "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" but just quietly do evil, and then try to hide it under the coverup of a top-secret server and claim once exposed that it's fighting, rather than obviously doing, corruption. It's now playing in Kiev (Ukraine) where "dirt" is being dug and due to popular demand in the original Chinatown of Beijing.
4
Maureen has never acknowledged her role in electing Trump by bashing Hillary. She should at least admit her guilt and apologize, but just like Trump, she doesn't apologize.
25
“...watching Mike Pence and Marco Rubio and the red firewall of Republican lawmakers pervert principles to protect Donald Trump...” that is the outrage.
When is the radical center going to speak up?
9
What a geat analogy
Maureen,
Permit me to quote Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. "In crisis, the wrong question to ask is, “What have I done to deserve this?” The right one is, “What am I now being summoned to do?” Each of us has a task. Every life has a purpose. We can bear the pain of the past when we discover the future we are called on to make."
http://rabbisacks.org/credo-when-in-despair-think-of-your-set-task/
Now, get to work!
7
Caught up in this filmic maelstrom besides The Evil Trump are the Evil Media. Thanks to Clinton, "Spin" is in the common parlance as we can see in Dowd's drivel.
Media no longer give us truth. Media spins falsehood to suit their beliefs.
Remember where Dante will put all the liars in his Divina Comedia epic. Sure beats "Chinatown" and it looks to be overflowing with future tenants.
2
It is especially appalling that the mendacity growing at warp speed in the Trump administration is accompanied by such completely mediocre people. Rule of the incompetent for the incompetent by the incompetent.
Who would've thought that once exposed, the power structure of white male America would look so bizarrely pathetic and honorless?
13
Not buying this act, Maureen. Not for one minute.
You wanted this. You dreamed about this. You campaigned for this. Take THAT, Bill!
And now you get to own it.
All of it.
19
"Fatalism ripens through defeatism into despair."
- Anonymous
"Fate can be frighteningly random."
- Maureen Dowd
1
Hitler was destroyed. His name will ever be the definition of evil. Germany became a strong ally. The rubble was cleared away, revealing a Europe more beautiful than ever. The wall fell. Trump will eventually be gone, too, and his enablers permanently tarnished. Certainly, America can revitalise and restore it's reputation in the world. But we Americans must allow our representatives to compromise and we must swallow some bitter pills so we can address the very serious problems confronting us. We must find a way to understand and respect those who hold different views. Presidents can't govern 35% or half the country. A ship of state governed that way will eventually sink.
6
No, Ms Dowd! It is a tsunami of evil. Destructive. Catastrophic.
8
Without exception, and sadly, the best thing Dowd has ever written, and perhaps the epitath, eulogy, whatever for our era....dare I say country. Recalls the pain in the excerpt from Robert Townes' 1994 review of his script for CT, in the LA Times article linked by Dowd:
INTERIOR. DEPARTMENT OF WATER & POWER--YELBURTON & GITTES
"YELBURTON (referring to bandage) . . . my goodness, what happened to your nose?
GITTES (smiles) I cut myself shaving.
YELBURTON You ought to be more careful. That
must really smart.
GITTES Only when I breathe."
Unfortunately we breathe daily, all day long....
3
"This was the week that made it glaringly clear that the president put his fragile ego, idiotic conspiracy theories and political prospects ahead of American national security interests."
Sadly, so do the 41% who still support Trump.
9
Lets continue with the movie analogies.
Aneela Mirchandani does a terrific piece using the classic 12 Angry Men.
https://theoddpost.com/2019/09/21/twelve-angry-trump-voters/
1
Rotten to the core. That is the sad news about America and its institutions that both the Trump presidency and the Chinatown script suggest. The claim is that Trump is America's representative, our king of the rotten because only the most extreme example of a moral deficiency already festering for years and far too common. Who doesn't know a few lesser Trumps in charge locally? If Dowd is right, expect much worse. Big systemic problems invite stupid and false solutions by other opportunists. Perhaps our national media culture's best is merely screaming on the street corner, "the end is near." Democracy in America must somehow experience rebirth. In the mean time try to imagine a good way to sober up the drunken idiot that is our body politic.
3
Trump is an American God. He is Greed. He is Power. He is Irresponsibility. He is Violence. He is of our making.
12
Well written!!
1
Certainly none of this is new for many of us and yet months before the 2016 election Ms. Dowd invested most of her time and effort in taking down Clinton.
15
Look to trump's bankrupt casinos for a glimpse of hope- or Hitler committing suicide in a bunker- evil is not sustainable, it collapses in on itself under the weight of its own idiocy.
look at trump impeaching himself by openly begging other nations to investigate his opponent- or look at the 2008 great recession-the housing and banking crash due to greedy banks.
Evil is not sustainable, it is the moral rot that causes its own structure to collapse-the task for the rest of us is to endure and try to fix the resulting mess when evil collapses-as trump and trumpism soon will.
10
I always thought Chinatown was one of the greats in a favorite genre of mine; the existential story of a detective who confronts depravity, tries to do the right thing but most of all tries to retain his humanity. Anyway, long time since I thought Dowd made a relevant point in this space, but she managed to here, and I'm moved to say so. I'm disturbed by what the GOP is allowing Trump to do to us, most of all because I think, while Trump may go, he'll go after doing his damage. Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.
478
Kudos to Maureen Dowd for reminding us that "Chinatown," which I consider a masterpiece, is an apt reference for what is happening to our country today. The deeds of Noah Cross transcend corruption to the point of evil.
But for me, an American by choice who emigrated because of poisonous nationalism in my birthplace, I cannot help but think of "The Lord of the Rings" and Frodo Baggins:
"How do you pick up the threads an old life? How do you do on, when in your heart you understand … there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep, that have taken hold."
One day, Donald Trump will be gone. He could be voted out of office; he might even be impeached and removed from office. But so much damage is already done. I can't look at the people around me without thinking that, after all that we know, 40% or more of them support the president. Many of them will still be around long after him.
980
@GV
It is true that each and every one of us is capable of anything, given the right circumstances, but that is precisely what civilization is about. It is hard work, full of setbacks, but, at least so far, it has succeeded. Were it not so, our species would have self-destructed by now--although its very technological triumphs might still bring about its downfall. This, in my opinion, is a distinct possibility.
I am an optimist. I have a feeling that the Trump presidency will be remembered as the time when America really came of age. Let us focus on this thought.
105
@GV I remember a remark by Hannah Arendt to the effect that she was astonished by how quickly the German people snapped back into normality after the war. There were municipal elections in the western zones as early as 1945 and the ordinary partisan sniping and caterwauling returned as if nothing had ever happened. Who would have thought on election night 2008 that Obama's successor would be a guy who takes Alex Jones seriously and equally insane? 40 years of Reagan-Clinton-Bush tax policies have left huge sums of money in the hands of right-wing billionaires who finance a vast propaganda machine. The fact that only 43% of Americans identify with Trump is actually quite remarkable. That's why reasserting tax equity ought to be the first priority of a Democratic congress.
294
@Gary FS I'm glad you included Bill Clinton in the continuum of the enablers of the Reagan Restoration of plutocracy and kleptocracy, though it was his financial deregulation policies rather than his tax policies that were the issue. Our nation has been done severe wrong through the complicity of DINO centrism going along with Republican looting. (They're all Republicans in my mind. Look at the record, not the rhetoric.)
89
I'll give you an even more frightening, existential scenario. You're watching the movie Chinatown, making connections, seeing the metaphors, marveling about how life imitates art when you notice that the people in the theater are laughing at the sad parts and crying at the funny ones and they seem to warm up to the bad guys more than they do the hero. They applaud violence against men, women and children and raise the roof when the bad guys get away with murder. The hardest and most confusing thing about this analogy is acknowledging the fact that we may be watching the same movie but we are coming away with completely different narratives.
1401
@Rick Gage
These hypothetical viewers you describe, the ones whose responses to the movie are the opposite of what we would reasonably expect, the ones you implicitly compare to GOP politicians and supporters: are they mentally disturbed, or somehow “evil,” or merely wrong?
22
@Rick Gage Brilliantly put. The audience scares me more than this movie.
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@Rick Gage Sounds like the people at a Trump rally.
74
I think a lot about the movie “Chinatown” these days. I especially recall the scene where Jake Gittes asks John Houston’s character why he is engaged in his corrupt activities—what he could buy that he doesn’t already have. “The future, Mr. Gitts” is the cheerful reply.
That’s what Trump and those who back him want—possession of our collective futures.
789
@Carla Jake Gitte was our middle class ethos, where hard work and the resources that come with it, buy safety, comfort, education for the kids, and some pleasures.
Noah Cross had an ethos where money is power, and accumulating power and control over a society is the goal.
That's where we are today.
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@Carla
I think about "Chinatown" and the fantastic movies of the 70's when I think about quality offerings at the theater...which is not often.
22
@caljn Why are adults going to comic book super hero movies? These comics were written for 10 year old boys.
20
Maureen Dowd's compellingly descriptive discourse of the present day malaise swirling around the Vietnam War draft dodger and the castrated Republican Party in the brutal yet moving context of "Chinatown" is appropriate. Jake Gittes exemplifies the soul of America, the soul that is experiencing, and continues to experience, assault, maligning, denigrating, and bludgeoning by the immoral actions of insatiably corrupt, compromised, and cunning by scheming malcontents. Noah Cross epitomizes those multiple evils savaging our very constitutional fabric. This escalating confrontation will culminate in a devastatingly traumatic collision, from Jake's point of view, of good versus evil. From Cross's viewpoint, "us" versus "them." The epic film noire, shrouded in inexplicable mysteries of Faustian bargains, sellouts, extortion, bribery, and blackmail, similarly are front and center here. Lurking sub rosa in both "Chinatown" and here, though, are the issue of race and immigration. Influencing the electorate is critical to the future direction of the growth and the development of the nation (in "Chinatown," southern California - Los Angeles and Ventura counties). Cross's prophetic response to Jake's incredulous inquiry about the salaciousness and vindictiveness of the conduct of the former is directly on point: "The future, Mr. Gittes! The future." We are confronted today with the dilemma Jake confronted in pre-WWII America: the domestic direction of the United States. Race matters.
3
"Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio predicted that being in the White House would distill Trump to his essence. And his essence, D’Antonio says, is a dark swirl of cruelty, violence and fear."
interesting. i've been calling trump a swirling vortex of dark matter, spray-painted shades of orange, for a while now.
i felt something like a tipping point for our country after the kavanaugh hearings ended the way they did a year ago, as if the ground was shifting below us, and again with the way barr wrapped up the mueller investigation. could this be the real coup, the lawlessness that seems to be taking over from the top down? i hope it's just my imagination running away with me....
5
If you haven't been paying attention Trump is the Quid Pro Quo President. His whole life is about transactional exchanges. He's incapable of thinking about other people in any other way. Such a person never has to actually mention the this-for-that equation. Every person is another opportunity to WIN!
9
The real meaning of Chinatown is not the corrupt evil or the naive investigator.
It's how the evil corrupted the integrity of the civil engineer and all the rest of the "good people" who were aware of, enabled, and went along with the corruption.
That's what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil".
6
As a former English professor once observed, "Get to your main point more quickly."
Evil is a metaphysical category and has nothing to with it. This is all man-made.
Youth have not watched "Chinatown"; older folks, except for film buffs, probably do not remember it particularly well. "Gladiator" and "Brave Heart" are all the rage.
What I remember. "Chinatown" was about one man's efforts to monopolize Los Angeles's water reservoir. But at the film's core is the incest motif, the central character's rape of his daughter and the implied suggestion at film's end that he will do it again to his granddaughter, the product of his incestuous liaison.
Noah Cross's original sin and criminality are ultimately a form of narcissism, transmitted generationally.
What this has to do with Trump I have no idea.
3
The American people have never been naive.
That myth is a core feature of the larger myth of American exceptionalism.
Perhaps a re-read of Reinhold Niebuhr's "The Irony of American History" is in order, Ms. Dowd!
I'm still a beliver that in the end it all catches up to us. and sometimes it catches our family too. McCarthy, Roy Cohen, Agnew, Marcos,, Old man Kennedy just to name a few. At the end it all catches up. No one rides to the end of the road in jubilation when you have harmed.
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“What makes the metaphor so powerful is its unAmericanness. In democracy, we supposedly have the power. But in Chinatown, there’s nothing you can do. Forget it, Jake. It’s an oligarchy.”
Nailed it. And I am beginning to think an enabler like Rubio is no better than Trump.
6
A more appropriate film noir is the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The action appropriately begins in San Fransisco. Playing the lead role as the converter is an aspiring TV host by the name of Adam Schiff. His mission is to transplant the gullible into zombie like creatures who point to and hiss at anyone resembling a Republican. They have a single purpose destroy the American social structure. But there is a happy ending to this version of the story. Eventually the body snatchers are overwhelmed by their violent hatred and end up killing and eating each other.
3
Ms. Dowd's opening paragraph says it all: "Washington, once the guarantor of American values, is a crime scene. This capital of white marble is now encircled by yellow tape, rife with mendacity, cowardice and corruption. It’s Chinatown on the Potomac."
The Chinatown analogy may stumble, but Ms. Dowd's own words are more than adequate to describe the scorched earth that Americans have to occupy for at least another 18+ months. The President has brought nothing but venal corruption to Washington, he has no accomplishments as President, but he wants to destroy our national monuments, our environment, our health care and our foreign policies among other entities.
The headline is partially right, but Trump and his minions posses more than a "touch" of evil--they are evil personified.
7
Stop calling this Film Noir- we aren't an audience WE ARE IN THE MOVIE.
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Before we know it, the violent remedies that Trump suggests - like shooting migrants in the legs to slow them down - will no longer be illegal. The sane, compassionate people who wrote those laws, elected by civically responsible voters, will be replaced by misogynists intent on outlawing abortion, bigots and racists who aim to stop immigration, and wealthy plutocrats whose only aim is to increase profits. "The Good of the Order" will be a thing of the past, which is where the US is doomed to dwell. An educated, forward-looking, analytic electorate seems impossible in today's political and cultural climate.
3
Ms. Dowd, I know glibness and wry punditry are your stock in trade, but I think we're all past the mockery and the sarcasm. It's not enough to say "get a load of these Republicans, can you believe what they're getting away with?" And it's not enough for venerated journalistic outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, or CNN to give us the play by play in the latest scandal du jour. It's time for taking sides in the fight to save our democracy, not just be spectators in what is looking more and more like a real government takeover by foreign interests.
While we're busy dealing with whistle-blowers on the Ukraine incident, our politics and assets are benefiting the likes of Saudi Arabia and Russia, with no small amount of assistance to the GOP to keep our government out of Democratic control.
We need a metaphorical call to arms. The insanity and the cover-ups have to stop. It's time for the Romneys, Sasses, Murkowskis, and other GOP Senators who insist they are patriots to stand up to the tyranny of McConnell and other Trump enablers. Do they believe in our country or don't they? Don't take the easy way out and resign the way Flake and Ryan did. Be the heroes John McCain would want you to be. And be quick about it before it's too late.
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Looks like Democracy is losing.
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Quite a display of erudition by Maureen in describing the miasma of rot in the GOP, and our nation's capital.
But, frankly, the true rot resides in the intellectual and moral depravity of the voting electorate that put Trump there in the first place .. AND ... that continues to support him. Without them, he'd be back doing what he has always done so well ... con jobs, serial bankruptcies, and deviant behavior.
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Ms. Dowd uses her considerable writing talents to enhance our understanding of the evil we face. Brava! Unfortunately you used those same skills to coat Hillary Clinton with a veil of doubt which aided and abetted Mr. Trump's ascension to America's first dictator. Just one question for you Maureen, what did you think was going to happen if all the scathing remarks about Hillary had their desired affect, as it turns out, they did? Many of you hated her style, so we got Trump's essential and innate depravity.
13
Sadly, Robert Mueller will end up being the honest but witless pawn in all this. By hewing so carefully to his rigid interpretation of what was allowed, he let the president off the hook. If he'd had the nerve to say the heck with the strict interpretation, let's just say what it is, much of this circus could have been avoided.
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In the scene where Jake alarms Evelyn by telling her that he has met and spoken to Noah Cross. "My father is a very dangerous man.....you don't know how dangerous....how crazy!"
7
from a dictionary definition of "film noir": "marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, and menace."
Ms. Dowd, the menace is definitely there in the person of 45, but that only means, to me, that WE, the American people, must avoid the fatalism and pessimism, at all costs! I read to the end of your Op-Ed hoping there would be some affirmation of a positive outcome! Our minds already work overtime to concoct doomsday scenarios. Sometimes I think it's better to say nothing, than to write that stuff. I'm sure there were Op-Ed columnists in 1940-41 who were expressing their certainty that the Allies would never be able to overcome Hitler's huge advantage. And yet, here we are.
I'm not into Pollyanna-ism, but I think hope remains the best deal...hope for national redemption, and whatever happens, awareness that the values on which wholesome life is based, are immortal and will ALWAYS reassert themselves.
5
He’s my guilty pleasure reality TV host!
He’s my President!
...
Only those so dim witted as to be unable to read with even the slightest comprehension should be peddling tripe like "the Mueller obstruction inquiry ended with no definitive answer."
9
You left out the Republican/Trump cult Maureen. You must remember that none of these greedy evil doers have any power without first being elected. The REAL problem in America is that 1/3 of the Country has no idea what these conmen are actually doing. The Republican ruse is to demonize immigrants, Muslims and abortion because the 1/3 also do so. These 1/3ers are oblivious to anything else these crooks do even if it is against their own best interests. All they know is that they voted for the guy who is against murdering children and is against letting “rapists and murderers and muslim terrorists” who happen to have brown skin into the Country. Anything beyond those three things they don't care. If these 1/3ers actually educated themselves then Republicans would always be a small minority. So the real problem isnt Trump nor Republicans. The real problem is the abject ignorance of 1/3 of America.
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And Mitch McConnell is Noah Cross! Amoral, selfish, greed personified, willing to do anything to make sure that his goals are achieved.
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Another liberal spouting the rigged election nonsense. A marginally competent campaign would have handily beat Trump
3
Another apt description of this Administration, borrowing from literature, is “A Confederacy of Dunces”.
8
It's time for an analysis of his protectors and his voters.
Money? Fame? Jealousy? Fear? Power?...................................
Follow the money first.....into the United States Senate.
11
I'm not a praying man, yet I've been lately praying.
This contemptuous malevolent cretin has the nation by the throat and is slowing applying more and more pressure.
In other words 'frog boiling' us. And it's working. Nothing has slowed him down. In fact, it's all getting much worse.
Nothing we have heard or watched Trump do would indicate he will leave office willingly of his own accord. As Frank B. stated recently;
'The Dems need to learn to look around the corner' at what's coming at them next. So do we all.
I think everyone can see this one coming down 5th Avenue, guns loaded. The Ds need a plan for a couple things now; Trump declaring a national emergency and halting the '20, or how to get him out of the White House if he loses in '20.
Sure as 'Russia if you're listening', he has signaled his intentions NOT to leave. To paraphrase Trump;
'You know it, I know it, everybody knows it!'
Kids, the firewall WAS the 2016.
Now it's getting serious.
12
As the late Harold Pinter said, “Look in the mirror chum” for those who promoted Trump.
9
“Nothing good was going to happen when the spoiled attention addict was put in a position to demand the attention — and favors — of the whole world, or else.”
Told you so.
12
Constitutional crisis (and not the kind your dog might face when you walk him).
1
Another thought provoking piece. Here's my thoughts. We must never quit believing in and acting on the premise that people have the power. I will continue to be active on social media and in personal conversations. I will continue to state the facts regarding the president as detailed in the Mueller Report and from other sources such as the very detailed and comprehensive theassetpodcast dot org.
Edward Snowden's Permanent Record is essential reading for all; if not the entire book then at least a detailed summarization. NPR and Democracy Now have both recently conducted interviews with him which you can access. Mueller in person was less than energizing but the savior of the American People is the American People. His report clearly showed all the collusion, conspiracy, lies and obstruction and it all continues daily.
If trump has any genius it's his realization that the Big Lie works and committing crimes in broad daylight makes them seem less of a crime and over time diminishes the outrage. As has been repeated--when a person tells you who they are, believe them the first time. Clearly he has told us and shown us over and over who he is. How any can rationalize any of his behavior/policies/actions is beyond me. The next president must allow Congress to do their job and demand appropriate judicial actions but the next president must also put forth an enlightened plan for the majority of Americans; It must be a better way forward and not more of the same.
6
The Chinatown analogy is highly accurate but it is not in my nature to succumb to despair. Look at Shanghai today. Those people flatly refuse to be ignored, openly defy the ban on wearing facial recognition obscuring masks, and they have not left their streets since it started. If Americans haven't taken to the streets of Washington it is simply because America is really big and it is far away for most. But two weeks ago the immune system of our democracy finally kicked in. I have no doubt it will encapsulate the cancer. But we really need to give up smoking.
3
Hong Kong, not Shanghai. Big difference.
5
One reason more Republican Senators have not spoken out about He Who Embarrasses Us Daily is the incredible amount of money and power backing him. Some of it is Corporate, some Financial, some of it Churches, some of it Foreign Powers, some of it The Media.
There are perhaps ten powerful individuals who could pick up their phones and make one or two calls and He would be toast. They’ve not done this yet, and even if they do, and He falls, surprising little may ultimately change. Even so, this could be a watershed event in American history.
10
There's a larger and older dimension to this picture. Many seem focused on the current political dynamics in the U.S. as the problem, but the egos of presidents past have destroyed countries as well -- just foreign ones, with relatively minor negative effects at home.
President Johnson escalated in Vietnam instead of prudently withdrawing, because he couldn't stand the prospect of experiencing the humiliation suffered by his French predecessors after Dien Bien Phu.
According to Jean Edward Smith, in his book George Bush's War (1990), the Gulf War was an attempt by President GHW Bush to finally lose the epithet of "wimp."
His son, President GW Bush, is said to have invaded Iraq to finish what his father started, and in doing so to come out from under his shadow.
President Obama led the destruction of Libyan society because he was afraid of a Rwanda-type massacre happening on his watch in Benghazi.
In this context, President Trump just seems to be a much more extreme case of egoism -- so extreme that his ego-centred activity is just as or more devastating to his own country as it is to other countries.
This all speaks to the enormous damage that can be inflicted by the egocentric reflexes of one person holding nearly unlimited power. This is ironic in a country founded mainly to curb the power of absolute monarchy
7
Chinatown is a great movie, and it is about corruption, and America certainly has a lot of that. But the comparison is not a good fit. While the kleptocratic Republicans, led by McConnell can be said to represent the forces of darkness a la film noir, there is nothing in Chinatown like Trump. With his enormous ego, insecurity, vanity and rage he is his own thing. Likewise, his enraged and embittered supporters remind one less of a detective movie and more of The Purge series.
6
Movies aside, nothing will change until the "national" demons are dealt with. the "Deep State" for one sect and "Oligarchs and Corporations" for the other. One of the unintended consequences of prosperity has been the emergence of cultural infantilism. In addition to selfishness, blame and entitlement, we continue to peddle the so-called "Dream" and cannot accept that relevant education and skill-building, not "college" and "passion", have become the single greatest determinants of socioeconomic status. Once we grow up, we will accept that speaking in grammatically correct sentences does not mean being "elitist" and that the adult application of cognition, not the expectation of "life as fun", is the determining variable in today's winning formula for success. Thankfully, once Americans return to being adults, course correction will be inevitable.
5
So true..as the previous comments noted. Those beyond the realm of rich..seek to control..and to take as much as they can regardless of the consequence. Some say the redeeming point comes when one contributes millions to hospitals or research institutions...perhaps that might include Jeffery Epstein.
As a former serving office in the United States Army where duty, honor and country still have a resounding meaning..or the honor code.."I will not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those among us who do.." How many of our leaders in politics even come close to this measurement.
What I hope voters seeks or those who endear those attributes like above..and bring our country back to sound government based on the ideals our forefathers hoped for....
7
I have and continue to be a fan of Maureen’s.
Let’s interpret the Chinatown analogy to include the political climate of the times-Vietnam, Johnson, Nixon and Watergate for starters. Americans were dying by the tens of thousands in Vietnam and many cities were under insurrection. In that light, problems with our duly elected officials today pale by comparison and if there is one thing that era taught us: our elected officials will lie through their teeth about the most important things to the American People.
3
Dowd has it exactly backward... the evil in Washington was rampant before Trump, especially with dimocRATS, and we elected President Trump to drain the swamp. Now we are seeing that the swamp creatures don’t want to be drained and are fighting back.
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@Bill Few sights are swampier than that of Donald Trump saying that he has an absolute right to do whatever he wants and having the Republican party apparatus, almost unanimously, say "Sure, whatever you want Boss.
When a few Republicans place their sworn duty to the country over their short-term career interests, that will be a small start towards draining the swamp. Not holding my breath while waiting though.
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The only part of Chinatown not mentioned in the context of Trump and his crony regime was the sexual perversion and assault underlying the villain's character. And yet, with Trump's friend Epstein, and Trump himself, there certainly appears to be something impeachable there.
11
Why are we still rationalizing and handling Trump with care and velvet gloves?
This guy is a traitor, a criminal and a buffoon and we are risking American lives, our democracy and our safety while waiting for his Republican supporters to grow a heart and common sense. Time is not on our side.
23
"The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter."...Maltese Falcon.
Trump to a T.
24
trump is evil and there appears little we can do to stop this madman from destroying our country. We can vote but can we undo what has been done, can we get our country back? Sadly, I doubt it.
As Frank Bruni out in his excellent piece, the trump sycophants have sold their souls to the devil. We have seen this before.
12
@Jordan Davies
Many working people don't just vote FOR Donald Trump, they're voting AGAINST the Democrats.
Something that Democrats, liberals, and progressives just can't seem to get through their heads is the fact that a lot of working people, not just Republicans, vote for conservative candidates because:
1) They resent the fact that so many people have their hand out to the government, and it obliges them by giving them an easier financial existence than WORKING people...enough with the handouts, get to work!
2) They don't want to turn our country into another Latin American country. None of them function anywhere near as well as we do. There’s a reason for that.
3) They want our government to control our borders, helping us to control our population. Overpopulation is at the core of so many of our problems, including poverty and climate change.
4) We need fair trade deals, even if it means paying a short-term cost. Is it fair to have a 65% tax on American wheat going to China, when they can import to the U.S. without any tax? How about a 28% import tax on American vehicles going to Germany, but only 1.4% on German vehicles coming to the U.S.? We have been subsidizing the world economy since WWII...time for that to end.
5) LGBTQN citizens already have the same rights as everyone else. Just be quiet and live your lives, like everyone else. It is possible to have logical reasons for opposing homosexuality, etc.
The Democrats address none of these issues.
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@Raz
1. Those same people do not oppose government bailouts and subsidies when it means they get to keep their jobs, working for firms that are unprofitable for whatever reason.
2. Plenty of regions in the US have people that live exactly like in the slums of Brazil and Guatemala. Go through rural Virginia or rural New England to see them.
3. Plenty of social democratic policies are popular with people across the political spectrum so long as they're not labelled as such. It's a marketing gimmick.
Everyone wants clean water to drink, safe food to eat and clean air to breathe.
Everyone wants gun control so that crazy people don't have access to military-grade weapons.
Everyone wants their kids to have good public schools and affordable college education like they had post WW II.
The days of yore when the middle class prospered had higher tax brackets and powerful government regulations that were enforced.
14
@Raz
There are no “logical” reasons for opposing homosexuality. And what are the “etc.”?
Plus, what is the “N” in LGBTQN”?
6
Just like Jake Giddes in Chinatown, I thought that I had seen all. But I was naive. I assumed that rational people would corral Donald Trump and escort him out of the White House before he decided to burn it down. But now I realize that his ambitions are far greater. He doesn't intend to burn down the White House, he wants to destroy the entire U.S. government -- the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Department, the EPA, the Interior Department, the Fed, the Energy Department -- before he is finally put out of his misery. It recalls Hitler (which mainstream media is reluctant to draw parallels to) who, when defeat was upon him, ordered that everything be destroyed because the German people were unworthy of him. This is what we are up against. Donald Trump is determined to destroy everything that is a threat to him. This is no exaggeration. This is not hyperbole. This is reality.
19
Maureen Dowd - 👏👏👏👏👏
Thank you for giving more depth to my abstract and beleaguered thoughts of how it might already be too late...but I SO pray it's all wrong and we can get out of this mess.
And rentals of Chinatown will be soaring this week...
4
You omitted another storyline from, as Trump would say, “Ginatown.”
John Huston’s character raped his own daughter (Faye Dunaway), and produced a child. That unforgettable scene: “She’s my sister; she’s my daughter”).
Trump told Howard Stern that his daughter Ivanka is so hot, he’d date her.
Yecchhh.
16
Democrats are becoming increasing alarmed by the increasing likelihood that Trump will be re-elected and there is nothing on the horizon except wishful thinking regarding removing him by the impeachment process.
Still, my family’s medical costs continue to escalate and the Democrats are doing nothing about it.
First things first.
It's so unfortunate that you cannot see that it's not the Democrats that are responsible for your health care costs. Republicans had control of all three branches of government for two years, and "great, affordable" health care was a central promise of the trump campaign. Turned out, all Trump and Republicans wanted to do was repeal the ACA - they offered no greater or better plan to replace it. They had NOTHING else. How can you possibly blame the Democrats for the failure of the Republicans to address your health care issue? Do fact and reality matter at all to you?
12
What is Trump doing about it?
10
Trump is doing more than defining deviancy down. He's making integrity, honesty, hard work, and decency abnormal. To quote Groucho Marx: These are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others. Trump and the GOP's other principles are non-existent.
14
Maureen, all of Trump's toxic flaws, and the threat they pose to this country, were on full display while he campaigned for the presidency in 2016. And yet you gave him a pass and hammered Hillary mercilessly. An apology from you is long overdue.
27
The core problem, for America, in the long run is the fact that such a substantial minority of its citizens and voters will blindly follow Donald Trum and parrot whatever talking points he puts out.
The question is: "Why?". We're not talking about stupid people with no access to alternative sources of information, so it's not deception in the sense of the Big Lie.
I think it is because people think that they got to know Trump in his personna on the apprentice and his PR bloviations over the years. They feel that they know him, that he is part of their family. And it takes a huge betrayal to break that bond. People are willing to forgive and tolerate huge transitions from family that they never would from strangers or even friends.
One reason that Trump is so unpopular in New York is that most people were exposed to Trump in all his con-man detail and have been able to discern the reality of his sleaziness. People outside of New York, not so much.
So the big question for the future is: "Will Trump overplay his hand so badly that his core supporters will begin to see him for what he is, or is he cagey enough to conceal enough of his essential dishonesty that his core supporters will not be swayed by independ sources of information?".
Only time (and an election) will tell.
4
If only anyone had warned us that Donald Trump was a terrible person who would make a cruel and horrible president! It's too bad that we had no way of knowing. If only there'd been a weekly television show where we could see for ourselves what a cruel person he is, or, you know, if only there'd been any journalists or op-ed staff writers working for prestigious news outlets to warn us. If only!
But, you know, at least we know about Hillary Clinton's missing Pottery Barn emails. At least we had that.
18
Many people here on the East Coast knew what a con man and low life he was prior to the election. Apparently the word never got out to the some parts of the country.
5
Also, Bill Barr has been in Europe on a political fishing trip to discredit the Mueller investigation and dig up dirt on our own intelligence and law enforcement agencies, ie. the tin-foil-hat crowd favorite "deep state."
Republicans in Congress are demanding Speaker Pelosi hold a vote in the House for formal impeachment proceedings. Given the mind-boggling events of the past week, I say if she has the votes, go ahead and give Republicans what they pretend to be asking for.
6
You've just described the "Deep State" though not in the way Trump or Bannon have.
Everywhere you look their are subterranean forces gnawing at our foundations of democracy.
House member Elissa Slotkin from Michigan's 8th District attempted to explain to her constituency why she supports an impeachment inquiry. She was shouted down by a cascade of Fox News acolytes regurgitating the Gospel of Hannity that it's the Bidens who are the ones who need to be investigated.
God help us.
6
@Bricks They all need to be investigated, and by someone with clean hands. The reason we're at this juncture is too many of the voters have excused corruption in their own party by loudly proclaiming that the other side is worse. With that low bar, here we are. Once we get past this infantilism, "Johnny started it, Susie did it too," we might get somewhere. And no, it's not about false equivalency. It's about deep, systemic corruption, with the people paying the price.
2
What a great analogy. Not much is going to happen if the Republicans keep protecting this president, a corrupt ignoramus who, after 3 years, has no clue about what it means to be in the Oval Office. The clock is ticking, the carnage is flowing from coast to coast and We, the People of this country sit there, powerless until the next election or until someone dares to get us rid of this aberration of history. Lady Liberty does not have enough tears...
6
Nice metaphor but I think the Trump mind is much simpler than some evil force behind the curtain. Trump distinctly reminds me of a two year old going through the "terrible twos" who never did out grow them.
He's been isolated all his life. Maybe he was looking to gain the approval of his father but it could be that he was simply molding himself into that role model because he saw it as a way of justifying his need to have things his own way all the time at the expense of everyone around him.
Until his election he literally could have everything his own way. Sure, he made mistakes but he never admitted them. He was always about just putting mistakes behind him and moving on to his next need with no evidence of regret or concern about the effect of his mistakes on others.
If I were to pick a movie metaphor for Trump it would be the bit in
"Twilight Zone - The Movie" where the spoiled kid has complete control over everything. But that bit ended on a hopeful note. This is where a second bit in that same movie comes in, the man who hates everyone finds himself imprisoned in a box car headed to a Nazi concentration camp.
Trumps lack of regard for his fellow human beings will likely, hopefully end the way this second bit did, on a one way trip to a place of his own making. The only question is whether or not he'll take our democracy along with him.
4
Maureen, you are still amazingly tepid in your analysis and criticism of this criminal enterprise/disaster of an administration. Where’s the fire and fury you conjured up on a weekly basis for all the earth shattering transgressions of the Clinton’s and Obama? Their schoolyard gaffes and missteps (and, yes, I place Bill’s affair in that category - it wasn’t going to help end the world after all) were all you used to need to go full on atomic with rage and indignation.
14
This article confuses cynicism with the ability to recognize harsh realities. Somehow conflating this premise with an American cultural and societal naïveté that allowed America to misinterpret the Nazi agenda and miscalculate the dimension of Nazi Germany's evil in the years leading up to WWII. Not so. Newspapers reported what was going in Germany making that information available to the public. Certainly American government officials from lower tier level up to and including the Executive branch were well aware of the policies the Nazi regime was implanting into that country. This was the climate in the latter half of the 1930s that the average American largely ignored. With the American government focused on a diplomacy that would insure that nothing be done to antagonize the Nazi government. The avoidance of anything that would threaten those American corporate and financial interests doing business with Germany. Today it's not about a totalitarian dictatorship in a previous century, in a foreign country removed from everyday life in America. It's no noir work of fiction and film but American reality under the Trump/Republican administration in the year 2019.
2
Maureen, did you pause for one second to consider that your resuscitation of the Chinatown trope might be problematic?
You know, the stereotype of Chinatown as a dark sinister place, full of penumbral activity.
In truth, Chinatown was a sanctuary for persecuted Chinese who were forced to live there.
This is serious, not a politically correct diatribe about "wokeness."
The more appropriate analogy for Trump's reign would be the Berghof or Wolfsschanze.
Something for you to think about.
4
Another tremendous Column by Maureen Dowd! This time invoking the greatest movie of all time, and my personal favourite movie of all time: "Chinatown" ("Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" coming in second).
What is really being distilled during the Trump Administration is that America "is a dark swirl of cruelty, violence and fear." America has been naïve about what it has thought about its own goodness and virtue. The U. S. A. has always been a nest of vipers, flim flam men, con artists, crooks, criminals, grifters, snake-oil salesmen, et. al.
Our entire culture and society of criminality and corruption is getting top billing and its due thanks to President Trump. We finally have a President who really does tell it like it is. President Trump makes it O. K. for us to be biased, discriminatory, prejudiced and down right nasty. The American character is maturing full blown in all its villainy. The citizenry was more than tired of being restrained in a life of good-two-shoes-ness. President Trump has allowed Americans to be who we truly are: a nation of crazed, craven misfits, ne're do wells, thieves, rapists, gropers, cheaters -- the worst collection of individuals that this sorry planet has ever seen. President Trump is the right man setting the right example of Americans as a people, society and culture. We can only hope to grow in this disreputable character by re-electing President Trump for another four (4) obnoxious years!
3
Ms. Dowd's reminder that if Trump and Pence both go down in the impeachment process we'll have our first Madam President in Nancy Pelosi.
This is the most delicious scenario: Trump replaced with a strong woman. Hold that thought!
9
Rather than the bleakness of Chinatown, the current political state of affairs reminds me of the ending of The Bridge on the River Kwai, when after the bridge has been blown and the train crashes, a British officer who witnessed it all just shakes his head and says “madness......madness”.
3
Republicans KNOW that Trump is a serial liar, a conniving crook, a sexual predator, they know he is vastly expanding the deficit, demeaning the country, antagonizing allies, threatening the rule of law, even our democracy. They don't have to be convinced, they know it.
But they don't care. He is giving them what they really want - big tax cuts for the rich and deregulation so they can pollute, exploit their workers, mislead consumers. Another group that hates gays and wants to force women to bear children against their will. Another group wants unrestricted rights to have weapons. And another hates immigrants.
Though there is some overlap that adds up to a lot of people, but its not a majority. They can't be convinced to care, but its not too late to prevent them from taking over for good.
7
"America was naïve about the forces of real corruption, real evil," unless of course, you happen to consider kidnapping, rape, torture of enslaved Africans "real evil." Or another 200 years of lynchings, terrorism, institutionalized injustice "real corruption." These--along with American foreign policy grounded in white supremacy and attempted native genocide--were not aberrations, they were institutions, replete with policy statements, court rulings, bureaucratic structures. Most mythologies are benign; this American mythology is a malignant cancer.
This "innocent" time is what millions of white Americans dream of returning to. And since they can't, they're fed up with the dream of America. They're eager to chuck it all away because the American dream is available to all those "others" who were never supposed to be a part of it in the first place. So they want to blow it up. This disgusting mythology is what has brought us to where we are today.
5
Brilliant. The yellow crime-scene tape around our marble government buildings is the perfect image for the times. So, too, is the feeling of hopelessness most Americans have come to feel. The President is soulless, Senate Republicans are cowardly opportunists, and our institutions are crumbling. The result: we look at our kids and weep. Idealism is a quaint, bygone notion; principles are for naive dreamers. There is little consolation knowing that history will record Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham as the wretched equivalent of little rats, blissfully unconcerned with the country they are gnawing into oblivion.
2
Did you forget that incest is at the heart of this film. It is the sexual control and subjugation of the powerful man’s own daughter. There are no boundaries for such greed and desire for power and control. Fits Trump to a tee, and he’d be proud that it did.
5
I wish Pelosi would take a lesson from Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) and use those slapping techniques on Trump. Pelosi slapping him across the face and yelling "more subpoenas?"
1
The Russians didn't rig our election. The Republican and Democratic parties did that all by themselves, pushing one corrupt candidate after another on us -- assuming in their comfortable removes that we're not going to figure out we've been had. The mainstream media apparently believes it can push Biden on us as a "counter" to Trump, whitewashing his career-long self and family dealing. I don't think it's going to work this time. They're actually some candidates running this time who care more about their country than themselves.
4
This is the perfect comment on our hapless situation as a country. But the eternal optimist in me is rooting for Nancy/Jake to save the day. Republican’s Faustian bargain will need to be paid off in full, and heads will ultimately roll. Not soon enough for my liking, but the popcorn is ready and waiting. I want a front row seat.
6
I don’t know how to write eloquently, but I have this sickening feeling that he is going to get away with all of this and crookedly win re-election. What hurts my heart so much and has me walking around in a stupor sometimes is the complete absence of any positive, kind, empathetic character trait in this man. How do millions vote for this national representative of anger, ignorance and hate? Robert Jeffress, the deranged pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas ( not a small congregation folks) said we would have a civil war if Trump weren’t re elected. Yes, this is the man who is a huge symbol of his evangelical base. Preaching war. Amazingly sad. I will go back to my therapy appointment tomorrow to try and cling to a few spoken words that will give me hope that you are wrong. The way things are now, I would go daily if I could afford it.
22
"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" also comes to mind. Here's a blurb from the IMDB story line, "friends are complaining that their close relatives are in some way different. When questioned later they themselves seem changed as they deny everything or make lame excuses." This is how Republicans at large are behaving: they used to laugh at Trump, now they defend him with lame excuses. To continue the analogy, are Fox News and social media the alien pods? And Republicans pod people?
7
If you could assure every Republican lawmaker that they’d win their next election in a landslide regardless of their support for the president, they’d run from Trump like the burning building that he is. Donald Trump is a soulless, inhuman, and destructive individual. He uses the office of the presidency to engage in merciless acts to indirectly take revenge for having endured a lifetime of perceived victimization. Everyone can occasionally act in self-destructive ways. But Donald Trump will stop at nothing until everything and everyone around him lies in ruin.
8
"Washington, once the guarantor of American values"...? Seriously? That's a way-idealized vision of the past. That idealized Washington overthrew democratic governments in Chile, Guatemala, and Iran, among other nations. It passed and supported racist laws, from Slavery through Jim Crow. It's been in bed with big corporations for ages. So yeah, Trump et al are mendacious, nasty, and explicitly corrupt. But let's not gaze with undue fondness towards the past.
7
Yes. One day Trump in his craziness will see himself in a mirror and will cry with horror.
The GOP will see a mouse in the mirror.
3
Maybe a more apt analogy could be "Where Are All The Presidents Men" as Republicans stay muted or Trump acolytes keep on spewing out excuses for his continuous lies and conspiracy theories. The rabid dog has gone rogue and sadly nobody seems to want to put the poor wretch out of its misery save for Nancy and the Democratic legislative caucus. Will it be enough ?
5
No, Maureen, Trump is not the real horror. It's the citizens who voted for him, and who still don't care about the evils you excoriate, because he appeals to something in the ugliest part of their souls. And people like you, Maureen, who let your personal dislike of the Clintons dilute your coverage of Trump, knowing that you would provide cover for those who just could not bring themselves for Hillary. You will note that Hillary defied no subpoenas; she testified for hours. She believes in democracy. Yet you could not let yourself see the difference between HRC & Donald. Shame.
20
Let’s face it, even smart people get conned sometimes... the truly smart though catch on to the con eventually and know when to say “Stop. Enough is enough.” It’s the real fools who continue to double-down even though the cards are clearly stacked against them. Right now, those who continue to support and defend this so-called president are looking especially foolish. They are in for some rough times ahead.
8
@Marcus
It would serve them right too.
Without all the taxpayer money paying their way they'd starve to death.
If each state only gets 2 senatorial votes despite size then they should only get back from the government exactly what they paid in.
NY and California could use all that extra money. These lazy ignorant slobs do not. Take away their Medicaid. Make them pay for medical care like I do.Take away their foodstamps. Kids can't eat? Don't have them.
Those are the rules they live by for other people.
See how they like it for themselves.
3
“... we know now that the Russians have figured out how to rig our elections ...”
Really? Is that so?
In Chicago, Mayor Richard J. Daley’s henchmen perfected the art of getting out the vote of dead people and of people who moved out of the district, often several times on the same day. That really happened. They called it Daley’s machine. Year after year it chugged, delivering the outcome the Boss wanted. That included getting JFK enough votes in Illinois to defeat Richard Nixon in 1960.
In Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson won his first election to Congress in 1937, defeating popular incumbent James P. Buchanan, by stuffing ballot boxes. After that he was derisively known as “Landslide Lyndon.” That also really happened.
These are examples of vote fraud that really did happen in America.
But nothing like that happened in America in the 2016 election: There was no rigging of voting machines nor ballot box stuffing, nor were there any “hanging chads.” The American people, not the Russians nor any other foreign government, cast the votes that elected Donald Trump President of the United States according to the long established rules set forth in the US Constitution.
They might very well choose to re-elect him in 2020. Unless the voting machines are rigged and ballot boxes stuffed.
3
It’s shocking and depressing to think aside from Trump-Pompeo, Barr and Pence are all involved.
McMaster, Mattis, Kelly and Flynn all served with distinction in the military but all left us in the dark when it came to depth of Trump’s lawlessness and incompetence.
How can there be so much moral abdication to support Trump?? I understand they are career opportunists but to betray your oath, your whole past life to align with a person as defective as Trump is so incomprehensible.
He has had a strange corrupting power over Washington-maybe his lack of moral boundaries allowed the real DC to come through.
Maybe it’s not the emperor who has no clothes, maybe it’s America, the exceptional that has been bared.
4
Scary times, indeed.
If you fast forward to the movie, L. A. Confidential that takes us deep into the putrid truth of Los Angeles PD corruption of the 1950s, we see the white hats won, in the end.
In real life, William H. Parker, as the new chief of police, launched reforms that, over time, turned the department around. L. A. P. D. still has problems. What big city P. D. doesn't? The point is, this corruption we are witnessing is unlike the LAPD corruption in that it isn't entrenched, it isn't a decades-old fingerrprint, it is emanating from the 'outside in,' not from the inside out. That is, the Deep State, is largely, IMO, a fabrication of Trump and the right wing media and Trump is establishing, through his loyalty-to-me only appointments, his own Deep State.
I still have faith in our institutions, in the career bureaucrats who are, unfortunately, hamstrung by Barr and McConnell and Barr and most of all Trump.
But I don't think we have to throw up our hands like Jake Gittis and mutter..."As little as possible."
No. we're not there yet. We can cut out the poison. And we will. It won't be easy and it may not come until the presidential election when Americans who stayed home because, Trump win? Don't make me laugh will stampede to the polls to rid us of this plague.
3
If, as Michael D'Antonio says, "that being in the White House would distill Trump to his essence." he and his enablers have been the agents that have distilled America to its dark essence. The 15th century European colonizer's desire to dominate and exploit a land without rules and regulations is manifest today, the future. Slavery, genocide, fascism, greed, hypocrisy is in our DNA. Time to face up to our dark underbelly and own it. Only then can we do something about it. My guess is that we won't if the current administration, so blatantly 15th century, is allowed to continue.
2
Trump is the evil Noah Cross character, and like Jake Gittes, American seems powerless to bring the villain to justice.
1
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" -- good women, too, of course.
That quotation is widely attributed to Irish-British statesman Edmund Burke in the 18th century, and it has never applied to the United States more than it does today.
At this juncture in our history, evil is staring us right in the face. We can't escape it because it's omnipresent -- forced upon us by sheer brutishness, bullying and bombast round-the-clock.
It's easy to recognize because its appearance is grotesquely unique: orange skin; ludicrously coiffed bleached blond comb-cover; traitorous pattern of behavior; nonstop vitriol, vindictiveness, mendacity, corruption and hate -- thrust at us during every waking moment through TV and Twitter.
Donald Trump's malevolently self-fulfilling prophecy of "American carnage" is metastasizing before our eyes at an ever more alarming rate, inflicting previously unimaginable damage to the foundations of our democracy.
The longer the monstrosity now occupying the White House is allowed to ravage our Constitution, our country's guiding principles, the rule of law and the sanctity of truth, words from the Walt Kelly character Pogo grow more ominous:
"We have met the enemy and he is us."
But that can't be, can it? The enemy's identity is self-evident.
The unprecedented desecration of our democracy by this rogue president must end, and end soon. Only then can our long-overdue period of healing and recuperation ever begin.
7
What I recall from "Chinatown" is the kernel/mystery at the center of the plot: father/daughter incest, as revealed in the scene "My sister! My daughter!" At least the father, Noah Cross (played by John Huston), never bragged about incest with his daughter Evelyn (Faye Dunaway), whom he safely married off.
Here, we have a president who bragged when he started his campaign in 2015 that he could get away with murdering a total stranger in front of Trump Tower, not to mention "My daughter is hot! But I can't marry her." That hinted at bragging about such a relationship, and cast a shadow on his own grandchildren's paternity.
4
Orson Wells could have made a decent film about trump.
2
"...we know now that the Russians have figured out how to rig our elections"
No we don't. Because whatever they did do did not result in a change in the outcome. The DNC wanted Mrs. Clinton, and they got her. Complain about the Electoral College all you want. Complain about "deplorables" all you want. She lost, to the crass carnival barker who leaks fraud from every pore. It is long past time to drop this canard.
3
The odds are long but we may have our first Madam President before very long. If so, it will not be President Pelosi. There are too many Marcos, Lindseys, Mitches and too few John McCains to allow such an eventuality before 2021.
2
Brilliant....just perfect. The analogy could not be better placed.
Come on, Maureen, It’s just America.
What we are witnessing in our country is the result of how Trump's behavior has been so glossily 'normalized in the eyes of his faithfu, especially all that recent erratic behavior we've seen on the White Hoiuse lawn as he prepares to board a helicopter to whisk him off to a rally or other venue twhere he gets to preach to his gallery.
3
My favorite line from Chinatown is “Yeah, summer colds are the worst.” How prophetic!
~"Russians have figured out how to rig our elections — and our dictator-loving president doesn’t seem too disturbed about that."~
""...doesn't seem too disturbed"? You suggest that trump is a passive observer of what is unfolding.
On the contrary, trump knows he cannot win without help and is actively seeking that help.
6
Too much of a stretch, the whole analogy
1
Interesting fact: In Robert Towne's original script Evelyn and her daughter got away and Cross was killed. Polanski insisted on changing the ending. Hei said to a TV interviewer, if Chinatown had ended happily, "We wouldn't be sitting around talking about it today." Polanski, having suffered the death of his wife and unborn child at the hands of the Manson family, knew all too well that sometimes evil wins. We are seeing this evil manifest in Trump, the most despicable man ever elected in America.
2
when will this national nightmare be over?
2
It isn't so much that Trump demands all of this self fulfilling aention. It is that so many in the mainstream media keep giving it to him. Can't you media people see that all you are doing is giving him a national forum to spew his toxins out on the people? Yet you all seem hypnotized by him, laying at his feet at the "press interviews", eyes wide, mouths agape as if you are thinking: I could just listen to him all day. Which is just about what you all do.
The actual story adapted for Hollywood film is of William Muholland ,incidentally ,of the same namesake as the Blvd. or street.Muholland saved the city and the Hollywood film industry by appropriating water resources by somewhat unscrupulous methods.The city ,during the early years of 1900 was running out of water ,because of the then bountious orchards and tremendous growth. Muholland began to purchase farm land with extensive water rights further North of Los Angeles for the purpose of bringing water to the city .Unknown to the sellers the nature of this bounty and corruption ensued.
2
The American political system, while capable of producing aberrations, has always managed to self-correct in future elections. The question now is: Is Trump an aberration or the avatar of the new normal?
4
It seems that every so many years, we have to push to advance ourselves a little farther out of darkness.
I believe that Trumpists are a backlash against the progress we were making (most visibly in having a black president). We now have to consolidate and keep on moving forward or slide backwards.
I remember Nixon—that terrible fear that he was going to get away with it and wreck the country we had taken trouble to build. Not perfect, but advancing; willing to look again and correct ourselves again.
For awhile it looked bad. We were in despair. But people kept pushing, did the difficult thing.
A few years later, you couldn't find a single person who admitted they'd voted for Nixon.
Keep on keeping on. We are the majority, even if not by a lot, and we have law and right on our side.
5
Thank you Maureen for using drawing upon art to illustrate the magnitude of our situation. I have only seen 'Chinatown' once; in 1974. That was sufficient to get the message. Hillary was right about the vast right wing conspiracy. Too bad so few listened.
4
I have been around a while - have seen this countries many flaws - but this malevolence is something different - its time to stop it NOW.
6
Maureen, your statement that Pence could go down with Trump is one that we should all hope never happens. If both Trump & Pence are forced out, Nancy becomes president, as you said. This would be the absolute worse possible outcome, perhaps even worse than Trump being reelected for another four year term.
If the Presidency is shifted from the Republican to the Democratic Party by an impeachment, the cynicism of the right will be confirmed, and it will look like a coup has taken place. The only way that the government should change parties is by election, not by impeachment. Otherwise, Trump's prediction of civil war may become reality.
Let's hope that your prediction does not come true and that Pence becomes president upon Trump's impeachment, or a Democrat becomes president by election. The government can change parties or not, depending upon the 2020 election, not a 2019 impeachment.
3
Chinatown was one of the best films ever to come out of Hollywood, and its relevance reverberates as Ms. Dowd demonstrates. As Trump's essence is a "dark swirl of cruelty, violence and fear," it is also an empty soulless void. Trump has not only not suffered the consequences of his bad behavior and its effects, he has led a soft life without the responsibilities of domesticity, military service, or physical labor. If Chinatown mirrors the ills of a society suffering from a deep and entrenched nihilism, then Trump symbolizes the apex of this nihilism, cynicism, and disregard for any kind of decency.
9
Ms. Dowd is a creative writer par excellence but, I don't think Trump can read at her level to take valuable notes.
The Russians figured out how to install a détente in our elections thanks - I assume - to the inept Republican Congress members whose leader is Mitch McConnel so, should I be surprised that our president and Congress aren't disturbed by this?
2
It would have been better for Ms. Dowd to share this dark-America-under-Trump vision before the 2016 election. As a New Yorker, she knew who he was and yet flirted with the campy possibilities of a Trump presidency. Now, perhaps, having to live with her own journalistic failings, she envisions a hopeless future for this country. I suggest that she render her penance by envisioning a better fate for this country once Trump leaves office and talking it up, not down. We're in a moment of crisis, here. And we could use those who have the gift of writing to help us craft a different ending other than "we're all doomed."
6
We expected too much from Mueller. We got what we deserved: another spineless government employee with unwilling to reach a conclusion.
6
@Robert Martin Mueller did much good work in terms of holding Trump's underlings accountable. But, when it came to taking on Trump, the center of the conspiracy, he brought a 400-page treatise to a gunfight.
1
I’m surprised that Dowd ended the column on such a naive note. What makes her, or Michael D’Antonio, will think that Trump’s nightmare will manifest, or that his demons will confront him? As is noted, he has always escaped consequences before, and in his latest predicament he has a Republican Senate to protect him. Impeachment without conviction would likely not help his prospects for 2012, but neither would it damage them significantly, and we can already foresee his re-election. Many gangsters die in bed without seeing the inside of a prison cell.
3
Chinatown is apt; the same sinister aura envelopes Trump, his appointees and the GOP loyalists who suddenly aren't even swayed by open displays of greed and corruption. D'Antonio's description of Trump at the meeting with that put upon Finnish presidents was on point: if that outrageous, toxic performance didn't send Republicans running, these are people with no standards. That was raw id, ego, contempt: a human toxic dump site. What is terrifying about him, which too many still play down, is the level of rage and his enjoyment of destruction. You might think his only appeal would be to sociopaths.
My hope is in electing new people who resist corruption, which means that we absolutely require election campaign limits. There have to be substantial penalties for accepting or proffering any moneys or gifts or services on the side, under the table, or wherever else they slither through.
Without reform, the ideal of a democratic republic goes down as global oligarchs assume power. Ironic, isn't it, that Trump campaigned against "globalism" but he always had a different version of globalism in mind for himself?
1
Eight years of GW Bush and Cheney running amok on a grand scale both domestically and in fabricating the Iraq war in the wake of 911, then eight years of Republicans dogged stonewalling and massively and viciously denigrating Obama even as the country struggled to rebound from a devastating economic crash. Next up the 2015 choices among the seventeen GOP contenders who were mostly abysmal — no wonder Trump found a way into the Oval Office.
It is questionable that the Founders ever in their wildest musings over the vagaries and vulnerabilities of democracy envisioned the perfect storm that America has suffered with an unhinged aberration like Trump having free rein while being abetted by a feckless, self-serving Republican Senate.
4
Bleak assessment. The “Jake” in me is holding out for the “real” Donald Trump’s appearance to testify in a Senate Trial. Like in the film, “A Few Good Men,” we may get a graced moment when Donald Trump let’s his demons rip on camera; then, everyone will see Donald Trump as he really is. That’s my hope. We will see.
2
Great piece. Dowd hits this nuanced evil of Trump with a sledgehammer and perfectly captures the creepiness of it all by recalling Chinatown. She didn't mention the court-packing that Republicans have been doing, but that is at the heart of this gut-wrenching unease we all have. Long after Trump is gone, Mitch McConnell's judges will be dispensing Trump's madness from our courts, especially the Supreme Court. That's at the heart of our feeling like evil has already won.
4
Nice column. There is an understandable compulsion to comment on Trump's asinine actions, but the more awkward root problem seems to be like Kryptonite to media outlets. Trump is just a symptom; the real problem is the 40 odd percent of American voters who support him. Trump's strange mix of comical ineptitude, extravagantly outsized ego and dangerous mendacity will eventually lead to his ouster, but the voters who enabled him will then seek out a replacement. That person may be smarter and more focused than Trump, and present an even greater threat to the fabric of American democracy. The Trump base must be confronted. Furthermore, solutions are needed to the most pressing problem of our time: citizens informing themselves entirely via confirmation bias.
3
What would our country be like right now if JFK, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy hadn't all been murdered? It took some time, but the direct result of those killings is Donald Trump. Whatever dark forces made those deaths happen, they are now reaping the rewards. Will it take violence again to change directions? I hope not. But this is America.
2
@Don Palmerine What culminated from those figure heads was Obama.Who figuratively placed Mr. Obama in office was GWBush.In a twisted turn of fate ,the two terms of Obama placed Mr. Trump in the white house.the controversy and said conspiracy lies in the fact that Federal Operatives in the prior administration planned to keep Mr. Trump from attaining that office.
1
The bad guys have already won. We have a raving lunatic in the WH enabled by whimpering Republicans in Congress whose number one priority is self preservation. We have a senate majority leader who does not legislate, stifles debate and is so bold as to abuse the process of appointing a justice to the Supreme Court. We have a Republican Party interested only in giving tax breaks and benefits to the wealthy. We have a military industrial complex squandering trillions of dollars on endless seemingly winless wars. We have a medical system that enriches insurance companies, medical equipment manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies. We have rural America that doesn't pay its own way but relies of those coastal elites they so hate to provide them with tax dollar shortfalls and then turn around and tell us we are not real Americans. We imprison children at our border. We tolerate white supremacists in our midst.
We need a revolution for all the same reasons on which this country was founded. We are not the America envisioned by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
8
-Of 96 percent of mass in the Universe
21 percent dark matter
75 percent dark energy
and Trump ---100 percent dark matter and dark energy
1
Well, if he only recognized those “demons” as his own. He does not and we have learned that a million times over. The demons he sees are always someone doing evil to him. Trump is the paradigm case victim claimer. He does not self reflect. He does not acknowledge the damage he has done and can do. Impeach him or vote him out.
2
I see everyone around me giddy about impeachment. But the fact is if this President is not removed then the game is over. He will have free reign to be corrupt and ask for more foreign interference in our election, possibly even direct hacking. He will not stop unless removed. Although this all seems absurd, it is way more dangerous than it seems. Removal is not a slam dunk with these traitors in the senate. If they win this battle, the war is lost.
4
For another film which provides insight, i recommend "Downfall" ("Der Untergang"). Observe the ranting madman in the bunker, his minions, and a nation in ruins.
2
I think of the Trump presidency through the lens of another great Jack Nicholson film: “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”...
3
For three years now, we've watched corruption, stupidity, and narrow-mindedness play out in this administration on a scale never before seen in an American presidency. And it's all been very public.
But the problem is not merely an unjust and incompetent leader committing crimes in plain sight.
Every day, there are millions of people who cheer Trump's cruelty and ignorance and who dismiss his attacks on our institutions. Millions who buy into the conspiracy theories, millions who think that Trump is doing great things for the economy (even people suffering financially, like farmers), millions who say that while they may not agree with Trump's misdeeds, look, the Democrats are just as bad. (No, they really aren't.) And we all get to watch and listen to these crazies almost as often as Trump.
This isn't just Noah Cross and his corrupt buddies at the Albacore Club. It's a huge number of our fellow citizens and because of that, we should be feel more depressed whether the truth will ultimately come out, the malefactors will be punished, and justice will prevail.
3
It's the same view as Jean Anouilh's Antigone: the world is not ruled by the lost or the misguided but people who know exactly what they are doing and your civil disobedience counts for nothing.
2
Donald Trump is clearly an abomination. We look at nonvoters, Russian interference, disaffected Bernie bros., etc. as the cause of his election. However, perhaps the populist impulse Pat Caddell discovered, and Donald and Bernie rode, came from our having handed the reins of the country to the corporations ad the rich. We are functionally an oligarchy, with corporate interests outweighing the concerns of the majority of citizens. Is Donald an aberration, or a symptom?
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make...President? (Trump was already as mad as a hatter.) I have often thought that, like in Greek tragedy, Trump would be destroyed by his hubris. It will surely be cathartic for the country...and the world...to see him fall. Trump will learn nothing of course but let’s hope the nation learns that character matters and that we must never again elect of man so transparently devoid of decency.
5
“We still have dreams, but we know now that most of them will come to nothing. And we also most fortunately know that it really doesn’t matter.”
Probably the darkest passage you have ever written about politics and the people in that orb, MD. When we live in a world of Fox News and its many copiers - suggest something in the way that facts matter. Or, that time does matter: Behavior A happened on this date; Behavior B is verified to have occurred on this date, etc. Or do we just get on buses by the tens of thousands and march thru the streets of your beloved Washington D.C. demanding the immediate end of Trump's King Louie reign? Maybe a nationwide strike - no impeachment and removal of Trump or no work...
2
"We live in a world of Fox News." Yes. And I remember the days of the old FCC "Fairness Doctrine," when broadcast stations had to offer air time for opposing editorial views. Of course, that was a pre-Reagan and pre-cable world.
The irony is that Trump campaigned on being an outsider to the corruption, ineptitude and cynicism of politicians, yet his administration has been astronomically corrupt, inept and cynical. And who has helped him continue bringing base behavior to our highest office? Those career politicians who hold the Republican majority in the Senate and those who used hold a Republican majority in the House.
Drain the swamp, indeed. Vote out the Alligator-in-Chief.
3
I agree that his essence is cruelty and fear, but not that it is violence. Donald Trump is a physical coward, a wimp, who is terrified of guns. In a physical fight, not only would Joe Biden beat him, Nancy Pelosi would too.
He is the single greatest exemplar in history of the phrase 'he can dish it out, but he can't take it'.
Apparently a majority of the American people now support impeachment. Whether or not he's impeached, we know he will not be convicted by the Senate. I just hope that when he loses on November 3rd 2020, he goes quietly... but I'm not all that hopeful.
Dan Kravitz
1
What is important to understand is that the people defending Trump, both in office and his base have revealed the nature of their souls, and its not pretty.
This isn't about partisanship, though many on the right under the banner of Fox News would cast it in that light.
This is a revelation, where the social scab is pulled back, and we see for the first time that a significant number of our fellow citizens are dirty to the core. This is not about demonizing, this is calling out immorality and corruption writ both small and large.
Never mind the excuse of cognitive dissonance. The despicable sociopathic behavior displayed by Trump; the absolute rotten depth of this evil man has inspired a significant number of Americans to embrace the dark side. He has inspired corruption on a scale that mirrors human history's ugliest eras.
It wouldn't take much for the "peasants with pitchforks" to begin rounding up traitors for processing--the breach between incitement and conduct is narrower than you think. We've already seen examples and we are going to see the equivalent of torch lit rallys--we've already seen them in embryonic form.
Don't think it can happen here? Read your American History. The whisper of suspiscion, the stain of disloyalty, you don't need a majority or even a plurality to set these activities in motion...and remember who has the weapons.
4
I will go to my grave puzzled because I can't ask the question Jake Gittes does get to put to Noah Cross when he wonders, "what more can you have," and Cross replies, "The future Mr. Gits, the future."
Chinatown is modern noir fiction but it is also classically Greek tragedy. Cross, like Trump, is ultimately, a self-destructive figure. Trump is as unsympathetic as a villain can be, which makes his downward spiral into impotent rage all that more pathetic. He will not be mourned.
1
Column: “Trump doesn’t know that people who don’t confront their demons are destined to be confronted by them.”
----
This explains how I can simultaneously despise Trump, whom I consider our worst-ever President/thug, and watch him go down -- loudly -- with rapt attention and enjoyment.
1
As a man, Trump is evil in every sense of the word. Criminal. Immoral. Cruel. Demented. So what does that say about the republican party? A party of men and women who have completely and enthusiastically embraced the very worst traits of this man. As a country we've had a pretty good run these past 243 years. But if we aren't very, very careful, it could all come to a very abrupt end.
3
"Mendacity, corrruption, grotesquiery". Does Ms. Dowd ever read her own stuff? "Chinatown, the Manson Family, etc." She and most of the people commenting need to sit down and take a deep breath. Pres. Trump's one phone call to the Ukrainian president is not the end of democracy as we know it-----calm down and wait for the election in 2020. Stop berating Republicans for not agreeing with you that impeachment is necessary to save the world. The Trump Presidency will pass into history and the Republic will be fine.
A completely ridiculous analysis.
The President has done an admirable job, and we appreciate it.
He will be re-elected.
2
Donald J. Trump and Brett Kavanaugh look alot alike when pinned by their own transgressions. Vicious counterattack is the order of the day to get revenge for such an attack on their ego.
We deserve better leaders than this.
1
But the hypocrisy of the Democrats will ensure that Trump is re-elected. Again it will come down to a choice between two low life politicians, and Trump will win because he's not pretending to be otherwise, unlike Biden, Warren and Sanders.
2
The comment that “Russians have figured out how to rig our elections “ is absurd. What has happened is the electorate is so uninformed and pays so much attention to social media that facts are irrelevant. Voters are lazy so they get what deserve. A showman like Donald Trump has a chance because of this laziness. Combined with partisan writings like this and others, lazy voters are whipsawed instead of simply casting this stuff aside.
Maybe it was all a dream that America stood for freedom, human rights, democracy. At least we used to pretend to espouse those values. Before we became a country who can elect a con man to our highest office. Before one party decided it was more important to keep their cushy jobs rather than stand up for democracy. All of this I lay at the feet of the GOP. Trump is one, but you are many. And yet you do nothing. I pray you are all voted out. Shame on you.
1
"a dark swirl of cruelty, violence and fear."
a perfect description, not just of trump himself, but of his truest, die-hard base: enraged, nihilistic, paranoid, and violent.
1
A warning to the Democrats from Nietzsche: "He who fights with monsters should look to it that he does not become a monster himself ...." . Trump has a way of dragging his opponents down into the abyss.
Ironically, we just watched Chinatown two weeks ago. We were hoping for a distraction from the news and, instead, we were staring right back at today.
1
Greta Thunberg and the youth she inspires give me hope. I may be pessimistic about our future, but I choose to live optimistically.
1
"His [Trump's] performance with the Finnish president was a florid demonstration of his inner self. Enraged and irrational, he was incapable of hiding his contempt, which is ever-present, and heedless of his effect on others."
The Finnish president did mange to say to Trump, "Mr. President, you have here a great democracy. Keep it going on."
Trump, I am sure, wasn't paying attention, just as the country wasn't paying attention when Obama said before the election, "Other countries, they kind of count on the United States being on the side of science and reason and common sense...."
Unless we start being "on the side of science and reason and common sense" again we will continue to be on the wrong path.
5
My first memory of political turmoil was when Lyndon Johnson decided not to run for a second term in 1968. Along with that came the protests against the Vietnam War and finally Watergate. As a teenager, it all seemed so hopeful. We could get rid of the politicians who were damaging the country. Now our future as a country is hijacked by a dark force that is even greater than Donald Trump. We boomers have given up hope and become cynical. I cannot bear anymore, news of the malfeasance of Trump and his henchmen. It is all so predictable. I only hope the younger people can take return the hope we had back then...until the cycle returns. Yes Chinatown was a great movie!
4
Interestingly, the title of this piece is the title of a different movie, the Orson Welles classic. One of the themes of that film is “the ends justify the means” as Welles’ corrupt cop frames a Hispanic character. Late on in the film, almost as an afterthought, it is confirmed that the framee did actually do it. Some Trump supporters may make the same argument for their champion, but like the Welles character, there is no disguising the fundamental ugliness.
The mighty can fall, and justice show its face, but in the current moment I find myself with a choice: hoping dearly to see Trump hauled off to prison, disgraced without his suit and tie and makeup and ridiculous combover, or accepting the fact that that might never happen.
Some long time ago, I turned on the news to hear that, here in our shining democracy, national guardsmen had actually shot and killed student demonstrators. I touched the names of former classmates on the Vietnam Memorial on the DC mall. Even before that, we’d seen parts of our cities in flames during riots.
We’ve seen dark times before and still moved on. Trump may get off Scott free, but he will never laugh all the way to his banks, because, if you’ve ever noticed, he does not laugh. He gloats, and that’s not the same.
My mission in life is to enjoy it, and I’m trying hard not to let the blindness of our times keep me from that sight.
2
We are living in the moment, the moment of Donald Trump, but would you not like to be able to time travel to 100 years from today to see how history viewed Trump and the impact he had on America and by import the world.
1
Naiveté is what happens in those little Midwestern towns,and let's face it, in the little towns elsewhere in the country, where the closed bubble populations can never imagine the things that their fake heroes do, in the dark of night, and also right out in the open, in all of our populations centers, where anything goes. It just couldn't be! It just does not compute with those who are easily led, terribly ill informed, and lacking in sophistication. Not critical thinkers, in that they believe if it never happened to THEM, it never happened at all. This is another reason why we still have racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and religion-based child abuse. Never has quality education, and intense critical thinking training, been such an urgent need for our people. Ignorance will be our final downfall. No more will we be the world's leader. Well, we really aren't the leaders, now, are we, except in the minds of those small town residents? So, the slide has truly begun.
5
I'm not so sure that we deserve a different future. Maybe Americans want a dictator. Most Americans like order and following rules and being told what to think. Americans don't care if their government is corrupt, as long as their lives are orderly and safe. Maybe this whole experiment in Democracy has proved to be a bust, and we're ready to move on to something more structured, where decisions are made for us. How much easier life would be. No fuss about elections, because there wouldn't be any. No rants against fake news, because there's only news the government puts out. No laws stymied by the courts, because there are no courts. No opposition to policies in Congress, because there's no opposition party. How much easier life would be! What a relief to not have to hear two sides fighting each other--there's only one side, ever. Maybe that time has come for the U.S., and in the future we'll thank Trump and hail him as the father of the New America.
1
You seem to imply that Russia "rigged" our election to elect trump. No evidence that the Russians had much effect on that election. A few Facebook ads are not going to have much effect. Think of how many facebook account must be in existence - millions and millions. Did you pay much attention to them? You would not be able to differentiate what was true or what was Russian. How would that have changed your mind?
Trump was elected because Hillary was a bad candidate and presented no hope for the working, isolated and insecure persons. Trump seemed to (and pretended) to understand them and they fell for it. We have a high tech society and if people did not keep up skills in that area they fail. Factory jobs are gone to you know where. Rural areas are dying as seen in an excellent article on that here this week and now. White uneducated persons are struggling, isolated, feeling insecure and alone and abandoned. Trump arrived and promised them the world.
1
I watched Chinatown again recently so it is fresh in my mind. The horror of the ending lingers: everyone walking away in the mist, all in the wrong direction. Let's hope that isn't the world we live in and that the good guys still have a chance. We'll all find out soon enough.
If only Maureen Dowd hadn't hated Hillary so much, and hadn't spent most of her time criticizing Obama for not being manly enough. I didn't read this column for years because it made me too angry. Somehow now, I'm reading it again. All is forgiven. Just please don't be right this time.
5
Clever as always.
I would have expected you to make connections to the goings on in this country when the film was made. From what the actors and directors were getting up to during and after production what Trump and Cohn were doing in NYC and the country in general.
As I recall it America was a country where avarice, corruption and depraved indifference walked among us with their heads held high in 1972. Not unlike today for that matter.
Fact is as the sophistication of propaganda and methods of hiding these traits have grown things for the people of America have really only gotten worse since.
3
I'm totally on board with the sentiment that Trump is evil, but did you have to reinforce a darkly stereotypical depiction of an ethnic community in America in order to smear him?
I get that it's the name and setting for a movie, but that's thin cover. No where in your article did I see any disclaimers about the good in the actual Chinatowns, which are prosperous economic and social communities. You had a chance to help question THAT stereotype and you chose, instead, to reinforce it. Disappointing.
2
If only this were a movie!!
But it's not, and the ending is probably going to be far worse - if it ends at all. (All things come to an end of course but the horror of this show is that it won't, or not soon enough.)
The end is somewhere between a war with N Korea, Iran and/or Russia and some deus ex machina that mercifully brings this show to a close. Hopefully with everyone, and our country, intact.
3
Try to find a recording of this morning's interview on Meet the Press between "sleepy Chuck Todd" and Rep. Johnson.
It devolved to a shouting match because Johnson would not answer questions and insisted on spreading the Trump propaganda lies.
2
Maureen, two noir films at once! Of course. Orson Welles and Charlton Heston gave us wonderful border corruption and hope in "A Touch of Evil", and "Chinatown" gave us corruption and hopelessness together. A fine balance between the two films.
But Washington "as a guarantor of American values" -- please say it ain't so, Maureen.
Trump isn't the one who took his kid to China to take up a collection plate while seriously negotiating for US interests in the South China Sea. Trump isn't the one who had his kid offered a job for the boss of the gas giant Busrisma, which funds the Atlantic Council, which pays ex-Ukraine president Poroshenko, etc..
And the Ukraine DNC contractor Crowdstrike is the only proof we have of Russian meddling -- because Comey and Mueller both forgot to, um, collect the actual evidence of hacking from the server.
The point here is not to let Trump off the hook. You're OK on that score. The point is to investigate in depth what Biden, Obama, and possibly Hillary were doing in Ukraine in 2009-16, when US and EU money in tens of $ billions was passing through Ukraine government hands, some of it maybe being recycled under the table back to here and the EU.
Thank you Ms. Dowd. As someone wrote yesterday Trump will make James Buchanan the second worst President. Trump is victorious yet again. The worst we have ever had.
1
I do worry that this monstrous man will never face his day of reckoning, so richly deserved — but we still must try, despite the odds.
3
We need to take a look at history. The intelligence community in our country does great work on many things that we will never learn about. They have also been tragically wrong. JFK was convinced by the IC that the Cuban people would greet us as liberators and overthrow the Castro Regime in 1961, the Bay of Pigs disaster. During Vietnam our IC told us that if we only bombed the north they would capitulate. Wrong again. GW Bush and his administration was told unequivocally that Saddam had WMD, and we would be greeted as liberators. Another fail. So you wonder why Trump is skeptical when the media and the IC swore that the Russians were involved in hacking the DNC computers. And we now know that the DNCRefused to allow the FBI to look at the servers. As Joe Biden always says, “come on folks”
2
@Mitchell myrin
The intelligence community has not merely been "tragically wrong" on occasion, they have actively lied to the American people and unconstitutionally interferred with domestic political groups to advance their own agenda of ensuring continued popular support for American empire and expansion abroad, and the need for ever-increasing surveillance and limits on free expression at home. They were unimpeded in this endeavor until Vietnam, the Pentagon Papers and Watergate caused the American public to start questioning what they were being told. They are as much or more to blame for the conspiracy fears that currently cross the spectrum of American politics than Alex Jones, Glenn Beck and all the other shock jocks combined.
A strange by-product of Donald Trump's election has been the spectacle of Democrats defending the intelligence community as if they were created by the Constitution to protect our democracy. The Constitution, of course, doesn't mention them. The notion that the FBI, CIA, NSA and other national security agencies have been a government unto themselves, more often than not at odds with the one elected by us, is hardly the invention of hard core Trumpists and conspiracy theorists -- both Democrats and Republicans have warned about them since at least the end of World War II. No one having even a passing familiarity with postwar history would take anything they have to say on any subject without several tons of salt.
2
It was obvious to the majority that Trump was not fit to be President. Many of us knew his history or deceit, moral bankruptcy, racism and just plain evil. He dominated the dialog, turned business as usual upside down and made lots of money for cable "news". Trump has brought us into his evil world and taken us down into this very dark hole. References to film noir makes for a readable opinion piece but the truth is Trump is the externalization of our own dark side, our shadow parts that we keep under wraps. Until we own our "Chinatowns" and integrate these less than good parts of our country and ourselves, we will be haunted by them. Trump is what happens. Impeaching him fuels him. Better to Vote him and his enablers out of office.
2
This is but one component of the daily-documented destruction of Earth by Homo sapiens. The bigger the picture we acknowledge, the scarier it looks.
As the population continues to grow exponentially, causing the ongoing mass extinction of other life by commandeering and poisoning every livable habitat, and the out-of-control atmospheric overheating that may already have become irreversible, the global fight for what's left has already begun. In that emerging struggle, democracy is dispensable.
America has represented available abundance to the world for centuries. ("Give us your tired, your poor....") Trump and the Republican Party have been the party of the Haves since the Civil War. The latter 20th Century was a blip of abundance delivered by the post- World War II overheated economy. The rest of history has been an ongoing onslaught by the Haves to control and exploit the world's natural resources.
Now, the flight of desperate global populations has grown along with the technological means to do it. The Haves worldwide increasingly hunker down even while refusing to reduce their indulgence.
Trump has won because parts of our country already have been hollowed out economically and prefer a dictator who promises to protect what we have from outsiders to a democratic leader enforcing our ideals. He's at the pinnacle of this trend because he envisions teaming up with the other most ruthless dictators and oligarchs.
The future ain't pretty.
2
Maureen Dowd is exactly right about the trump era and “Chinatown.” I have thought about the similarities many times of late. There is a signature detail in the movie that is delivered by the director himself, Roman Polanski, who plays a cameo role as a switchblade wielding messenger of evil. He sticks the point of the knife into Jake’s nostril, lectures him about sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong and then gives the blade a flick. The great Hollywood movie star, Jack Nicholson, wears a big white mocking bandage on his nose for what seems like the rest of the movie. The symbolism is clear. The Jimmy Stewart era is over. The villain may not control Jake, but as Faye Dunaway says at the dismal end, the villain “owns the police.” The final scene leaves you feeling helpless and resigned to an ugly future for the character that represents innocence. “Chinatown” is just a movie. The trump era is not. But we, the people, have been forced to watch the latter unfold for two and a half years with the same helplessness and increased resignation. For even if trump is impeached or loses in 2020, we ask ourselves, will this movie be over? Will the lights come back on? Or have we been sitting in the dark for some time now? And the next reel is about to roll.
1
Noah Cross' incestuous relationship with his daughter, producing his granddaughter who is also his daughter, is representative of the level of moral disregulation we have achieved. Growing up in the 50s and 60s and of the same period as Maureen Dowd, the thought of an American president paying homage to dictators who are also our enemies eschewing racism and committing crimes was inconceivable. Our current politicians who defend and support trump have sunk to a never believed possible low. In a way, they are guilty of political incest.
2
Zimbabwe offers a better – and real world example. Robert Mugabe led the revolution that freed Rhodesia from British control. He was seen by the Dowds of the time as a proponent of reform who could lead a country endowed with substantial resources forward. Instead, he and his corrupt colleagues robbed the country of everything, leaving it totally destitute.
Donald Trump’s slogan was “Make America Great.” His intention is to “Make America Zimbabwe” The long article by Monica Potts in the Sunday Review offers confirmation of the progress towards his goal.
2
All Trump/all the time. Accurate Ms. Dowd. But we knew all this before he was elected. What do we do about it?
1
Yes, and yes again. Unless trumpy is unseated by some force, some unexpected miracle of justice truly and finally delivered, we will all be condemned to live in the trump prison where we will have to endure his self-inflicted wounds.
2
Trump is already toast..It is just a matter of time and staying fearless.
1
imagine a scenario where trump is voted out of office, he retreats to trump tower, his twitter account is blocked, the media, including rubert murdoch's son, refuses to allow him on tv, nobody goes to trump hotels or resorts, and eventually he melts into a puddle of nothingness.
life is good again
2
I'd say it's more like the cynicism of " A Face In The Crowd". The telephone call rather than the open mike in this instance.
Everything Trump and his toadies do - including Barr, Pompeo, Pence, Graham, Mulvaney - basically, the entire GOP - destroys the rule of law, the energizing diversity, and the fact-based governance that have made America truly great.
Their MO is to cause harm to the vulnerable and anyone who opposes Trump, while abusing their political power and using taxpayer dollars to serve themselves - and Putin.
Putin fuels the anti-Mueller, anti-United States intelligence professionals, current Ukrainian-focused anti-Biden conspiracy theories that Trump embraces, because they all help Russia deflect the reality of its unrelenting cyberwar against Western democracies.
They also help defeat true American patriots who run for office and do not support Putin.
Putin still wants his quid pro quo for helping Trump win in 2016: relief of sanctions. All the false Putin conspiracy theories line up to justify sanctions relief.
Trump is a Russian asset, and Putin plays him like a violin. That Barr, Pompeo et al. and the GOP enable Trump’s delusions, vengeance and treason on Russia’s behalf is far worse than any movie script.
1
All sadly true, but having just read the excellent article by Monica Potts here in the NYT about a small community in rural Arkansas tells me that none of the despicable behavior on display daily matters one bit to these voters who will vote for Trump again. Their view of government and the world outside their immediate surroundings is so warped that nothing can penetrate their minds. Unfortunately they have the same number of electoral votes as millions of Californians!
2
As I recall, the movie ended with an implication of incest. I could be wrong, but I think the line about it was,"My mother, my sister."
In Tricky Dick, aired last night on CNN, Nixon was musing (on tape) to Kissinger about dropping The Bomb on North Vietnam. Henry thought it was a bad idea, Nixon wasn't so sure. And civilian casualties didn't bother him one little bit.
At least Nixon's ledger had a bright side -- overtures to China, beginnings on the war on cancer, school desegregation, SALT talks with Brezhnev, founding the EPA, Clean Air Act. Trump's ledger is all hate and paranoia.
2
"Former 45" is not a Hollywood movie. Chinatown is not a Hollywood movie because it does not have a Hollywood ending (where good triumphs evil).
No one has tallied the millions of local taxpayer dollars both the campaign and now the P. has failed to repay local police for "protection" at stadium events. Who has the mandate to calculate all the way 45's evil has bankrupted taxpayers for his personal greed?
Impeachment will solve very little. Imprisonment, after his failed election will do much more. After all, he will have enough cellmates to name a whole wing, no?
2
Gee, Maureen apparently you have a problem with peace and prosperity. The United States is enjoying both. The big lie being that under the Democrats the country would be under a grand illusion that “Happy Days are Here Again” while the managerial elite and its identity group minions delude themselves that they have saved the democracy.
1
Oh jeez. I don’t care about which movie this is like. This is reality. I agree that it is a horror show. I just hope we can survive it.
6
Much like I no longer watch Saturday Night Live after it featured Donald Trump, I can't exonerate Maureen Dowd or the hundreds of others who helped Trump to the White House. My anger at her and so many others who didn't take the horror of Trump seriously doesn't get any less. I don't have that many years left, so losing 2-1/2 years of my life to sorrow and pain is not forgiveable, Maureen.
4
This article is a great exploration of the wisdom of the ancients and of trumps unself-examined pathos...but it's way above the average trumper's reading level.
2
Excellent piece Ms. DOwd, the movie shatters all concepts of the American Dream; one cannot make it in this world
through one’s efforts alone. America like in Chinatown has become a place occupied with deception and corruption
where the powerful prevail. No longer the shining city on a hill but a fool on a hill.
The Sunday readings echo Maureen Dowd’s movie metaphor about the impeachment process.
“O Lord … Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and clamorous discord. Then the LORD answered …
The rash one has no integrity; but the just one, because of his faith, shall live.”
The “rash” launched of an impeachment inquiry even before the Trump-Zelenski transcript was released.
The “just” are taking their time and piecing together the evidence from the beginning with faith in the process.
Did it begin with Obama’s unprecedented designation of Joe Biden as point man in Ukraine and China with knowledge of Hunter’s business plans (that Hunter could not have conceived)? Did it begin with a (Warren -) Hillary Clinton supporter in her “Deep” State Department that seized upon a plausible conspiracy theory, shared with Mr. Schiff, and sold by a well connected attorney?
Dowd’s ends her film noir spiral with the suggestion that Donald Trump has never been able to confront his demons. In fact, Mr. Trump has changed for the better. He is no longer the playboy of his youth and has seen the unintended consequences of abortion, open borders, and liberal judges. The office of the presidency has made him childlike in private with the constant need to seek advice about the details of new issues. The constitution vests him alone with the responsibility for deciding when and how to use his vast power to make America Great Again.
1
All true. The big problems are the electoral college, allowing a minority to win and the republican Senate that refuses to do its job. Add to this the right wing propaganda aimed at the most ignorant and fearful minority Red states population and the democracy is very much in great danger of being lost.
1
I am looking at this theater of the absurd. Why are we here? What happened? To me this is the overriding question. What caused this country to go so far in this direction. Like Alice in wonderland. Evangelicals are no longer evangelical. Many Catholics no longer support this pope and are hostile to him. Witness Brannon and his ilk. Please, give me an answer I can understand.
1
Interesting and sadly on point.
1
It's a kingdom where the definition of "law" is whatever the king can get away with and the definition of "crime" is anything that displeases the king.
1
"But watching Mike Pence and Marco Rubio and the red firewall of Republican lawmakers pervert principles to protect Donald Trump elicits dread that there will be more lawlessness."
Trump, Barr and McConnell, with the full force of this mindless Republican Senate, are leading an all out assault on our nation to destroy our free press, deconstruct our long standing democratic principles and establish a Trumputin dictatorship .
The national news media should not lose track of thee other articles of impeachment.
The criminal in our White House has committed so many impeachable offenses that limiting the number of articles of impeachment is a significant problem for the Speaker and House Chairs to overcome.
1
Not sure why mix movie metaphors, but "Touch of Evil" was another great noir movie with Charleton Heston cast as a good Mexican lawman & Orson Wells as a bad American lawman and Janet Leigh caught in between, not to mention Calleia, Tamiroff and Dietrich. But in this one the good guys win in the end as Wells turns on his most loyal friends and they do the right thing and betray him. Which seems as likely as Chinatown to be the actual ending to the Trump era. Stay strong.
1
Russia is the least of our issues. Trump is a bafoon but not the biggest issue either. Liberalism is losing its way in a place it needs to lead. Adaptation of the crazy pc/ identity politics will only harm the issues they care most about.
I really think it’s more like Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange, slight pun intended. The public are all the McDowell character, strapped to a chair, eyelids forced open, being reprogrammed to accept what we are seeing as the new reality.
2
"Even if Donald Trump is impeached, we know now that the Russians have figured out how to rig our elections — and our dictator-loving president doesn’t seem too disturbed about that."
I think differently than the above.
I think that Donald J. Trump is a mafioso, a Russian/Italian mobster, much like Giulio Andreotti - the man who served in just about every elected position a person can in Italy, who was made. See "IL Divo" the movie. His base is ignorant of the manners and methods of those mafia. But if Trump's base could co-relate Mafia personal affectations and M/O's to DJT, they would get it. We have a super criminal as President.
It is not the Russians who have figured out how to crack our sacred election systems, it is just that our elections are wide open to being cracked. The Russians infiltrated our system using guns as bait. They have paid off Republican elected officials and lured them with exotic women bearing high powered weapons.
Working in computer programming informs one that everyone out there in the world is a potential enemy to freedom when it comes to computing. There are evil doers in the Netherlands, Australia, and just about everywhere in Asia. They don't have a political agenda; they just want to destroy - they are vandals of a high order and are amoral. To cross them, even inadvertently, they will come back at you to harm your computer systems.
We, freedom loving US citizens, have multiple Russians to deal with.
1
"Even if Donald Trump is impeached, we know now that the Russians have figured out how to rig our elections . . ." Here is where Ms. Dowd, and by extension establishment Democrats, reveal their own naiveté, born of the same idealistic good intentions yet just as wrong as that of Jake Gittes, "about the forces of real corruption, real evil." There is not a single shred of evidence that Russia "rigged" the 2016 election. To be sure, they interferred with troll-farm Facebook ads and some email phishing, but there is not even an allegation that a single voting machine was hacked or a voter registration list changed. That their activities came anywhere close to "flipping" the election to Trump is an enormous leap which even Mueller did not make in his indictments or in his report.
Blaming sinister outside forces for our own failings and divisions is a uniquely American pastime, but the "forces of real corruption, real evil," are all right here -- Russia did not bring racism, xenophobia, or crippling wealth inequality to our shores, they have lonng been here. It is long past time we all accepted our own responsibility for Trump. As the comic strip character Pogo famously observed, "We have met the enemy, and they is us."
2
The Chinatown analogy - with its immorality and cynicism - is quite apt. I have given up trying to empathize with members of "the base", even those who are family members and decades-long friends. I have given up thinking that there is any crime -ANY CRIME- for which the base and the GOP would actually hold our president accountable. I fear we are now two virtual nations, with two separate cultures and two separate versions of reality, forced to co-inhabit the same cities, towns, roads, schools, and work places.
I know what Abraham Lincoln said about such divisions. Our fate may be foretold by the Star Trek episode "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield".
6
What did the utopian visions of the baby boom generation deliver to us? A nation's Capitol awash in and drunk on corruption, funded by global corporations and other wealthy masters of the universe. The middle class was left with crumbs and opiates to ease their demise. Rather than succumb, a piece of America stood up and fought back. Trump is no Jesus, but any disruption at all beats oblivion, which is where we were headed after 16 years of Bush and Obama combined.
2
@JW
Please explain how a corrupt president, who cares only for his own desires, who lies and bullies, who speaks in vulgar language, who demeans anyone who won't do his bidding, who profits from his office, rather than serving the public good, is better for this country. He hasn't done anything to help the vast majority of Americans. He has not provided improvements in health care, infrastructure improvements, cleaner air or water, or better jobs and job benefits. He has taken millions of our tax dollars for his constant vacations and to build a "wall" that won't solve our immigration problems. He has turned us against one another and turned our differences into mean and angry diatribes. He will destroy this country.
2
I share your frustration, but you obviously don’t remember what it was like in the way back before you were born.
Now we’re in the back of the Snowpiercer train. There’s one crazy guy driving that train. We need to band together rather than squabble about abortion access and who marries who and whether you want your sister to marry a brown person. Once the Engineer shuts the passenger compartments, which is what he’s in the process of doing, we’re never going to stop the train and we’re never going to get out.
I’m totally serious. We need a truce. But we also need a plan. After the train leaves the democracy station, they’ll be no getting off.
You’re right about the Jesus thing.
And regarding the ‘meritocracy,’ anybody who’s ever had a kid in Little League (sorry LL) knows the coach’s kid plays whatever position he wants. If he wants to be the catcher because of the cool gear, he’s the catcher, whether he can get off the throw to second or not. It’s just how it works, from the playground on up.
We’re all bitter about something, and that’s what the fascist gazillionaires are banking on.
Literally.
1
@JW
No. That was delivered to us by reagan using religion and lies to manipulate a lot of folks who lost their souls chasing his/GOP fraudulent morality. They are still chasing it to this day hence El Trumpo.
1
Ms. Dowd's analogy is chillingly apt. And whether or not our nation will recover from Trump is a question too dark and terrifying to contemplate; but somehow we must. The scariest thing about Trump is that he reveals just how delicate democracy is. Democracy depends on trust, on good faith, on an electorate armed with facts and a belief in "the better angels of our nature." Democracy is hard work. Trump lacks all the qualities required to preside over a democracy. So he's smashing democracy and trying to replace it with authoritarianism. He's doing this with the backing of a political party corrupt to the marrow and with the gleeful approval of a sizable minority of voters. Right now, the light at the end of this frightening tunnel is difficult to see.
7
America is reaping what it sowed. The voters in Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania need to decide whether they are prouder to be Americans today than four years ago.
9
Forty five years ago "Chinatown" convinced of the impurity of capitalism. I recently saw it and maybe I have changed. Isn't it really a metaphor about the Evils of "Hollywood" where child abusers and rapist are part of our great entertainment system. Powerful enough to convince us of their virtue and importance. Water projects were not what it was about.
Downton Abbey is a much better representation of how we live now. A scramble for the wealthy to hold on to their wealth and become wealthier. The lower classes are loved as long as behave and they stay out of the way. DA is a litmus test for the new left. If you take it to heart turn in your party membership card now.
3
This is a good article but does not go deep enough to uncover the rot at the heart of the American experience which involves at its core the use to money to buy political power and political power to make money. There is a revolving door between government and business and now that includes business in countries eager for influence. There are much larger forces at work here over a much longer span of time than just the current president.
4
I’ve seen Chinatown many times. It is a terrific movie and an apt metaphor for our current situation. The only difference I can find in Ms. Dowd’s comparison is that in the movie, people go to great pains to hide their misdeeds. The movie contains startling revelations we would not know about except for its laser focused antihero, Jake Gittes. Who can forget Faye Dunaway’s gut wrenching admission that her daughter is also her sister? Now, we have people openly, unabashedly bragging about braking the law and getting away with it. The entire country has seen Trump say he wants assistance from foreign countries The entire country has seen him get that assistance or threaten countries who don’t comply. We don’t need some intrepid private detective to find the truth. We know the truth. If we do not act decisively to put an end to this criminal enterprise, it will be the end of us. It’s not just Chinatown. It’s the United States of America.
9
@Mickey T
"...admission that her daughter is also her sister?"
That is the world Roman Polanski loved and thrived in. Not what the "entire country" is.
Amazing to me how the cable news channels have such a different take ...almost propaganda approach to the news in America. If Fox News did not exist I am convinced most Republicans would be open to impeachment. Fox enables Trump and enables their leaders in the House.
13
@Bob Smith
With big media corporations in control — there will always be a Fox News.
Robert Caro got it right when he observed in his book, "Master of the Senate," that power does not corrupt one's character; instead, power reveals one's existing character by giving it rein. The greater the power, the greater the revelation.
As a further comparison to Chinatown, I note that Noah Cross had physical relations with his own daughter, while Trump (by his own admission) is physically attracted to his ( "She's hot." " If she wasn't my daughter, I'd date her. ") Shiver....
20
I was too young to really know all about Watergate, when It happened, and my husband and I watched a tv special on it, that detailed Nixon’s fall. The stark difference that struck me was: his own team were worried about his crimes (and sanity) and they did the right thing: they prosecuted. It seems that we are a gaping chasm away from the decency that they had in those 45 years ago, let alone in our post Revolutionary times. It takes brave (overused) people to come forward and say “enough”.
Sadly, I think we are only about half way down our own spiral; I feel that everyday it gets deeper by a degree. It’s hard to believe it’s only been since 2016! Usually, time flies and with Trump it’s just dragging on and on, with him careening from one mess to another. I am unabashedly liberal and so Trump has been a disaster (for me) since before his election. What will it take for him to finally have total disillusionment in his own party? It is sad to see such partisanship, such blanket denial from his Republican enablers. Are they really getting that rich, that they can freely sell their souls and our democracy along with it? Guess so.
As to analogies of Trump’s behavior, I would suggest “The Magnificent Ambersons”, by Booth Tarkington. The rotten, spoiled, consequence-free life of a son from a wealthy family that ultimately ruins it seems apt.
I hope.
And I will vote.
18
McConnell might conceivably allow the conviction of Trump, especially if it will help his reelection campaign, but there's no way he'd allow Pence to be convicted as well, since that would turn the WH over to Democrats.
There is a possibility that even some of Trump's base might finally recognize his venality, but we shouldn't hold our breath. We must continue to assume that we have to defeat him in 2020, even as we hope that he is removed from office sooner.
10
@Barbara
Pence is doing his best at the moment to be perceived as a nonentity, an irrelevant bystander, a nodding bobblehead, not very bright, possibly on heavy meds …
I hope he is unmasked. He's the very definition of the word "complicit."
Message to Trump country:
The current Ukraine scandal isn’t an extension of the Mueller Report. Donald J. Trump has been operating corruptly on many fronts ever since he was sworn in as President of the United States. He is that morally corrupt of an individual and was temporary given the keys to the most powerful position in the world and has learned to navigate through his presidential powers that will be an advantage to his corrupt agenda and is the sole reason that he is a danger to our democracy. If the President is found guilty of his confessed alleged crimes of abuse of his presidential powers. he must be removed! It doesn’t not matter one iota if he is a Republican or a Democrat. We will cease to exist as a viable democracy that our founders intended for our country. It is that clear in our Constitution.
I loved “Chinatown” and it is a very good analogy to describe our current dilemma, but we can’t dismiss it as the famous phrase is intended, for it is who we are as Americans if we do.
7
Trump country is busy complaining about paying a librarian a living wage. read Monica Pott's essay and skip the memo
Let's not forget:
Mitch McConnell is Trump's chief enabler.
His survival is fully dependent upon the Senate's Majority Leader.
This is the backstory.
22
@CJ13
Yes, and McConnell is actually more evil, because he's an intelligent man, a schemer and manipulator. Trump is - well, yes, he's a manipulator, which comes naturally to him, but in the end he is not particularly bright and has some obvious cognitive decline. McConnell is far more intelligent and far more dangerous.
1
This is all way more interesting than the plain, sad truth. The people, as counted by the rules of the electoral college, elected him. The Republican Party didn't originally want him, Fox News took a wait-and see attitude until he won the nomination. "We" elected him and we have to face that and hopefully, correct our mistake next time.
9
They all get theirs in the end. The thing is, they create the end for lots of other people on the way. There's just this huge fascination that comes with Trump. Somehow we all recognize
his flaws. We watch them play out, even multiply, every day. And as much as we hate it, we love it. All those things we go to great lengths to avoid in our own lives get played out and documented
every day...by the President of the United States. You couldn't ask for a clearer example of what NOT to do if you tried.
6
The problem with Trump is that he views the government like it is a business and not a public institution. It is not hard to imagine him threatening not to pay vendors if they did not do as he asked or asking others to try and undermine his competitors when making a business deal. He is scarily unprepared to be the President of the most powerful country in the world. It is clear to me he does not understand that those things he did in business were not in public view or restricted by government norms. That may explain why he does not care about a 23 trillion dollar deficit. In business, when his debts ran too high, he just declared bankruptcy and fudged the numbers and he was off to a new start. There is no such remedy for the federal government but that doesn't stop him from wasting the public's money.
So no Jake, it's not that surprising that he thinks it's okay to suggest violence as a remedy to get what he wants or to make bribes to nudge world leaders to do his bidding. But unlike Chinatown, I believe a day of reckoning is coming.
8
@George
I saw the ashen and stunned faces of Nixon’s Republican defenders during the Watergate hearing. Trump testifying in his Senate Trial may provide that same defining moment for the most stalwart of Trump’s Republican enablers.
Watching that old man standing out yelling on his front lawn (ours, the public's front lawn) about how it's his job to address corruption was the topper for me. As SNL pointed out last night in their news segment, maybe it's time we stop laughing at Trump and instead get him some help. So very sad.
11
Thank you, Maureen Dowd.
In the recent past, a readers comment describing Donald Trump as being the embodiment of evil was a sure fire way having a comment or letter rejected.
Those days of complacency and denial are over. What America needs is an exorcist.
13
@Al
Trump and his followers are always labelling those who disagree with him as communists.
Why aren't conservatives concerned that he regularly attacks democratically elected officials but is buddies with, and asks for help from, REAL communists?
John Dean to Richard Nixon:
"I think that there's no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we've got. We have a cancer within-- close to the presidency that's growing. It's growing daily. It's compounding. It grows geometrically now because it compounds itself".
Well the cancer is back and metastasizing everywhere as Trump is allowed to follow his conspiracy theories to Australia, Italy, the UK, Ukraine. It is stunning to hear grown men describe all that as some sort of joke.
It has a special irony for those of us who grew up with the Red Scare ideas to watch Southern Senators defend this president asking for help from communist China to smear an American political opponent's son. What exactly do they hope to accomplish by their betrayal?? The gratitude of religious trust-funders like Franklin Graham and Falwell Jr? sycophancy from that Baptist guy Jeffress? Kudos from Rudy? What?
29
Impeachment is an embarrassment for Republicans, but it offers them the opportunity to nominate a statesman, someone who would bring dignity back to the office, but, sadly, there are few on the right who fit this or have any hope of getting nominated. We have become too polarized, and I fear the right will continue to push to ever more extremes in their hatred of Democrats.
19
Maureen, you are great. Your style of prose is great and your columns are gripping. Each time I learn something new.
Keep writing the good word. These words are all we have to take that horrible, despondent and hopeless feeling away, albeit for the few minutes that it takes to peruse your sagacious and penetrating columns.
Thank you
21
And while most moderates like me agree with the 10,000s of articles and editorials which have the same spirit of this one, Trump will win. Why? Because the democratic alternative of anti-business, anti-growth, soak the rich, open borders and green new silliness will be rejected by the states where Democrats need to win.
13
I wish you would give just one fact to support your accusations. It seems to me we have had more growth, new business, more rich, while paying at least some attention to immigration reform and climate change under Democratic administrations than Republican. So is a moderate someone who likes Fox news and Trump's agenda but draws the line at the Twitter feed?
9
The points here just parrot the Republican talking points. Please discard. The Republicans have shown their true colors now that they have governed from the minority. Party before country. Tribal unity proven by allegiance to the right and an unfit party leader. Even some never Trumpers have been drawn back in. Wow. They are seriously unserious about governing for the common good--not even a talking point. If they didn't control more than 2.5 branches of government they would be a sideshow. What have the Democrats done to deserve such pathological hate?
I think it is because they have reason and emotion behind their policies. Discarding science and rational economics the Republicans are left with negative emotions to fuel their base. That is the irony of MAGA. It is more like make America hate again.
Vote.
2
@Jason
The Dems are not anti-growth, soak-the-rich, etc. That’s Fox News propaganda. Warren recognizes that the playing field has been tilted toward the very rich for a long time, and proposes a 2% tax on wealth in excess of $50 million. I repeat: $50 million. Obscene fortunes existing while a hundred million people are struggling mightily is deplorable.
2
The Chinatown allusion is salient as a cultural backdrop; Aesop’s “boy who cried wolf” protagonist, however, brings more to mind our dissembling commander and chief.
6
Michael D'Antonio wrote that “Trump doesn’t know that people who don’t confront their demons are destined to be confronted by them.”
America has refused to confront her demons, and is now being confronted by them, embodied in Mr. Trump.
53
We know that Speaker Pelosi isn't perfect, but in this moment she is our country's Mother Superior. Every interview is more spiritually grounded, every comment focused on prayerfulness.
Nancy knows she's in Chinatown, but she's identified the residents, understands their rules, and recognizes the evil that resides there. With a growing cadre of whistleblowers, the tenacity of our free press, and the strength of our support, she will prevail over this evil.
30
Trump supporters are happy they have found someone who echos their thoughts, wishes, dreams and desires. He is their fierce leader.
If he were to say we should execute whistleblowers without a trial, I’m sure a majority of the 41 percent would go along with it and his 95 percent rating among Republicans would only go down a few points.
And, yes, Trump could indeed shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and suffer no consequences.
22
@Oliver
"Trump supporters are happy they have found someone who echos their thoughts, wishes, dreams and desires."
Yes. Literally. One of my right-wing cousins says explicitly that he likes Trump because Trump says the things he wishes he could get away with saying out loud.
2
@Oliver
Just look at the conservative sites where his followers post. They are already saying his opponents should be executed.
2
All - wake up. Trump has achieved his goal already, casting enough doubt on Biden's integrity to possibly up end his candidacy, getting in his place a more beatable adversary, such as Warren. Biden's muted response is a dead tipoff. He knows his son's actions are questionable, while "legal". Even if Biden gets the nomination, he is wounded.
24
@Artis Biden already had the smell of "elite". To some voters, it's super rallying and a seminal point of view. An "elitist" might not have won pursuable states.
Trump broke oath of executive office by seriously conferring w/ foreign powers re: his own upcoming election. Now he's publically doing that. Toss the book out here and there: you can't throw a book out on that one and have rule of law in your nation-state.
As always, thank you, Ms. Dowd, for sharing your talent.
1
The futility of good intentions. How apt is that. and with that, I am now all in on Warren. Some of us agonize that Warren is "too progressive" for trump / borderline supporters. but you know, Trump was given a chance from Rep and he has done irreparable damage to the truth and trust of govt. (thanks Steve bannon) with intention of greed for power and money. (evil) Warren doesn't have a greedy bone in her body. Maybe her take on anti corruption can be crafted to resonate with working class trumpers. still over a year.
19
There's little doubt this man is evil personified. That there are still citizens and fellow politicians willing to look the other way due to fear or a lack of interest or care, is beyond belief.
While the comparison to Chinatown is interesting, it simply isn't crazy enough to make a dent in his follower's disenfranchisement and need for disruption. They're willing, like their demented figurehead, to tear our democracy down for a simple slice of the pie.
Both Trump and Pence must be removed. Those who've covered up crimes or attempted crimes or treason, must be removed and prosecuted. While this won't cure all our problems, it will set us on the path to saving our democracy and defending and honoring our most precious ideals laid out in spectacular form in the Constitution. This is our undeniable duty to self, country, allies and forefathers and foremothers.
14
It's the Trump Era and make no mistake: it's much bigger than just the one man.
26
Movies are not reality no matter how similar to real life they are.
Climate change is real. Unequal distribution of wealth is real. Obscene military spending is real. ad nauseum...
Reality can be brutal. Reality is not a movie.
10
@JJ
Chinatown was based on a REAL case of corruption. The theft of land belonging to farmers so as to create a new Los Angeles.
And make the few wealthy through water rights.
If any movies reflect the U.S. we’re living through, it is indeed Chinatown and The Godfather I & II.
They’re not spun out of thin air, ya know.
1
Yeah. It's all Trumps fault. Or, if not his fault, some billionaires fault. Or, at least some Republican's fault. Or maybe, just maybe, it's about voters who watch the corruption of their local legislators, then elect them to state and federal office on the basis of their label.
11
The American experiment may have found its destiny -- Trump may be the Frankenstein's monster that it spawned and swallows us all.
Perhaps a country whose origins included Slavery, Racism, Imperial ambitions, vast wealth, celebrity-worship and the life-numbing migration of all personal experience to Instagram had to begin swallowing its own tail, just as Trump has begun to do.
11
Chinatown is a good analogy, but JOKER may be more realistic since Trump obviously sees himself as a "victim" being persecuted by "evil" opposition. And, Trump's decline into madness has perpetuated a cult like level of folie á plusieurs in the GOP never seen before in our political history. As with the JOKER, and as with Trump, mental illness is often ignored until there are dire consequences that affect greater society. Trump's mental illness has been ignored too long. The consequences of this neglect is a preventable tragedy. Intervention is the most profound kind of caring. But in Trump's case, who cares?
8
@Mimi
Trump and Kavanaugh were both poor little rich kids who feel they are "entitled." They feel victimized and throw tantrums when anyone gets in their way. You saw Kavanagh in full display at his "hearing."
The phoney "gulf of tonkin incident", which was fabricated by the Johnson administration and opened the Vietnam War leading to 58 thousand U.S. deaths was up there in the very evil ranks. "Quid pro Joes" evil is simply based on greed and the implications of " the U.S. has no problems with China", Joes statement, belies the evil of 1.5 billion placed in the hands of son Hunter by the Chinese gov.t. What was done with these funds? Evil seeds planted with the water of greed.
1
@hiasakite
What about the three dozen trademarks the Trumps have gotten from China?
So now we have a President who actively seeks help from brutal dictatorial communists.
That $1.5 billion supposedly paid to Hunter Biden is utterly, absolutely bogus. We don’t know what happened to the funds because they’re nonexistent.
Keep your eye on the ball. Hunter Biden isn’t president. Nor is LBJ these days. Trump is, and he’s actively pursuing foreign policy not to our benefit, not to achieve America’s goals, but to his own venal ends. Only that and nothing more.
For years now, Trump has consistently impugned everything and everyone who crosses him. Mueller was corrupt. Hillary Clinton was corrupt. The deep state. The whistleblower is a spy. Adam Schiff is committing treason. On and on it goes.
When will it end? Only when, and if, we demand it.
1
One of the richest ironies of the twisted melodrama that is Trump is his claim that he wants to check "corruption" in Ukraine by showing that Biden helped his son.
Has anyone pointed out to him that he is the last person to have credibility to speak about corruption in the form of nepotism?
Ivanka got patents for her line of attire from the Chinese. Coincidence? I don't think so. Jared saved the family farm - or at least his own folly at 666 Fifth Ave. - with a loan from Qatar. Gee, how did that happen when no one else would give him the loan? What are Junior and Eric up to traveling around the world peddling influence?
Trump concerned about corruption? Nepotism?
Give me a break. That is like a fish being concerned about water.
Flimsiest excuse ever.
50
I am horrified on a daily basis. I have a few republican acquaintances, exactly 3 of them, and they do not see the evil in this man and his cronies. They say that the other side is corrupt too. I say, in my lifetime I have never seen anything like this. I cannot understand these people that think that everything is ok and that they will vote again for him, another four years of this, we are already unrecognizable around the world and we have lost all respect. I wonder why we are not all taking to the streets.
38
We’re not ‘in the streets’ because there is undeniably obvious corruption among the Democrats - AND the Republicans too. The difference is I can admit it about the GOP. You have blinders on about the Democrats. And in this case with Trump’s Ukraine call, there truly is nothing there.
1
No one believed he would win. Until he did. Now no one can fully believe he is so evil. But he is. "Believe people when they show you who they are". And I would add be very very wary of cynics and naysayers who would go after the flaws or weaknesses of the good guys, falsely comparing them to the evil ones. It is a mind trick used by dictators and torturers that make it hard for normal people to comprehend evil behavior, the normal, healthy human mind cannot believe that people will DO such bad things. So we are easily tricked into focusing on the flaws of the good guy because it's easier to comprehend. This happened with the 2016 election when everyone focused on HRCs flaws all while looking away from hideous evil Trump. Don't do it again Maureen. Don't any of us do it again!
35
While you are comparing this administration with the movie "Chinatown", and justifiably so, You may want to also read or re-read the book "Elmer Gantry", by Sinclair Louis. Trump would be a shoe in for the part of Elmer Gantry who in the book is a total manipulative fraudulent Evangelical Preacher, that uses and abuses anyone that will be of use to him then dumps them.
I would highly recommend this book, written in 1927, even though the story takes place in the early 1900's, it is even more relative today.
Do yourself a favor and read this book.
8
@USMC1954
Look up Marjoe Gortner and the movie of the same name.
So dark. So depressing. And, so true.
12
“But watching Mike Pence and Marco Rubio and the red firewall of Republican lawmakers pervert principles to protect Donald Trump elicits dread that there will be more lawlessness.”
Yes, Ms. Dowd, there will be more lawlessness. But while Trump is surrounded by sycophants he also has White House aides who leak to the press. And there are many people who voted for him ( like you?) who have buyer’s remorse today. It is up to the Democrats to win those voters back and register new ones.
I have faith in this country. The way America is today, we are much better than that. We will defeat this man in 2020.
4
Trump will read this. but it’s not likely he will tweet about it. He won’t understand it.
3
@Sean I doubt he'll read it. Not the whole thing, anyway. Too hard.
@Sean
LOL. He may read Dowd's column, or part of it, but there's no way he would read this far down in the comments. He doesn't have the attention span.
I prefer that America have the opportunity to vote for or against trump at the ballot box and not through impeachment.
3
@mark Do you understand the problem with your suggestion when Trump is (and will be) doing all he can to subvert the election process itself?
3
@mark I want to see an inquiry that digs up everything. This snake has hidden under the rocks for too long. ?If the American people are going to be stupid enough to reelect Trump, McConell, and Graham, then they should do so knowing exactly the kind of crook they are getting. And if they reelect these creatures, then the people deserve exactly every last bit of pain and suffering they deserve. And more.
“He has led a consequence-free life despite enormously self-destructive behaviors over time.”
That sums up the modern GOP to a T.
I used to respect conservatives, I didn’t agree with them but I respected their ideas and I saw how their input was valuable. Then it became all about the “liberal conspiracy” and they became a bunch of raving lunatics! They abandoned everything they said they believed in just to stick it to the “leftists” boogey man (a myth used to keep children in line) and Donald Trump is the manifestation of that, as Jesus used to be the manifestation of unconditional love.
15
The world is being held hostage by a madman who embodies Voltaire’s quote that someone who can make you believe absurdities can make you perform atrocities.
This will end badly, and I am certain that there will be blood on the ground before it’s over.
15
One of your most literary pieces. The writing itself is beautiful even as it describe the heart of darkness. It feels to me like the germinating seeds of a book. I hope you will write it.
As for its subject matter, the trust fund cripple continues on his rampage of destruction. He gets caught red handed extorting the new president of Ukraine and a couple of days later he goes back to his playbook of doubling down. So now he has asked China to investigate the Bidens. How can it be wrong if he does it in public in front of everybody? For a guy that is supposed to be all about our borders and our distinct identity as a country, he has ushered in a new globalism for the digital age. Get all those foreign leaders to aid and abet his calumny. He's really more `international' than his reality tv campaign lets on. He wants a small club of bullies who will also brutalize whoever they have to to pursue their unmonitored and unreflected aims. So we are left having to count on the humanity and humanism of the Russians and Chinese. Incredible. If he is not brought down for these quid pro quo transactions you can kiss our democracy goodbye.
10
How ironic that only the Republicans can save the country Trump ha stolen from us. It looks like the American dream is coming to an end.
6
As we react day after day to a poor excuse for a leader's rantings, we miss the point. This was a carefully orchestrated campaign to DISMANTLE THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE. Despite the occasionally clever articles, the NYT focus is missing the mark. Please. The president is an animal. His profound self loathing is obvious. But that's not the bad part! The bad part is the dissection of the government for profit. We have a handful of people here who are specifically appointed to jobs to destroy the departments they head. THAT SHOULD BE THE FOCUS. Most people won't know it's happening until they are entirely broken, financially and emotionally, which is the aim of the GOP. And that is why no one will be able to fight that machine without focus.
7
As someone who was too young and distracted to pay good attention to Watergate, I decided when Trump ran for president that I would watch the whole thing. I wanted to witness it all. I have watched closely, read and listened everyday. Now that we seem to be 1/2 way through the story, I am sick to my stomach as the villain flouts all decency, and his stooges protect him with silence and lies. This noir tale is too demoralizing. I’m focusing on local politics in order to keep my state blue. Vote people!
5
I think we all like to tell ourselves soothing stories about our nation, its history, its values. The land of opportunity. A melting pot. We conveniently bury our history of our abhorrent crimes of genocide of indigenous people and kidnapping and enslavement of a race of people whom we deemed inferior to our gleaming whiteness. Crimes which continue to this day, albeit in slightly less heinous manifestations. Our treatment and exploitation of waves of immigrants that followed is also shameful. That their descendants managed to rise from the shameful ashes is a testament to them, not to this country. And yes, it has always been corrupt and yes money has always been the victor. We tell ourselves stories to make the reality more tolerable. Trump was not wrong about one thing. “You don’t think we kill people?”, he said, in defense of his master, Vlad. What he was saying is, you don’t think we’re corrupt and predatory and rapacious? The difference is a matter only of degree. And we don’t just kill people in CIA ops and trumped up wars. We kill people by depriving them of the health care they need. By caging them and denying them basic necessities. By turning away asylum seekers and legal immigrants who don’t have health insurance. Did trump’s mother have health insurance when she arrived? Melanie? Ivana? Each of whose entry was of dubious legality. By cutting food stamps. By reusing to raise the minimum wage for 20 years. Yes, we’re Chinatown. Always have been.
10
Maureen , Chinatown , my favorite film, my loss of innocence. I'm stunned, crying real tears.
3
It is well known that when a narcissist's inner world is in turmoil, the people around them pay the price as the narcissist unleashes his rage and misdirection outward.
As Trump's inner world goes into turmoil, America is paying the price.
7
@KP
And the narcissist's inner world is ALWAYS in turmoil.
When Trump stares into the abyss he sees himself, he blames the abyss.
6
Trump is not only incapable of confronting his demons, he is not aware of their existence. He appears to be fed up with this thing called being president, he knows that sooner or later he’s going to get caught and, judging by his recent erratic behavior, he’s trying subconsciously to get impeached, and removed, as soon as possible.
He probably spends his sanity time contemplating a deal to resign in exchange for a non indictment clause. In his twisted mind he’d consider it a win.
Most Americans will take it.
6
Didn’t Citizens United tip us over the edge. Why Barr, Trump, Koch man Mike Pence unconcerned about voters. Made Big money corruption no longer taboo? Mueller report, Kavanaugh scandals, each dark money at work. Isn’t Citizens United our Chinatown?
8
It's not just Trump's nightmare. He has dragged the entire world into it, with the help of the Republican Party.
"Trump’s lunatic denials about his blatant transgressions, and his even more lunatic bouts of self-incrimination" are only exceeded by the Republican Party's lunatic defense of Trump and the Republican members of Congress' even more lunatic abuse of their oaths to support and defend the Constitution.
During the McCarthy Hearings, attorney Joseph Welch famously asked McCarthy, "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" Today we must ask all Republicans, "At long last, have you no sense of honor or integrity?" Sadly for America, I think we know the answer.
13
Your Chinatown analogy is brilliant and nightmare inducing. As a nerd, though, I have translated it a bit so I can get some shut-eye and a little false solace this weekend...
We’ve slipped into the Parallel Universe... soon Giuliani et al will be wearing goatees and gold sashes.
At least Pelosi is our good Kirk, trying to appeal to what is left of decency in this country.
Scotty, beam me up!
4
@Loretta McKibben .
And Pelosi is much smarter and more strategic than Captain Kirk ever was!
1
The founding fathers of America were not naive - that is why they put in checks and balances.
England had just been through Charles I execution and then the overreach of Cromwell.
and of course, who can forget that Caesar, beloved Dictator of the people of Rome, was assassinated by his Senate.
Democratic Athens was defeated in the Peloponnesian war by authoritarian Sparta.
The founding fathers must have realized that if people -41% of them anyway - still vote the man in, then that is man America deserves after all.
Yes, very sad, I know.
2
Nancy Pelosi is far from Jake Gites. She actually has power and so does the US Congress. She has known exactly what she has been dealing with for a very long time. Jake never really knew what he was dealing with, not even the complex relationships driving his employer. Many of the professionals in the DOJ, State and Treasury are now coming forward with evidence. Jake had to ferret stuff out by himself. Finally a majority of Americans did not vote for Trump and a majority now favor impeachment. Jake was on his own. This will not end like Chinatown. I think more like “All The President’s Men”. In this case the main character will not be granted immunity and will end up in jail alongside Paul Manafort.
7
Ahh, Maureen. I compare Trump more to the "Commodus" as portrayed in the film "Gladiator" in which the victorious emperor in waiting slays his father and returns to Rome as their savior, their messiah, just as Trump has descended on our nation's capital.
And as portrayed in the film the young dictator establishes blood sport as a way to keep the masses loyal and passes out loaves of bread to the gullible just as Trump passes out lies, deceit and red hats with a slogan that is not truthful.
In the film we have the disloyal sister who is caught plotting against the despotic Commodus and is to be silenced-as happens to those who dare plot against our version of Commodus.
Alas, the hero of the movie, a male character, takes action and soon frees the empire from the grasp of a corrupt dictator. In real life that hero could be Nancy Pelosi sans the sword that is used to slay Commodus.
But, one thing would need to change concerning Trump, the movie and the emperor.
The name of the emperor, as applied to Trump, would be "Comicus" (sorry Mel Brooks) as we are saddled with a despotic clown, a third rate comedian, who we hope will be exiled as the real Commodus' sister was.
1
"Even if Donald Trump is impeached, we know now that the Russians have figured out how to rig our elections..."
So, no matter who we elect, the Russians had a hand in it? No matter the outcome, they created it? I think you're giving the Russians far too much credit.
The American voters elect the president, and as history will show, they don't always get it right.
2
@JohnD
I think the point is more - as a couple of other posters have pointed out - that the INSTITUTIONS that compose our election system have been gutted - the have rotted from the inside out, from the malevolent actions of some parties and the apathy of the American people.
If people have no belief in the institution anymore - as a result of the fact that outside interference was not only allowed, but the president BRAGS about encouraging it and thumbs his nose at those who point out he did it for his own personal profit, not the good of the country - then, all bets are off. Outside interference is okay then. Anything goes. Anything can happen in an American election once it is clear that the process is corrupted. It isn't necessarily that Russia will now control our elections … it's hard to know where such a ship sails next, what bad actors will be involved - or even what possibly what good actors! - but clearly, it will erode the U.S.'s status as a sovereign nation.
There is really only one way to straighten this out. And that is that the perpetrators be punished and punished severely. Impeaching King Donald is not the answer, although impeachment and removal would be a great start.
There needs to be a Republican bloodbath in 2020. They have to lose the Senate, more seats in the house, governorship seats, and legislatures. Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch going down would do more than even getting rid of Trump.
Now we will find out if the people are willing to do it. If not, it will be the people themselves that are betraying the Constitution. And then it really is a piece of paper.
24
At least the 1930s villains in "Chinatown" were working to improve L.A.'s water-supply system. If the movie were remade for today, all they'd be doing is poisoning the water-supply with lead, withholding funds from renewables, and using melted ice-caps to dig up more oil in Antarctica.
20
We pinned our hopes on the Mueller Report. Now we are hoping for change through the 2020 elections. Think again. There are ominous signs we should take seriously.
First, the Republicans are canceling Republican presidential primaries in four states (Arizona, Kansas, Nevada and South Carolina) to shut off any contenders to Trump. And that was at 15 months before the election.
And Trump is putting out "feelers" at his rallies about his intentions. "Eight years? Sixteen years?" he asked recently.
Michael Cohen said he won't go willingly. Believe him.
33
Film noir indeed. But even more so, Shakespearean. I am sickened by this man.
When Trump chose such a tender spot to attack Biden, mafia like, through his vulnerable son, it confirmed my worst assessment of him. Not just mean, but mean enough to torture a kitten, or (the imagination offers up) torment his own vulnerable brother into suicide.
Biden, by contrast, in this Shakespearean moment in history, finds himself in the most tragic and heroic of roles, striving to deliver us from Trump’s evil: He has endured more in his private life than most of us have only feared. It’s this personal history that has tempered him for the rough life of a politician, particularly the roughness of confronting Trump. Give Biden due respect in this. Whatever weakness he may have, he has the strength and integrity to fight clean.
22
I see multiple ‘whistle blower complaints’ are now emerging. The soft coup continues to expand as reinforcements are brought along because the first one is inconsequential. This will undoubtedly blow up in Democrat’s faces. We’ve seen the transcript - there’s nothing there. It’s routine to ask foreign countries for help with investigations.
I have my issues with Trump. But the left has been harping on impeachment since before the inauguration. Democrats have diminished impeachment’s gravity and are setting themselves up for major 2020 losses. They are too ideologically blind to see it.
5
@Once From Rome:
“We’ve seen the transcript - there’s nothing there.”
I arrived at exactly the opposite conclusion.
8
Joe Biden bragged about getting a prosecutor fired who was investigating the company paying Hunter Biden $50,000 per month despite having zero energy experience. The Biden’s Ukraine dealings reeked of quid pro quo and influence peddling.
The 1998 treaty with Ukraine explicitly calls for mutual cooperation between the countries on criminal matters. Trump merely asked Zelensky for help investigating what appears to be blatant corruption.
Not sure what you find troubling about this. I see a sitting US President doing his job. The left’s double standards will be their undoing.
1
@Once From Rome
A challenge we face right now is that so many choose to say that a report of our president blackmailing another country to discredit a political opponent is “inconsequential.”
Our craven senators probably actually know it’s wrong, but have already made their deals with the devil. Yes, we will have to see what 2020 brings. I have some hope, but you never know.
1
“The movie is a good metaphor for the Trump era, when you hope that this grotesquerie is an aberration but you worry that the bad guys have already won.”
The ship has been leaking for a long time, the lower decks are flooded but on the upper deck, the party’s raging on. Trump and his sycophant GOPs are tiptoeing to the lifeboats.
5
Spoiled, rotten children, are NOT just ruined for family, but for the world! When a child has no negative consequences for their negative behavior, it doesn’t just affect the family who raised that child. At first, the neighborhood and community are affected, as the neighborhood children try to make sense of an out of control kid at school. Then the wider community gets involved when people’s belongings come up missing or ‘accidents’ keep happening at the Little League game or Pop Warner Football or Summer Concerts in the Park, etc. Next thing you know, your tax dollars are being spent on police investigating and social workers exploring what went wrong in this child and family. Then, the child grows to adulthood and is attracted and mysteriously finds others like themselves bent on doing bad things, and in a group gain more power and status for their dirty deeds, which include attacking and bullying anyone vulnerable, including young children, immigrants, and the sick or elderly. Then, if they’re parents are wealthy, they are shipped off to military school to gain some discipline, or awarded a college environment to conquer, and so learn the world is their playground to concoct and do whatever nasty schemes they dream up. Now, they can even become president with the help of other spoiled brats influencing our elections from around the world. How we ever allowed this spoiled, rotten brat to become president is beyond me? Justice must be served.The day of reckoning will come.
6
Your best essay! So, true.
2
Great analogy, Maureen, on the money. But I can't help but be curious. What does brother Kevin now have to say about his choice for President? A vote for and defense of an inept megalomaniac whose hideous behavior is no surprise at all? Kevin and like-minded Republicans are equally culpable for refusing to see Trump for what he has always been - a thug with cheap gloss. It was then and would be in 2020 the height of American electorate irresponsibility should they once again pinch their nose and vote for this incumbent supremely unqualified to be President.
5
“Gentlemen who have the Misfortune to have any of their Rogueries detected: Discovery seldom stops till the Whole is come out.” Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
1
@Douglas
"Such a parcel o' rogues in a nation!"
-- poet Robert Burns, on corrupt fellow Scots aiding England against Scotland.
The republicans/conservatives just hate liberals and their values and even Donald Trump is better in their eyes. I think it's just that simple.
5
I remember the movie aside from the criminality, being about incest. I would not label it as the personification of pessimism. That title might go to ''The Spy Who Came in from the Cold'' or ''Schindler's List'' or other films whose titles and plots of good v. evil will come to me later today.
In spite of all my efforts to avoid the daily horrors of Trump, et al, I am drawn to the flame, addicted in the hope that he has dropped dead in the middle of a rant, or been hauled off thanks to an interference from his family, or just removed from public sight and sound thus permitting our slow recovery from this abscess. I understand solipsism, while a palliative treatment for Trumpism, is merely a delay in facing reality. Which grinds exceeding slow.
And much as I revere the bill of rights and the freedom of the press, he is a prime example of why in some cases it should be carefully considered. Not quoting his tweets, nor showing his photo as a lead to every article, the press can reduce his daily presence. Some grad student should do his/her thesis on how many TV hours and lines of print did Obama have in comparison to the same number of days in office as Trump? And all for free, of course.
5
I was ready to march on Washington after El Paso this summer - who's with me?
8
Chinatown is one of the greatest American films of all time and John Huston's Noah Cross is one of the great villains of all time: ruthless, reptilian, lacking in any sense of what is morally correct, willing to kill to protect what he thinks he should own. I never would have thought to compare trump to Noah Cross, but what a devastatingly dangerous pair trump and cross make. Unfortunately, trump isn't fictional
4
Have people really forgotten about Bush? While he doesn't appear to be as foul a human being, in many ways what he did was even worse than Trump, at least so far. He too was a childish and deceitful warmonger and his incompetence was fully displayed in the aftermath of Katrina.
Was Putin's hand in the election worse than that of the Supreme Court with Bush vs. Gore?
Trump may seem to be our worst nightmare but I think he's a worthy predecessor to Bush. That honor should go to neither Bush or Trump, it should go to Mitch.
4
@ Tom Daley- we are here, in this moment, precisely because of Bush. The Repubs learned then that they can contort and flout the law as they want, because they got away with it then. That was the play book. Now we are in the game, rigged as it is.
3
The army of Times columnists who complain of Trump’s Presidency virtually never speak of personal harm to themselves. They are insulated against Trump and they virtually always speak of harm to others. Ms. Dowd actually benefits from Trump. Whenever she can’t think of anything worth writing about, she can always surf the internet to find somebody out there who has suffered direct an immediate harm.
3
We can be rid of Trump and the stench that is his cabinet, but will be left with more of the same waiting in the wings for the next opportunity. Money drives evil and always has. Trump was just the worst we have seen...to date.
3
Some blame the "dumbing down" of the American public for the election of Trump, but it seems to be much more like an "erosion of principles". The plutocracy has produced a hopelessness and resignation and desperation that made millions check their sense of right and wrong at the voting booth.
November 3, 2020: A referendum on American culture.
4
@shakree Excellent summation of Trump. What we need is for one of the lower polling candidates to do is switch to continually excoriating Trump for blocking release of his transcripts, tax returns, et. al.
Some of Mayor Pete’s best lines have been about Trump’s lack of service.
This strategy would have a huge benefit - it is based in truth. Unlike birtherism or Trump’s going after Obama’s academic career (and his current Biden attack, for that matter), in which he merely manipulated the press into continually covering a false narrative of a more honorable candidate, we would find something completely different than his own narrative. Up until now, Trump has controlled the narrative by manipulating the media and which stories they cover.
In my mind, the IRS head should be immediately threatened with inherent contempt and jail if he doesn’t follow the law and immediately deliver the tax returns of Trump and of his thoroughly corrupt organization and “charity”. That would give him a clear choice. Either he follows the law or goes to jail. Not Trump, not Mnuchin, but the IRS head who is following their unlawful orders.
As an Air Force officer, we were specifically trained not to follow illegal orders.
The words “censure” or “impeachment” will not break through this obstruction. Only the real threat of real punishment can break through this intransigence.
12
Sometime earlier in the Trump administration I had occasion to visit Washington D.C.. I exited the train at Union Station and saw, illuminated in the distance, the Capitol. I was caused to pause by its brilliance, but, then, sadly my realization that it was Organized Crime central. Trump is not an aberration. He is the distilled essence of an American politician and the dysfunctional realization of the popular quote, " Every boy in America can rise to be president."
2
Lest we forget, the Messrs. Biden, no matter what may be said of them, are American citizens. Since when is it the custom of American officials to invite legal scrutiny by foreign governments of American citizens abroad? The very thought of this assault on the sovereignty of not only the Bidens, but you or me as commodities (read hostages in someone's art of the deal) is concerning, if not chilling.
9
A reader writes:
"Trump deserves his rendezvous with his dragon. Let's all hope and pray, we are not all eaten in the process."
In my view, Hope and Prey postpones dealing with the world as we have made it. We made Trump president, right? That's actual reality.
Hope and Pray begs for a magical intervention from above to correct our own human affairs gone wrong.
Hope and Pray is a private personal choice people can make to find comfort. It signals that deep down we've given up on our agency: I'm sorry, daddy, please come save me from this mess.
Hoping for miracles; Praying for righteous things to happen; imagining the world will someday be just again and its secrets revealed; eternal perfection or damnation for each in accordance to their merit ...
This diverse wish list fits inside Hope and Pray.
Truth is, Hope and Pray is more dramatic and "special" than the modest brick or two we can lay to build a better place for ourselves.
Is it that scary to face our human vulnerability and limitations that we'd rather run for help than live better by taking responsibility?
Hope and Pray is fine so long as it doesn't preempt practical, intelligent action big and small that can make a difference to others in the here and now -- a difference beyond the personal self.
It's one thing to wish people well, but a very different thing to "pray" for them and to tell them so. I find grandiosity and arrogance in that.
oz.
1
the next election will be where America gives its verdict on President Trump. Everything else is bloviating.
1
@Bobby The next election has a very small chance of being an actual, legitimate election. Trump has made that clear.
9
@theothertexan then all is lost. Do you believe that?
Let's count the number of enablers of Trump's criminal regime: There are twenty five members of the House sponsoring a fraudulent motion to censor and condemn Rep. Adam Schiff for his work on the impeachment inquiry. There are two consigliere's, Barr and Guiliani, there is two under bosses, Pence and McConnell; there are four capos, Graham, Meadows, Jordan, & McCarthy;there are 25-House members sponsoring the motion, and there is the media capos, Hannity, Carlson, Fox & Friends and Limbaugh.
How does the nation overcome that constant stream of lies and false accusations against Democrats given the 24/7 attacks by these people?
11
As I read the comments, we are all in agreement that this country is in trouble. Unfortunately, we are preaching to the choir. The Trumpites don't read the NYT, they watch Fox and consume all those ridiculous conspiracy theories Giuliani peddled across the globe. The Democrats will never change the deplorables minds so lets focus on getting out the vote.
13
Yes, Trump will face his demons one day.
You could also say that America is being forced to face its demons with him as President. Who would ever have thought that someone like him would ever come close to be elected?
These demons that are in front of us all now, this country's racism, its inequality, its decades long wars, its destruction of the lands....all that belongs to all of us, no? Yes, we have greatness in this land and our history, but eventually we were always "...destined to be confronted.."
4
What is wrong with you people. Op-ed writers. Ed writers. Journalists in general. You make broad sweeping statements that have no basis in fact and you lay them out in your columns regardless. Then your echo chamber believes and repeats.
Let's be clear: Russia didn't rig our elections. Despite the hand wringing of lefties and anti-Trumpers, that didn't happen. They made an very ineffectual attempt to interfere and no one has yet to produce someone who changed their vote because of the Russians.
Further, the house investigation inquiry is a joke, led by a joke. If you want to use scenes from movies, Schiff thinks he's a soldier sent to do good work, but he's an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks to collect a bill. And worse, the bill is bogus.
The major problem with the Ukraine transcript -- beyond the fact that it is perfectly legitimate for a head of state to ask for help from another head of state to look into corruption in which both states played a role -- is that this is the third or fourth cause celebre Trump's opponents have tried to morph into an impeachable offense. The boy who cried wolf?
And the anti-Trumpers never think things through. Why would Trump want Biden out of the race? He's a doddering has been with major issues who would wilt in a debate with Trump and the contrast between his low key fumbling style and Trump's charisma (call it what it is) as well as policy positions would ensure Trump would Crush Biden.
2
I love the New York Times writing and it compassion but I blame it for demonizing Hillary and making Trump President of the Greatest Empire in World History!
3
If Americans need to march on Washington to get justice they will make the 3-4 million Women's March look like nothing.
3
Jake is not naive. He puts his nose in perilous places, but he knows and takes and accepts the bloody risks.
1
There are a number of ChinaTowns in America. Beautiful, Patriotic, and Honest Americans live, work and visit ChinaTowns.
ChinaTowns as a part of America with alien values (cheating, dishonesty, unpatriotic, etc) are old cliches, harking back to times when whites could shoot a man in Manhatten, and not be apprehended for the act. In New America, ChinaTowns are hallowed ground. Even the locals have to go out (to CityHall) to commit crimes.
Another analogy with Chinatown is Trump’s creepy relationship with his daughter.
7
Unlike Jack Nicholson too; the 45th Prez won't live a life of carefree charming naughtiness. No this real-life villain has two options left on t he chess board: death or jail. And his friend Jeffery Epstein had both in the same place. T's optimism of self-incrimination of openly offering and accepting foreign interference with AMERICAN elections smacks of a man who believes that the US Constitution allows him to "do anything he wants to." This petulant child never met a door he could not slam or a business he could not tank.
OK, if you're going to use Chinatown for your movie reference, I'm using Dr. Strangelove. While General Jack D Ripper is as mad as a March Hare, his conspiracy theory at least is logical and consistent, tying in the flouridation of water with the destruction of our "purity of essence." The conspiracies coming from the White House are neither.
I am waiting for the day when the President says, "You never see a Commie drink water. They drink only vodka." For heaven's sake, don't screen that movie for Trump!
There was one song once .
We grow up and the world get dirty.
Innocence lost.
America passed threshold to devolve the league anymore belongs. China, Brazil, India, Russia.
We are not any more developed, advanced democracy of western league.
We are dirty , nasty giants league.
These league is all about movie china town.
Trump did it.
"....we know now that the Russians have figured out how to rig our elections — and our dictator-loving president doesn’t seem too disturbed about that." No, Maureen, WE 'have figured out how to rig our elections — and our dictator-loving president doesn’t seem too disturbed about that.' I count some forty-five elections that the US has meddled-in over the course of my sixty years on this planet: Venezuela, Yeltsin...it goes on-and-on. But the REAL 'rigging of elections' comes from the corporate personhood of the Citizens United decision. All this red-baiting about Russia, Ukraine, China etc. means nothing in comparison to how we've rigged our own elections. When there's an amendment to repeal Citizens United, let me know. Otherwise, we've met the enemy Maureen, and it's US. The one-finger-three-fingers-back-at-ya pointing at others for our own, homegrown problems may be nice for national unity and all, but it's really just another form of denial when we should be looking in the mirror. Now THAT's a theme from "Chinatown" you might want to pick-up on.
3
Madam: If by the naivete you attribute to America regarding corruption, you mean that the great numbers of people involved in political economic life were oblivious to the unbridled corruption prevalent among plutocrats and the like, then, since such oblivion would be economically based, i.e. the people were too concerned with their daily tasks to really consider just how deeply flawed what they were doing was relative to the upper echelons, then one could certainly agree with what Donald Trump supposedly doesn't know, ..."that people who don't confront their own demons are destined to be confronted by them.". But Trump does know that, for he seeks to effect the onslaught of demons on to everyone but himself, thus acquiring, in the instance of this so-called presidency, the approbation of Heritage Foundation types who dictate the pattern of his decision making. Otherwise such a process yields all the gilt trappings, the ormolu facades and the most perverse type of interpretation of might makes right, that of the demagogue cum absolute ruler, which might be said to characterize his life in business. Cohen said he was..." a rascist, a con-man, and a cheat." Is there anything darker than that, save a mass murderer? It might be as well to view the film "Caligula" for a more apt characterization of the personality type which Trump represents. Everyone knows, of course, of the destiny of Caligula.
1
Another Jack Nicolson movie comes to mind when contemplating the sorry state of Trump in the White House and his hapless sycophants: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
It's not a stretch to say Trump might be one of the worst human beings on earth, and remarkably, he's POTUS. He inherited more than $400 million from his dad, and he's probably not worth that today, after decades of trying to pretend he's a real estate developer. He's been credibly accused by more than 20 women of sexual assault, which means he's probably assaulted more than 100 women. Trump, broken down to his foundation, is a fraud, plain and simple, and again, remarkably, he occupies the most powerful office in the world. It's an abomination.
6
Evil trickles down. In our desperate attempts to make sense of the nightmare, we choose to see this faustian behavior as a horrifying aberration. But, these weak, pathetic players see it all as not nearly so different from their business-as-usual. Rather than being a seismic shift, all that’s been required of them is a fatal tweak in their “normal” negotiation of the political/human landscape. They’ve been given permission to be who they always were. It’s raw, hateful and lacking in any subtlety or façade of decorum, and that’s Trump’s contribution to the inferno.
2
Perhaps as in the sequel “The Two Jakes”, the whole thing will blow up in the end.
I presume the column title is a reference to the Charlton Heston noir film which, naturally, occurs at the troubled Mexican border.
Pretty close to completely accurate, Maureen. And just think, you helped o up him where he is now. That is indeed a personal nightmare.
4
Donald Trump, Sr. is merely a symptom of the delusion that ails America. Trump is a carbuncle.
The rote mantra excercise in American intellectual mental masturbation about an imaginary ' our democracy' is the delusional root of the problem threatening the preservation, protection and defense of our Constitution.
America is a very peculiar kind of republic. A divided limited different power constitutional republic of united states where the people are the nominal ultimate sovereign over their elected and selected hired help.
The size of the House of Representatives is capped to the disadvantage of more populous states.
And a Senate where every state has two from a half million people in Wyoming to 39.5 million Californians stands against democracy.
An Electoral College President exposes the fact that votes cast in one state don't count nor matter in allocating meaningful Electoral College majority votes in any other state. There is no national popular vote in presidential elections.
Cabinet members and federal judges are nominated by the Electoral College President and confirmed without the advice and consent of the House of Representatives.
Donald Trump won 63 million American voters including 58% of the white voting majority made-up of 62% of white men and 54% of white women. Trump didn't run a covert stealthy subtle campaign. Every American knew who Donald Trump was and was not and voted accordingly.
Trump is us and our worst demons.
1
You and many other journalists and editorial writers at the Times found Donald Trump amusing and Hillary Clinton dangerous back in 2016. Your indifference to evidence of the man’s profound unsuitability then make your words ring hollow now. Russia interfered in the last election, without a doubt, but you and your bosses saw the profit in elevating Trump, denigrating Clinton, and enjoying the circus. Many of us once-loyal readers doubt we can ever fully trust the Times again.
6
@1 Woman —-
Well stated and true for this reader too.
1
Chinatown is a great metaphor for Trump's DC. So is the X-files movie wherein a cabal of rich, powerful white men protect themselves (they believe) as they sell out to the aliens who plan on enslaving humanity. Schiff and Pelosi are like Mulder and Scully, pursuing both the alien demons (Trump's infectious evil) and the smoking man (McConnell).
1
Noah Cross was a powerful, disgusting, corrupt old man who violated his daughter (think King Lear and Cordelia) ... a compelling example of the way that power corrupts. The difference between Cross and the President appears to be Cross' calmly rational pursuit of his evil goals. Our President is more inclined to rage and paranoia, and these in the long run bode ill for him and for the country.
1
The bad guys may think they have won but there is one more card to be played, violence. If the system brings no relief, if there is no law, it will lead to a Middle East style of life. Is that what you want Republican Senators? Rubio's comments yesterday were the words of a coward, what a weak, pitiful little thing he is.
3
I'm tired of the talk of impeachment. Someone needs to lead the charge declaring that the President is incapable of discharging the powers and duties of the office. Incapacitate him. The 25th Amendment is so much cleaner than impeachment. Trump isn't just a 'touch of evil.' He is a cancer that needs to be surgically removed.
5
Chinatown may be a perfect metaphor for our current misery. The fix is in and, in many way, those telling the story are just as if not more corrupt. Count me as one of many who refuse to line Polanski's pockets with even a penny until he returns to the US to face rape charges. So the corrupt telling the story of the corrupt has a nice symmetry. There's so much dirt here that we'll never wash it all away. One only hopes that the final chapter of the sordid story we are living in is a survivor of the right kind.
1
No, Ms. Dowd. Donald Trump is Max Cady, the blackest villain in film noir history (Cape Fear, 1962). Only Cady is smart and calculating, and none of either describes the president.
I don't see "Chinatown" as a metaphor for the grimness of the American experience. Noah Cross (John Huston) stepped on Jake Gittes like a roach. His daughter and his grand-daughter ("sister; daughter; sister; daughter"-- Evelyn Mulwray played by Faye Dunaway) ended up on the street in front of a bus. Only America is the savaged daughter and Trump is the bus.
Evil, but more than just a touch. Robert Mitchum was the American nightmare on the screen. We're now living it and the actor is a fool.
More than a touch of evil, a tsunami. Trump shook up Washington DC alright...he amped up corruption. Quid pro quo is the name of the game. Immorality abounds. Ethics are a joke. The lust for power and riches is front and center. He embraces the cruelest inhumanities toward those in dire need. The Swamp is now on Steriods and he is King.
When this is all said and done, we need to refine our laws to prevent another horror such as this Presidency...maybe lying to the press more than twice a day becomes a felony. And we all need to put country first, before power, money, adulation, fame, etc if we wish to represent others politically. oh yeah, they take an oath of office for that. Pffft.
Tried of the "talking points" of lies and misdirection to keep a base of voters drugged. We Americans are smarter than this and better than this.
"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine." I am ready for the finely ground results. Sooner rather than later. That is, if we are still a country of truth and justice!?!
1
Other commenters have noted Ms Dowd has no credibility on Trump per her endless sniping at HRC before the last election. And really, there is nothing here that was not evident three and even more years ago. Those who don't get it already either don't know or don't care.
Better to the spend the news pixels and print on positive stories about Warren et al. That would not make up for all the HRC bashing we heard in this column 3 years ago but it would be a start.
6
@True Believer —
But Ms. Dowd’s pen prefers bashing to praising!
1
Your best column in a long time: perceptive, pungent, simply brilliant! Would that people who need to read it actually read and appreciated The New York Times. If this is fake news...fudge away!
But it was fine for hypocritical socialists to do whatever they want and be employed by foreign gov'ts whether a conflict of interest. Corruption started long ago with the Clintons and their Foundation is closed. The NY TImes should do a story on a website I read about over 8 million in travel, etc. The biggest white collar crime of the century.
After the cruelty, corruption, criminality will come violence against Trump's opponents as his hate and rage grow. Just watch.
Unfortunately, Ms. Dowd does not mention the cynical manipulation by the media to boost Trump and denigrate Hillary Clinton, an effort in which Ms. Dowd participated enthusiastically.
3
In the meantime, Wisconsin ( isn’t this a swing state?), has lost 551 dairy farms in 2019 after losing 638 in 2018 and 465 in 2017, this according to data from the state Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection.
And while all the insanity surrounding the Ukraine stuff was happening the Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, was telling small farmers they won’t survive. And yet these farmers are still supporting Trump.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbc26.com/news/state/trump-farm-secretary-no-guarantee-small-farms-will-survive?_amp=true
3
Beyond “Chinatown,” Trump is a Lon Chaney, Bella Lugosi and Vincent Price film, all spliced together in a blood-curdling, hair-raising tale of crime, corruption, sadism, rape, pillage and plunder. Meanwhile his evil cohort sit in the back of the theatre, stuff their faces with champagne-infused popcorn and cackle like schoolgirls as Democracy burns to the ground. The most deeply troubling aspect is that this lurid horror film has no end in sight. And there is no intermission. Bleak, indeed.
Washington is now Chinatown onthe Potomac. Completely glib analogy. How does Gittes fit into this? Dowd says he’s like US electorate. Gittes has no clue until too late. The American People is completely oblivious when in fact Gittes is working detective pursuing the John Houston character who wants to defile his granddaughter. Dowd could havechosen any recent movie, the joker?, to parallel trump.
Trump is bad for the glass.
2
Mo correctly says:
"What makes the metaphor so powerful is its unAmericanness. In democracy, we supposedly have the power. But in Chinatown, there’s nothing you can do. Forget it, Jake. It’s an oligarchy."
But our real problem is that there are so many Americans now who provably do NOT find it 'essential to live in a democracy', per the 2016 NYTimes piece by Amanda Taub (be certain to scroll down to the graphs):
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/americas/western-liberal-democracy.html
as well as the disconcerting fact that this puts America on par with other Western Democracies.
Mo, in this light, what's more disturbing is that Steve Bannon and his ilk's dedication to leveraging the Fourth Turning is working out for them.
1
"Nothing good was going to happen..."
And where is Jimmy Stewart’s “Mr. Smith”?
The Joker as president; bring on the laughs, and the cries of the people for relief!
As Masha Gesson says, in the dark little feedback loop of the Trump brain, it all makes perfect sense. Of course he thinks everyone is out to get him--because he knows he doesn't belong in that office.
3
Side note, I fear all this corrupt behavior is becoming normalized. One random example, "the President merely suggested shooting them in the leg, so what?"
It's mortifying.
4
A disturbing, eloquent and learned commentary, this. Maureen Dowd, the playful cynic, exposes her frustrated idealism here as I've never heard her.
1
this is no movie. Trump is busy destroying our
government aided by gutless Republicans who
refuse to see how thing are
3
Eye of the beholder?
When I think about the Trump presidency as a movie, I think of "The Jerk." Except there is nothing funny about the Trump version.
This is an over wrought case of "can't prove Russian collusion with Trump" blues. Just repeat endlessly and somehow magically somebody might be able to show actual Russian interference. This is plainly one of Dowd's worst efforts. Her hero worship of the clueless Pelosi or demonizing Putin, she's there. The neo cons in the Obama national security apparatus fomented an illegal coup in Ukraine against an internationally recognized democratically elected gov't. The EU would not let the country into the club, its finances were so bad. Shock therapy by the IMF was their only choice. Sorry Ukraine. Their corruption is so systemic and deep. So the US decides to foment ethnic warfare in Ukraine. Crimea slips to the pesky Putin. Pelosi and Schumer claiming any contact with Putin was treasonous. Dowd's with Rachel Maddow and her endless pointless anti-Russia hysteria. Then there was the beast of the apocalypse Trump grinning from the White House. He's seeking dirt on Biden worldwide.
More than a touch. How evil do you have to be to separate babies from their parents, want to shoot asylum seekers in the legs, reduce funding for Food Stamps, deny health care to those who can't afford it, roll back 85 environmental safety regulations and sell our presidency to the highest bidder? Idi Amin used to feed his critics to crocodiles but at least he knew who they were. Trump wanted to feed asylum seekers he doesn't even know to crocodiles on our southern border and was so taken with the idea he even sent his aids to get cost estimates.
1
Sadly, Jake is now a Republican
Gotta hand it to you, Ms. Dowd:
This was brilliant.
The tragedy is that you had to write it.
The tragedy is: it’s all true.
Meanwhile, Republicans dutifully line up to piously bleat that, “Trump has the absolute right to investigate corruption.” This, for a man who now vomits forth more corruption, criminality, and madness in a week than Nixon did in total...
God help us!
1
Cannot forget of forgive how you savaged Hillary when the binary choice was so obvious
Insightful but not impressed
5
I must admit I often get lost in Ms. Dowd's literary explanations for political failings, but, this piece did motivate me to watch Chinatown again. And, yes, the film, which I did not appreciate at the time, but now do, pictures what we have become as a nation. I am not naive enough to believe that in my lifetime we have not experienced different levels of corruption fueled by dark money. But now, with Trump, I wake up everyday feeling like Jake Gittes---the absolute corruptness of a man and his administration sitting in the Oval Office and yet, we have a entire party, yes, and entire political party, telling us this is normal. I have neighbors who just shrug--you know, it's Trump just being Trump---Each day this cesspool of a Presidency gets deeper and deeper..and yet, nothing seems to matter.
2
Really? This is the best you can do? This reads as you dictated it to an aide while you had your Friday morning coffee. How about some solutions? Some paths forward?
Berating Trump is as about as hard as ... winning the presidency.
Americans in the modern world completely fail to comprehend TWO important points. The first is that America -- as organized under the Constitution -- IS NOT A DEMOCRACY. The second is that democracy, in its pure form, is nothing more than mob rule.
The founders understood this... They knew that because democracy is simply mob rule, it offered no protection for liberty and was always doomed to destroy itself. SO THEY CREATED A REPUBLIC -- a representative form of government wherein the people democratically choose fellow citizens to represent them in government.
Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2013/06/the_dangers_of_democracy.html#ixzz61W2mdVGO
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook
1
Trump over shadows any American excellence whilst exposing Americas wafer thin veneer of civilisation.
Amoral, lawlessTrumps unbridled USA is paranoid, threatening, racist, angry & violent. This USA has lost its way.
The world majority no longer respect or care about the USA, in fact, many alliances are questioning their relationship with America and so they should.
Everything Trump & this GOP touch turns to mud.
1
I'm with Trump to the end. The impeachment coup will fail. We Trump voters are ready to turnout en masse in 2020. It can't be stopped.
1
CJ
Will you take up arms against me, who is not a Trump supporter, if the 2020 election turns against him?
3
@CJ There are millions more of us then there are of you. We are going to beat you.
1
Can you help us understand why? What has he done FOR the average citizen? Don’t tell me why you hate the libs. Help me understand what he is doing for the country that is positive.
Don't actually disagree -- its always been this way, an oligarchy where the wealthy and well-connected live in a different world with very different rules. Growing up in Chicago under Richard Daly (and the finest police money could buy) there was always the impression of extensive corruption, just barely out of view. One was aware of the favoured contractors and the hints of mob involvement. But it was never flaunted and the public business proceeded. What is different now is that it is on full display and the good of the country, which very badly needs some constructive attention, is very much a distant topic for the grifters in Congress and government. If Trump and his supporters in Congress had actually done some of the positive things they promised (infrastructure, better healthcare, etc) we might not be here. But all they seem to do is break things and make the problems worse. And one wonders at the ultimate consequences of all these wilful excesses. Are these the last days of this new Rome? I wonder.
4
One thing I forgot to mention in my earlier comment was my sorrow over the four homeless men found bludgeoned to death in Chinatown, NYC on Saturday, with a fifth badly injured. Perhaps the perpetrator was homeless as well, the news story said.
Everyone deserves a decent place to live; even alcoholics, drug addicts and the mentally ill; people who just can’t help themselves. This problem can be mostly resolved through the end of governmental corruption and with policies like Bernie Sanders, regarding affordable housing.
4
This is precisely why he is president.
There are too many uncivilized people who want to live like Trump and get away with it.
There's a line from "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World." It is "Men must be governed."
If we can learn anything from Trump's sham presidency, it is that a stable, ethical, and functioning government is a good thing.
There are more civilized people who still believe this. Vote the bleakness out of our future.
6
Still waiting for the column where you admit that if you'd been a little less cynical and a little more practical, you might have avoided giving Trump a platform to legitimize his presidency. It's all very well and good to lament that we're in Chinatown now; if you had any integrity you'd be honest about how you drove the tour bus here, all because you could never get over your hatred of the Obamas for being classier, smarter, and, yes, more effective, than you could ever hope to be.
33
Did you vote?
Because it’s my belief that half the media-blamers didn’t, and are still looking for alibis.
Maureen not one of your best Im afraid. The Russians know how to rig a US election? WHEN ? Ill wait while you produce the evidence. The impeachment inquiry is a farce based on second hand evidence from an intelligence agency who wrote the book on subversive. Are you getting your talking points from Mr Schiff? Just say it- it doesnt matter if its true? The committee members are not under oath. Much like the inquisitors of old.
I see we are still pretending that illegals dont violate our immigration laws? My sensibilities are violated by the lawlessness of the left. So yea the week has passed and so far all the players are saying that there was no there there. Why is the house having all the events behind closed doors? Its seems that Trump is the only transparent one. Ill tell you why because behind closed doors they are saying it over and over again there was nothing to it. Another cartoon performance by the Dems who like Elmer Fudd are saying SHHH We are hunting Trump and Trump is the wascally wabbit that gets away
2
Ha! If the remarks weren’t so erroneous and dream-like, they’d be funny.
“...all the players are saying there’s no “there” there.” Seriously? Of course the guilty are saying this. Like the 10-year-old boy to his parents after stealing candy at the corner store.
The crazy thing is that Trump himself has admitted and doubled down on the violations. He’s so blatantly (and proudly, it appears) ignorant of the Constitution. Take a few minutes to check it out. It’s not that king of a read.
2
The only thing this article says about, “illegals,” is that Trump’s alligator-stuffed moat theory is demented, and sadistic.
This happens to be true. By the way, people who ask for asylum are not, “illegals,” under our laws and treaties.
Trump, malevolence personalized, thinks he is able to outsmart everbody...and get away with 'murder'. This, a byproduct of his deep ignorance, gave rise to a blind arrogance 'telling him' he knows 'more than the generals'. You have to give it to him though, his innate ability to lie and insult at will, unhinged by reality, morals, decency.
6
Many of the commenters here are pointing to the real culprit: those Americans who voted this disgusting human being into office. As best I can tell, these folks are wallowing in a stew of anarchy, hypocrisy, an assortment of unresolved grudges, with garnishes of racism, hate, and stupidity. I try to have compassion for others. But I find myself short on empathy and compassion for people who could rationalize away the evil of Trump.
35
@Dissatisfied You failed to mention those who didn't vote due to their anger over the Bernie vs Hillary vs Democratic Party leaders also helped the moronic fool into office.
If these same dissatisfied voters do the same next year then hang on for a wilder ride.
1
Spot on!
Sounds like we're hopefully trying while hopelessly doomed
Trump's a symptom, we're tribal animals in a dog eat dog world (baboons with bombs)
Given that, aren't we doing well? When was the last time you had to pick up a gun to defend yourself from an invading army, or felt compelled to crusade into another country? Isn't that OK?
Indeed, it is all just as you describe: grotesque and evil.
Even worse, this has all been brought to us in large (and probably electorally decisive) part by white evangelicals in what has to have been one of the largest acts of mass hypocrisy in human history.
Trump and his cronies are a symptom, a result, of something else: a deep moral cancer eating our nation from the inside.
May the true God (not the god of white evangelicals' making) help us.
9
@John
I think "Trump and the evangelicals" is the bit historians are really going to have trouble wrapping their minds around. I just draw a blank, trying to understand that level of hypocrisy and denial.
It was obvious that Trump was/is a monster and puzzling to an extreme that you were apparently amused by torturing Hillary Clinton so as to assure that her victory would be tainted. Maurine Dowd played a small role in electing Trump.
14
@M Caplow
Yes. And equally puzzling to me why so many Times readers seem to have forgotten this.
Maybe if we didn't have such short memories, if we held people accountable, if we believed people when they showed us who they are, and if we didn't forgive and forget people's egregious mistakes just because they keep us entertained, we wouldn't be in this mess.
4
@M Caplow
Yes. And equally puzzling to me why so many Times readers seem to have forgotten this.
Maybe if we didn't have such short memories, if we held people accountable, if we believed people when they showed us who they are, and if we didn't forgive and forget people's egregious mistakes just because they keep us entertained, we wouldn't be in this mess.
3
I keep imagining it’ll end more like The closing scenes in the movie Scarface.
2
Trump is the symbol of the cesspool that the GOP has become, but also a product of the inability of the Democratic party to come to grips with the realities of modern America.
Trump is a monstrous cancer, who contaminates and destroys everything and everyone he comes into contact with. But he did not do that to the GOP: the Republican party dishonored and shamed itself with endless lies, hypocrisy, pretensions of virtue and then more lies and hypocrisy ... peppered with a few wars over the years.
The amazing fact, though, is the Democrats' incapacity. Their unbelievable ability to nominate horrible candidates that either win one term (Carter) or are so inept of disliked that they can't win any (Gore, Kerry, Hillary). They have perfected the dubious art of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
4
That's pretty shrewd of him to use Madam President Pelosi as a shield in the senate just in case.
2
"This was the week that made it glaringly clear that the president put his fragile ego, idiotic conspiracy theories and political prospects ahead of American national security interests."
When will the whistleblower(s) step forward to make it glaringly clear that Trump is putting his economic prospects ahead of American national security interests, i.e., his proposed building projects in Russia?
5
Trump is and always has been a raging, whiny narcissist who cares only for himself. A sociopath with no patience or scruples. But to see how these republican "representatives" of the people out-Trump Trump is almost beyond belief. Has a shallower bunch ever existed?
11
Impeachment is a loser making Trump a winner.
Biden will go down. We will hear little from Democrats candidate. It will be all Trump all the time.
Politics is a dirty business. Always has been.
Chinatown is the reality in this world. It would be a good thing if more knew it.
What we have now is a cultural civil war.
Seeking a utopian dream is a fool's errand.
Having Trump to kick around is an amusing past time as we try to recover our the lost soul of America.
We will not find it in the White House or on Wall Street.
America needs to return to God.
Which god are we supposed to return to? The god of the hard-right evangelicals who put Trump in the White House? The god of the Catholics who is more worried about our sex lives than anything else? The god of main-line Protestants, who at least preach tolerance, but have trouble following it? The Muslim god? The Hindu gods? All of these are “American” gods, so which one/s do we turn to clean up the colossal mess we’ve made? Who gets to decide which one we all have to follow? Religion just serves as a barrier to keep us separated. I’d rather people kept their religious beliefs private and tried to treat their neighbors with respect and kindness.
4
Same as it ever was. At least Trump is unfiltered. Biden is a walking teleprompter.
3
We are not talking about a "touch" here.
2
MoDo and Pelosi have finally seen the impeachment light. Too little too late.
Bravo , Ms. Dowd. Unfortunately, Encore, Encore.
@unclejake
Why bravo to her when she's complicit? Have you completely forgotten how she threw Hilary under the bus? No more encores needed from Maureen Dowd.
I am so happy the NYT has the very creative, imaginative Maureen Dowd on its staff. Who else of your opinion writers thinks of comparing this fascinating, wonderful film, Chinatown, to Washington DC and all its corruption?
You are truly gifted, Maureen Dowd.
I do disagree with your politics most of the time, however. In this case, it’s the comment on Russian (government) interference in the 2016 election. There’s simply no proof of that, as the Mueller Report concluded. The only proven such playing around was that of the devious DNC and Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primary.
2
You think TRUMP started this? Are you kidding me? Members of Congress amass fortunes on $174,000/ year. The Clintons became multimillionaires when, supposedly, they were “flat broke.” Why were all these people giving money to the Clinton Foundation?
The Obamas have been cashing in ever since Barack was elected to the US Senate and Michelle got a $300,000/year doing nothing for a Chicago hospital. It was a position that didn’t exist before it was given to her and it wasn’t filled when she left.
Trump didn’t cause this; this is the reason Trump was elected. The American people have known that Washington DC is all about insider trading and influence-peddling. That’s why the chants of “drain the swamp” and “lock her up!”
were heard at all his rallies.
This article is ridiculous.
2
@Anne Beal all politicians and their kids do this. It is an unfortunate part of life. Trump, right now, i making money off his Presidency.
Kushner’s sister went to China offering green cards for investment. Kuwait just made a massive loan to Jared on his lame duck building in NYC.
1
@Anne Beal Do you mind telling us how Trump has actually reversed any of these corrupt tendencies of elected officials? Or are you just so happy to see liberals out of office that you haven't noticed how it's worse than ever?
Wow, get out of the echo chamber much, Dowd? I find Trump juvenile and obnoxious. But everything, and I mean everything, the left accuses him of doing, Obama and Hillary did in the last election cycle. They attempted to alter an election and they went to foreign governments to get the evidence to make their case. And there was even obstruction of justice (destroying email servers and phones) but somehow Hillary managed to skate with no serious judicial consequences. And for that matter, they had a fully sympathetic media with little or no outrage. But Trump does the exact same thing and all of the sudden it's the end of the democracy? I guess it's OK when your guys pervert the system and profit from it, but woe to anyone else who would dare try to bring a (former) corrupt government official to account.
The sad thing is that ABC News ran with Biden story last May but seemingly dropped it. No one else bothered to dig into it either. Maybe if the media would do its job, and go after both sides fairly, then Trump wouldn't have to do your job for you. Apparently, the NY Times is only worried about corruption on the right, not the left.
2
@KRM
Do please explain what you are referring to when you state that Clinton "went to foreign governments to get the evidence to make their case" about … what exactly? That's not clear either. What case did Clinton make that you're speaking of? What government did she go to? To get what evidence? How did her campaign then use this evidence to alter the election? (Presumably you get that there are lots of ways to "alter an election," like, you know, campaigning, and that's … legal.)
(Ignoring the bit about Obama since last I checked he didn't run for president in 2016.)
4
@KRM
What are you talking about?! Obama and Clinton did nothing that you rant about. Never contacted a foreign government for help with the election. And Obama didn’t run for office in 2016, please get your facts straight. Haven’t read even a summary of the Mueller report have you? The TRump campaign operatives had 100 direct contacts with Russia, 34 Americans and Russians were indicted. “The Report does not exonerate TRump, it excoriates him. It reveals a President who is dangerously incompetent, corrupt, impulsive and insecure.” Per the Houston Chronicle. Our election was attacked and TRump did nothing to defend us from that assault. Try and make a case that Obama and Clinton behaved the same way, but this time use something other than WH or Fox News talking points. Geezz.
“Chinatown”, with Jack Nicholson as Jake Gittes, as metaphor for the Trump era?
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", with Nicholson as convicted child rapist Randle McMurphy and all the self-committed inmates who are free to leave at any time but are afraid to do so, is more like it.
7
Maureen, Remember Hilary Clinton ? Just imagine how much worse things would be if she had become President. Do you remember what you had said about her ?
6
Ms Dowd do you and your colleagues at the Times ever think about your roles in getting us to this point in American history. Remember the EMAILS!!
6
He’s the President you helped elected
8
OK.
But think of it dear Times readers, he was elected by "us"; We the people.
We are the problem. That clown is the result.
4
It's "The Hunger Games" starring Nancy (Katniss) & Adam (Gale), both hailing from Trump's nemesis state, California.
The key concept in this piece however, is Trump's 'consequence-free life' spelled out so clearly.
The key conundrum is: Why is he still POTUS?
The key weapon: Trump's tax returns - his kryptonite (with apologies to a genuine Superman, he of 'truth, justice and the American way').
1
I wish that Maureen, at one point, would write a column acknowledging her responsibility in Trump's victory and Clinton's defeat owing to her vindictive, obsessive, hate-filled and vote-destroying columns about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign, all the while writing relatively benignly, indulgently and almost fondly about Donald Trump.
9
I would be very happy if Nancy Pelosi was president.
7
Trump is an over-the-hill professional wrestler with no script to go on.
1
'Chinatown' or 'Cuckoo's Nest'....
The Final Act has begun..... He's start-raving mad, no longer able to maintain the façade of strength and worth....
It won't, however, be 'death by police', it will be Death by the populous.... And relieved, he won't have to fake it anymore.
And the Trump Library will consist of books authored exclusively by Fox contributors, and displayed by a banquet room in Mar-A-Lago...
2
I let out an audible "yipes!" after reading Maureen's column. She articulated what has been gnawing at my gut all these months and getting worse. If the impeachment inquiry and all doesn't rid us of the abomination in the White House and his soulless enablers and cowards, then all is indeed lost. And we're left with the Harry Style's lyric. "Stop your crying, it's the sign of the times...."
Trump takes a shape under fire- belligerence is his spinach. Without his perpetual sense of being attacked (starting with Dad Fred, all of NYC and now rational citizens), he has no ideology, principles or vision. Self-promotion (born of his humiliation in military school exile) and the vague knowledge that he didn't read, study, synthesize complex issues or value anything beyond 'winning'-- per Roy Cohn's reptilian hiss--is his identity.
He actually believes that TRUMP in big gold letters is a bigger 'win' than knowledge or work.
His subjugation to Putin and Russia's national interest is the under belly of a bully--kowtowing to a real powerful thug. We may someday know what leverage made Trump our Manchurian President.
2
In sports, particularly in football there is an expression when a ball is dropped or fumbled, “he heard footsteps”. The best news this week is that Trump is “hearing footsteps” from Mitt Romney. That is easy to tell by the way Trump is lashing out at Mitt. Maur, could you please schedule a “ formal sit down” with Mitt and let us hear what he really thinks? Mitt has nothing to lose and you are among the most respected journalists out there with a long history in “the biz” ( no knock on age, we are the same age). But, please don’t Gail Collins him by bringing up his trip to Canada with the dog on the roof. This is time for serious journalism. We need you Woodward, Bernstein, and Gergen.
"Melanie has a son" reveals all you need to know about Trump.
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Nah....it describes the Clinton era perfectly and thank God we won't have a dirty Joe Biden regime of corruption. Maureen the sky is not falling, the country has never been in better shape and you have your President to thank for that!
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Projection much?
Barr and Durham are taking flak....which means they are right over the target: The origins of the phony Trump-Russia collusion hoax and coup attempt lie with the Democrat Party, Obama Deep State operatives and a compliant Democrat State Media.
The IG report on FISA abuse comes out soon. Invest in popcorn futures.
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After I have read some of the essays and comments of the last few days I think that if Trump is impeached and convicted Pence should double his SS protection and get a food taster.
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Maybe it is time to dust off the RICO statutes enacted with the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970.
In 1975 three (former) members of the Macon County, Georgia, Police Department were convicted under the statute. The specified criminal enterprise was that department.*
About 1985 the Key West, Florida, PD was also charged as a criminal enterprise.**
A single obstruction of justice satisfies the required criminal act under the statute.
Perhaps the Trump organization qualifies.
* http://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-brown-210
**http://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/01/us/key-west-police-department-called-a-criminal-enterprise.html
Attn: Republican Party
This is what you are each and every day:
AMORAL
lacking a moral sense; unconcerned with the rightness or wrongness of something.
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“…Trump doesn’t know that people who don’t confront their demons are destined to be confronted by them…
Were Trump to riff on Mattis:
“I don’t confront my own demons – I confront other people’s demons”
And – at this rate, it’s going to take him at least five terms to exorcise them all…
Thank goodness the man’s such a great patriot – and of such sound mind and body…
PS
In the spirit of the NYT’s more than 100 years of provisioning the finest word games anywhere:
Red rum and murder
If Trump present, they’re right in the middle of things
No matter which way you look at it
@W in the Middle
He has the BEST demons.
With reluctance, I must say that this is a brilliant column. I say reluctance, because Maureen, you are tainted yourself by your almost consistent bashing of the Clintons which helped bring us to this sordid and dangerous point in our history. You, however, are the first "pundit" to say what I have been thinking-that it is too late to save us from the corrupt oligarchy that we have become. Chinatown, indeed.
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"Everything to me is about corruption." - Donald J. Trump, on his way to the helicopter.
You said a mouthful there, Donnie.
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"...Forget it, Jake. It’s an oligarchy..."
How naïve it is on the part of Maureen Dowd and many other people supposedly well informed: America has been a corrupt and violent plutocracy for decades, and anyone willing to look at the mere political economic and social facts would have realized that long, long, long time ago.
Wake up from your long sleep and self-delusion, at long last!
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I love your opinions. You think well.
Yes Mo, it's bad, but remember: it was only 11 years ago that we elected our first black president, and 7 years ago re-elected him. Don't let your own dark side dominate. Keep hope alive, there are lots of good people out there. Bush was worse than Trump. His ignorance got us into 2 wars, hundreds of thousands of people died.
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And what does your brother think of all of this?
There is good news for all those gun-totin' Republicans in the audience -- their own elected officials have made it clear that Republicans don't have to obey the law. If there is a single Democrat in the Sheriff's or the court house, they can ignore summons and subpoenas, which are obviously just politically motivated. Laws are just for Democrats, who are too weak to break them for political advantage. The country's Attorney General isn't bound by silly little rules -- he's a Republican lackey and only serves the most corrupt person in the country. So what for his oath of office. The Senate Majority leader raises money from the criminality of the President. And it's perfectly fine to invite foreign countries to conduct corruption investigations of our own citizens or even to torture them to death, as they did Otto Warmbier. There will be no consequences for them, and in fact they may get that foreign aid they were promised. The Republican party has leprosy, or maybe it's syphilis -- imagine the worst rot that can afflict the human body and soul and then vote for it, if you're a Republican.
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Although her column is finely written and is great melodrama maybe Maureen Dowd has forgotten that all of her harsh words against Hillary Clinton helped to get Trump elected in the first place.
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It’s just breathtaking to me that Americans have succumbed to the insanity and darkness of Donald Trump and his band of sycophants.
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What Ms. Dowd left out is the key exchange in “Chinatown” that explains our nation in the 21st Century. A place where the dark money of multi-billionaires like the Koch Brothers control all.
Jake Gittes : Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?
Noah Cross : The future, Mr. Gittes! The future.
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@Greg cross's answer makes sense even if you don't like the particulars. Today we have a politics of the past - there is no future. And where there is no vision, the people will perish
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@Greg
The Republican Party: "The Supreme Court, America! The Supreme Court."
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@Greg
Consider the future if Donald Trump is re-elected in 2020. Or not. It might just ruin your day,
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My compliments on perhaps my all time favorite Dowd column. The "Chinatown" reference is the perfect allegory for the Trump episode.
As I think Michelle Goldberg said in "The Argument," never has one so wished we could be in the future looking back. So much do we want this to be over and know how it turns out. So much do we fear that goodness will not survive.
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I have to admit: Maureen Dowd lost me during the Obama years. So many columns hinged on a gender-based analysis of Obama's masculinity (or, in Dowd's eyes, insufficient masculinity). But I think we're seeing her now go a lot deeper: Gender-based analyses only gets us so far but a column like this one tells us so much more about responsibility, moral evil, what really is at stake in this chaotic time. It can seem like evil is winning these days. But Dowd's column calling that out confirms that goodness isn't going away.
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I am really enjoying Maureen Dowd take down Trump. I can't help but remember Dowds endlessly catty treatment of Hillary Clinton which helped bring Trump to power. Before continuing on with giving Trump his due, an apology is in order to Clinton.
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When the POTUS is an abject liar, that's on the ones who elected him and those who still listen. Blame the media FOX and CNN and MSNBC, etc. They are all attention seekers and the more gruesome the story, the more they like it.
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It’s been said over and over that Trump learned everything he knows from the Roy Cohn’s playbook.
There is only one thing that’s left for him to master: falling in disgrace, like his mentor in evil.
It’s coming very soon. Couldn’t be soon enough.
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Dowd and the entire Times are on the wrong side of truth and fairness. They've made up this insane Ukraine "scandal" and impeachment saga. They know Dems can't win in 2020 and they have to get Trump out. Well, Trump will win big in 2020 and then Dems will have to concoct 20 more such scandals.
@Shamu
And our mobster in chief is on the right side of truth and fairness?
I’m still mad at you Ms Dowd. But this is a terrific and terrifying column.
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Alligators roaming in Chinatown...
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The touch of Evil is Trump's enablers the entire GOP. He is a useful idiot for the party of plutocrats aka the GOP. He is huckster buffoon that your GOP created to continue their plutocracy. The mega donors that owns the GOP saw it in their evil wisdom to create a winning team who can enrage deplorable voters to win you the presidency. Winning was further assured by their ministry of misinformation, faux news and other right-winged operatives who continue to worship him while enraging their voters against whomever states the obvious that the "emperor has no clothes". They made a hate for profit industry to normalize his evil.
Trump is a nefarious psychopath whose buffoonery makes his supporters believe he is one of them, while Pence is a sleaze bag, who uses religiosity for the same purpose. Despite, their corruption, collusion, treason, etc., they have given the GOP a lot already, more tax cuts, more corporate welfare, more monopolies, more deregulation and more importantly a supreme court to protect their gains for decades so now is not time to complain.
Revealing the true soul of his GOP, his criminality will outrage the majority of us that for the first time since FDR, we have a chance to reverse their plutocracy. Elizabeth Warren will that person, and she will be your worst nightmare. Green new deal, Medicare for all, free college, more equity for the nation and if it comes at the expense of the party of plutocrats which will be well deserved.
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It wasn’t all that long ago when this columnist was engaging in ‘journalism noir’.
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Trump is the worst. The liar, bully, traitor, greedy, misogynistic, draft-dodging fake patriot, and now, fake Christian. But, he is very rich, thanks to his dad and our economic system.
We want to be rich, here. Personal wealth is top motivation. Yes? That certainly seems right. We of self-interest, capitalist ways; including all lawyers and lobbying and tax breaks. Trump pays no taxes, his lawyer says, 'Genius!', and we nod our heads.
The man that says he loves the military (for their votes) but actually lets others pay their wages and pensions and buy their weapons. Fake American.
We have the reckoning because of our lack of compassion towards others and respect for this planet. Trump will be gone soon enough; and then, back to the growing inequity, billionaires and struggling workers, climate implosion.
So, yes Trump, elected by the 'moral' right-wing, is the worst leader and man. And, who, pray tell, are we?
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Jake Gittes : How much are you worth?
Noah Cross : I have no idea. How much do you want?
Jake Gittes : I just wanna know what you're worth. More than 10 million?
Noah Cross : Oh my, yes!
Jake Gittes : Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?
Noah Cross : The future, Mr. Gittes! The future. Now, where's the girl? I want the only daughter I've got left. As you found out, Evelyn was lost to me a long time ago.
Jake Gittes : Who do you blame for that? Her?
Noah Cross : I don't blame myself. You see, Mr. Gittes, most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place, they're capable of ANYTHING.
(Noah Cross just wanted his next daughter under his control, so he could rape her too)
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Well, Dowd is always interesting. But the reality of our lives is that there exists no effective modern structure of governance. The Constitution and our democratic institutions are more 300 BC than 2019 AD. We senselessly rage on against the dystopian world the Constitution creates. America was founded as a corporate state by predatory European powers and created in the blood of a continent of systematically slaughtered native inhabitants. We fought back Hitler who was closer to us than historians care to admit. And as for Trump, what could anyone expect from an
antiquated, corrupted Constitution rotten to its core. Be assured, there's worse to come.
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@Dusty Chaps
Your overt negativity may cost you some 'recommends,' but I think you're correct: As a nation we've had blood on our collective hands for a long time and became 'great' on the backs of enslaved humans.
More practically, our Constitution is woefully out of date and the 'guardrails' we thought existed have very little substance. Many new amendments and major changes are needed - yet are impossible to imagine in the hyper-polarized political climate of today.
And yes, there likely is "worse to come." The only question is whether it will destroy the US as we knew it or not.
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There's a huge difference between Noah Cross in the movie 'Chinatown' and Donald Trump in the White House: Cross's machinations and evil deeds are well hidden, while so many of Trump's crimes and deviancies (his serial violations of the Emoluments Clause; his payoffs of the porn star and Playboy model he committed adultery with; the Trump University RICO fraud; his malignant demonization of working journalists; his endless Twitter slanders; his servile pandering to the Russian dictator; and now his traitorous, even extortionate attempts to get foreign governments to furnish dirt on Joe Biden) are right out in the open.
Trump's personal and corporate tax returns and the damning details they may contain of debts owed to and deals made with oligarchs may remain private - for now - his mendacity, venality and patterns of behaviour are all known.
And yet he continues to operate, protected by the power of the Constitution he violates with impunity, and by the endlessly accommodating (and endlessly compromised) Republican majority in the Senate. It's as if Noah Cross was an ex-radio star and got himself elected Mayor of Los Angeles in addition to being the amoral thief of the city's water supply.
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Roger Ailes and Fox News . . . the ultimate source of this river of evil.
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You think Trump is your only problem in Chinatown? He is just the face of it. Chinatown is loaded with Zuckerbergs, Bezos, Koch Brothers, McConnells, Rubios, the boys from Silicon Valley..............all the folks that have spent their lives taking control of everything and everyone.
You want to take back the power? Time for a personal inventory so that you can stop feeding the dragon. I'm not holding my breath.
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"You may think you know what you're dealing with, Mr. Gittes, but believe me, you don't...."
Noah Cross, CHINATOWN
4
How unconscious and deeply set is racism towards Asians, specifically Chinese?
Enough for a NYTimes columnist to blithely repeat the ugly racist trope of "Chinatown" as a safe space for the amoral, immoral, inscrutable and dangerous.
“The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price on life as does the Westerner,” Gen. Westmoreland said to explain his war of attrition strategy in Vietnam (essentially kill more of them than they do us). “Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient.”
Robert Town used Chinatown not as "...as a eulogy to great things that were lost...not conjuring a place on a map but a state of mind: the futility of good intentions...". He used Chinatown precisely as the LA Police did: an alien zone that was lawless, mysterious and not worth policing.
Chinatown is more than just Chinese as amoral monsters whites are justified fearing and hating. Chinatown means Chinese lives -- Asian lives -- don't matter. And worse: whites who go to Chinatown lose their moral compass and soon are capable of mindless atrocity. Chinese evil it seems is highly contagious.
The reality is that Chinatowns were ghettos that Chinese were forcibly confined to and strayed outside at great risk.
"Chinatown on the Potomac" perpetuates a vile stereotype of the ultimate racial other. Particularly as all the principal malefactors in Washington, DC are a whiter shade of pale.
___________
Posted at 4:23 pm (PDST) on October 5th.
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One of the most depressing opinion articles I have read in a while.
Trump is like a pied piper of rats and roaches, giving them permission to come out of the shadows. And coming out they are. These despicable people have been there all along, he is just giving them permission to come and reveal themselves.
Democracy is on the ropes.
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I don't know if he ever admitted it, but Huston held back a bit on his Noah Cross; all the more scary creepy was the man, right down to his sexual misconduct and abuse. It's clear from Huston's first frame in the film that here is one man you don't want to take lightly.
Our Noah Cross is monstrously worse because Trump is utterly lacking in Cross's intelligence, self awareness, self conficence, and farsightedness. Where Cross slices silently with a scalpel, Trump throws bricks through the front widow. Our country's front window. Four years later, Jake went to war and I don't know if he made it home.
2
Great article Maureen. McConnell is Noah Cross. Trump? He's Claude Mulvihill.
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#45's minions steady diet of FoxNews, Breitbart, InfoWars, etc, ... have proved the opposite of James Madison's credo, "education is the true foundation of civil liberty."
Some of the blame can be traced to Ronald Reagan's double fault: rescinding the fair and balanced communications for media and helping FoxNews and Rupert Murdoch became America's disinformation source.
6
All of this was obvious about Trump in 2016 when Maureen Dowd was alternately trashing Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and saying little about just what disturbed and dangerous President that Trump would be because they had snubbed her.
I'm not saying she got him elected, just she did her part and has always refused to take any responsibility or apologize for her part.
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