Not So Peachy Keen

My head has been spinning over the past couple of weeks. Ever since Nancy Pelosi finally pulled the trigger and decided to pursue impeachment proceedings, it has been as if the floodgates were opened. New revelations of additional examples of the Trump administration's systematic abuse of power and obstruction of justice have been almost nonstop.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, ever obedient to his master, blithely trashed and trampled on the institutional integrity of the diplomatic corps (again) to repurpose U.S. foreign policy to pursue not U.S. national interests but conduct oppo research for the president's 2020 election campaign.

Simultaneously, Tutti frutti Rudy Giuliani plunged, snake-like, into the bottomless muck of Ukraine's oligarch-controlled political netherworld to snake out some filth on Joe Biden, Trump's potential Democratic opponent in 2020, and Hunter Biden, who engaged in a little slimery of his own a few years back, serving on the board of directors of a shady, oligarch-controlled natural gas company.

Not content to live in the wreckage of his past, President Trump commissioned Attorney General William Barr to jettison whatever professional reputation he might have had left to jet around Europe in hopes of discrediting the Mueller Report. Rather than leave this task to the former federal prosecutor whom he had assigned, Barr insisted on taking the lead himself.

Meanwhile, other whistle blowers have begun to come out of the woodwork to corroborate the initial one's 7-page report to the National Intelligence Council's inspector general. That means that the White House will have to ramp up and extend its deny-deflect-trash-and-smear efforts, all the while bulldozing over the rubble of America's norms of governance.

It's all almost like some sort of twisted child's story and, more specifically, like the nightmare beginning of one of my favorite's: Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach. I'll give Speaker Pelosi credit, she's one tough customer, and she'll have to be. You never know what kind of slithery vermin is likely to crawl out of that gargantuan fetid piece of fruit. Although, you don't want to judge an insect by its slimy cover: the many-legged denizens, as in the original story, seem to only want to help Pelosi in her quest to get to the bottom of things and reestablish the rule of law.