Dreyfus’s Ghost

Yesterday I watched something on TV that is destined to go down in history as one of the darkest moments of American political theater since the McCarthy hearings.

One of the most astounding aspects of the Trump era — one that I’ve written about at length — is the headspinning sight of the Republican Party abandoning many of its core attributes (I won’t call them principles), from its longstanding suspicion of Russia, to its hyperventilating hysteria over deficits, to its commitment to NATO and a hawkish foreign policy. And all this it has done in cowering submission to a sociopathic two-bit con man, in pursuit of raw power unfettered by any concern for the Constitution, the rule of law, or representative democracy.

Grand Old Party indeed.

But perhaps most appalling in that fire sale of all things the GOP used to hold dear has been the vicious Republican slander of members of the US military…..a class of people that the right wing has deified, and to whom it has demanded lavish tribute from all others, including the opposition party.

That phenomenon reached a new low yesterday with the vicious attacks on Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman.

There’s no need for me to detail the range of attacks, but to skim them briefly: Vindman is unreliable, his judgment is in question, what he says is “just his opinion,” he’s a…