Dahlia Lithwick: John Bolton's Original Sin

[babylonsister]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/john-bolton-original-sin.html


John Bolton’s Original Sin
It’s not about what’s in his book; it’s about how he’s always framed his decision to do nothing.
By Dahlia Lithwick
June 25, 20206:01 PM


John Bolton’s decision to take the money and run has all but drowned out the important revelations in his new book, The Room Where It Happened, which was published this week despite the Trump administration’s best efforts to block it. To be sure, Bolton has garnered very few fans with his decision to cash in as he bails out, and—as I argued last autumn, when we first learned of the book deal— democracy simply cannot survive a bunch of egomaniacs running around building their tawdry brands in lieu of doing their duty. If COVID has taught us anything, it’s that commerce can’t fix it.

But while I join the many vociferous critics of Bolton who deplore his decision to make a quick buck off his proximity to power, I think that in the fog of capitalism we may also have failed to name his original sin: Bolton first gave up on America, and he then also gave up on himself. The subheading on his book might just as easily have been “Important Enough to Make a Profit but Not Important Enough to Make a Difference.” That really isn’t the moral lesson the nation needs to hear.

snip//

David French wrote this week about why the Bolton book won’t make any difference. It’s because the people closest to Trump “understand and discern precisely the chaos that Bolton describes. To stop the worst mistakes … one must be ‘in the room where it happens,’ to quote Bolton, quoting the musical Hamilton. But to stay in the room, one must engage in the flattery and the loud public defenses Trump requires.” In other words, people enter Trump’s orbit knowing his limitations and deficiencies. They say nothing while in service to him, they flatter and pander to him, then they all leave and suggest they were powerless to stop him. They want credit (and royalties) for having had the best of intentions, while perpetuating the myth that nobody bears any responsibility for enabling Trumpism because it’s unstoppable.

That’s the nihilism that seeps into public conversations about resisting Trump: Don’t bother impeaching him if it won’t end in removal, don’t bother speaking out against him if it won’t change anything, don’t bother testifying because it won’t matter. It is the language of abuse, every time. But it is not the language of democracy. The message, all told, is that since doing anything is futile, the heroes of the day are those who at least make money off of the doing nothing. And that is the central tragedy of Donald Trump’s time in office. The maddening thing about Bolton’s book is his definition of the “axis of adults” who ostensibly populate this mythical room where it happened. It now seems that they are sufficiently adult to profit off that service but not grown up enough to safeguard a desperately faltering democracy.

[abqtommy]

1. We could say that Bolton and his ilk are Truly Deplorable. That is, if Hillary hadn't

already said it.

[Skittles]

2. the man was part of BUSH INC who LIED THEIR WAY INTO A WAR

he is EVIL TRASH