Bully’s logic
by digby
This piece by Amy Davidson in the New Yorker about the role Jeff Sessions is playing is a must-read. I continue to believe that he is one of the most dangerous people we’ve ever entrusted with police power in this country and I’m terrified of what he’s going to be able to do to a whole lot of people. He has zero respect for the rule of law.
I also thought this observation about the Comey firing was especially sharp:
It may seem to some Clinton supporters as though the President has reason to be grateful to Comey for having announced, a week and a half before the election, that the e-mail investigation was being revived. In the alternative world of Fox News and Trump tweets, however, the narrative has remained that Clinton should have been prosecuted. For those who believe that Hillary got off easy, the big news coming out of Comey’s congressional appearance last week was his comment about Huma Abedin forwarding some of Clinton’s e-mails to Anthony Weiner. (As it turns out, Comey vastly overstated the number of such e-mails, and the F.B.I. corrected his testimony.)
But Administration officials apparently thought that, since everyone seemed to have a reason to be angry with Comey, they could do what they wanted with him—even though he was the F.B.I. director and was investigating people connected to the White House, and even though there is such a thing as obstruction of justice. By all accounts, the White House was generally surprised by the outraged reaction—which came not only from Democrats.
Those expectations were based on a bully’s logic: if you beat up on the unpopular kid, no one will call you on it, no matter the right or wrong of the matter. And this is a bully’s Administration. With Trump, and with the Cabinet members like Sessions who help him along, one can focus on the absurd and miss the vicious.
I think that’s right. They are vicious and sometimes it’s easy to forget that with all the stupidity.
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