Shameless

I didn't expect much from the Mueller hearing, so I'm not surprised to read that it failed to live up to expectations.  What did surprise me is just how shameless Republicans are in defending their Commander-in-Chief.  They wasted no opportunity to besmirch Mueller's reputation, question his judgement, and point out what they regarded to be the many failings of his investigation.  To be fair, Democrats likewise used their allotted time to chasten the President rather than ask Mr. Mueller specific questions.

It didn't matter that he netted several persons within Trump's inner campaign circle, and showed that Russia actively interfered in the 2016 elections, which he had been charged by the DOJ to determine.  In their minds, Trump remains cleared of all charges, even when Mueller specifically said he didn't have the power to indict him.  Instead, he laid out ten incidents where the president could be seen as obstructing justice.

I will never understand why so many Republicans go out of their way to defend Trump, who has trampled over them on numerous occasions.  The way he treated Lindsay Graham during the campaign, with Lindsay bitterly responding to Candidate Trump comes to mind.  In December 2015, Graham called Trump "a race-baiting, xenophobic bigot," but 1318 days later Graham ardently defended Trump's race-baiting, xenophobic speech at a North Carolina rally, in which the president viciously accused Ilhan Omar of sympathizing with terrorists and committing incest.  It doesn't get any uglier than that.

Lindsay Antebellum is not alone.  We have seen other so-called moderate Republicans defer to Trump, like Susan Collins, who defended the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh in the face of compelling evidence of sexual assault in the Supreme Court justice nominee's past.  Even if she didn't think there was enough proof to confirm the allegations, the way he conducted himself at the hearing should have given her pause.

However, no one represents this moral and ethical decay worse than Mike Pence, a Democrat turned Republican, former US Representative and Indiana governor, who now has his head so far up Trump's ass that he could only bear to grimace after witnessing the appalling conditions at one of his president's detention camps.  Back in the 90s, he had a radio show, where he was constantly calling Bill Clinton's character into question, but has no problem serving a president who has multiple sexual assault allegations leveled against him, and constantly demeans women on public record.  A self-professed born-again Christian, Pence is like so many conservative Evangelicals who have learned to look the other way when it comes to Trump.

The only Republicans who question Trump are those no longer in power like John Kasich, the former governor of Ohio, and William Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts.  Trump has successfully shut down any dissent within the active rank of Republican leaders throughout the country.  He's done so by securing the base of the party so that any Republican seeking public office has to subscribe to his cynical vision or face being "primaried" in his or her election bid. Even Lisa Murkowski, the GOP Senator from Alaska, is afraid to speak too harshly against Trump, despite having survived a primary challenge back in the wild Tea Party days of Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin. This is a very sad indication of how deep the Republican Party has sunk in its depravity.

It once was said that Republicans were smarter than Democrats, driven by pragmatism rather than ideology.  That is not the case today.  Fewer Republicans have a college education, and many never graduated from high school.  No matter, universities today are viewed as elitist institutions promoting political correctness.  Instead, we hear college-educated Mike Rowe promoting vocational training with college-educated Tucker Carlson, as if this is the answer to all our problems.

Not surprisingly, many Republican governors have advocated massive reductions in education funding, and our President supports a huge cut in federal education spending, sponsored by his Education czar Betsy DeVos.  It seems Republicans are purposefully dumbing down the electorate, hoping to get more converts.

Science has been widely discredited by religious conservatives who don't believe in evolution, global warming, vaccines or that we live on an orb, much less sent a man to the moon.  Youtube is largely blamed for spreading these conspiracy theories with all the spiffy videos calling basic science and medicine into question.  These dangerous theories are peddled all over social media to the point we have had the worst outbreaks of measles in decades thanks to the widely-held belief that MMR vaccines cause autism.  It was only after these outbreaks that Trump broke from his previously held belief that vaccines are bad to urge Americans to "get their shots.

The worst part is the utterly shameless way in which this information is transmitted.  There is little or no attempt to tell the truth.  It is all about convincing an audience with your power of conviction, much like tele-evangelists of the past.  Now, these charlatans have the added benefit of literally putting words into other person's mouths with voice apps , as well as altering photographs and forging documents in photoshop to make their case on Youtube.

It's not like Republicans have to go out of their way to deter young people from going to college.  Tuition rates and boarding costs have skyrocketed to the point many families simply can't afford to put their children through college without assuming crippling loans. The average student loan debt today is a whopping $30,000.  Factor in interest and students will probably not be paying down their loans for decades.  Vocational school aren't much cheaper, so kids would have to take out loans to become plumbers, welders and electricians as well.

This dumbing down of America has reached alarming proportions.  Persons are much more vulnerable to conspiracy theories, as they are more likely to turn to pundits offering shameless manufactured opinions than they are seeking out information on their own.  Fox News and local news syndicates have been the prime benefactors of this intellectual laziness, as more and more people turn to these so-called news networks because its pundits aren't afraid to speak their minds no matter how profoundly ignorant they are.

Chris Wallace, who is considered one of the sharper pencils in the Fox News box, glibbly dismissed Robert Mueller's testimony before it even really began in an interview with Stephen Colbert.  I suppose he had to make it up to Trump after giving his chief bully boy, Stephen Miller, a hard time a few days before.

Few people actually listened to Mueller's testimony.  Instead, they turned to their favorite news and comedy network programs to hear distillations of the proceedings.  Trump also offered his own color commentary to his devoted fan base, repeating many of the same Fox talking points, including Chris Wallace's demeaning account.

We no longer seem willing or capable of forming opinions on our own.  We prefer easily digestible opinions that can be further distilled into memes and spread across social media, dismissing fact checks as biased.  No wonder Robert Mueller looked completely exasperated.