Robert Mueller wonāt be filing any more indictments related to the āRussiagateā investigation.
Though the search unearthed ample evidence that Russia wanted Trump to become president ā and hints that some members of Trump World were perhaps aware of this ā the recent summary declared no concrete findings that the two camps knowingly ācolluded.ā
The president, naturally, is declaring victory. And his anti-Mueller attorney general is preemptively clearing the president of related obstruction charges, it seems.
Of course, this wonāt end the presidentās legal troubles. Lawsuits have piled up related to emoluments and sexual harassment. And legal and congressional inquiries into his taxes, business dealings, and possible campaign finance violations are, in various stages, underway.
What it should end, however, is the incredibly naive belief that someone was going to wave a magic wand and make all this āTrump stuffā go away.
This was a hope that āthe systemā itself was fundamentally sound and would correct itself, expelling all this unpleasantness like a bad burrito. Trump himself cast the investigation as an effort to de-legitimize his electoral college victory, and this wasnāt entirely incorrect.
The thing is, evidence of much more serious ācollusionā ā with corporations and the wealthy ā has always been hiding in plain sight. Though these unique excesses of the Trump era have gotten some coverage, they were never treated as the threat to his legitimacy that Russia was.
I mean, consider the facts.
Backed by health insurance corporations, Trump and the GOP have spent years trying to repeal, negate, or undermine the law thatās provided health care to between 20 and 30 million Americans. (They failed in Congress, but theyāre still trying in court.)
Backed by billionaires, they passed an almost incomprehensibly large tax cut for the rich thatās sent the deficit soaring to record heights ā and immediately proposed huge cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security to cover the difference.
Egged on by military contractors, theyāve put forth military budgets that award more money to a single corporation ā Lockheed Martin ā than the federal government spends on K-12 education. (And much of it is for a single plane that doesnāt work.)
In lockstep with fossil fuel companies, theyāve put coal lobbyists in charge of the EPA, oil men in charge of the State Department, and at every juncture tried to hound climate science out of government.
Finally, arm in arm with the private prison industry, theyāve loosened federal restraints on private detention facilities and packed them with record numbers of immigrants with no criminal records ā even children and babies. (Indeed, this abuse of immigrants is the lone promise Trumpās kept to his working white voters.)
Iām hardly alone in thinking all these crimes far more atrocious than any exchange of nods with shadowy Russians or their online troll farms. But while some leading Democrats and media stories centered Mueller as a central figure of the āthe resistance,ā real people were organizing to fight the administration on all these fronts.
Groups like the Poor Peopleās Campaign are organizing to repeal the entire billionaire tax cut package. Democratic socialists have made universal health care a mainstream expectation. The Sunrise Movement and others have turned the Green New Deal into an almost household name.
Meanwhile, immigrant rights movements have even gotten elected officials to tweet #AbolishICE, and made congressional Democrats hold the line on the wall. And more bold ideas are coming around cutting the enormous Pentagon budget to fund social priorities.
The necessity of these movements suggests that āthe systemā is, in fact, not so sound. But thanks to these efforts, the body politic may soon be.
Iāll be fine if I never see another headline about Robert Mueller again. Letās see more about the folks doing the real work of āresistance.ā
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