“Look at that Iranian girl over there. Very hot. What do you think?”
The war on Iran, aside from questions about its international legality and its wisdom, is yet another distraction from Trump’s many devastating problems and disabilities. Most prominent among those disabilities is his long-term close engagement with a convicted pedophile, a history now being illegally covered-up. (Not to mention Trump’s own conviction for sexual abuse, though I guess I just did.)
To try to avoid the distraction from this significant matter concerning the character of our president, let us not call this the Iran War or the War on Iran. Let’s call it the Epstein War. And let’s hope Epstein’s BFF ends it soon.
America and the world are paying a high price for attempted distraction from three outsized issues: the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Israeli decimation of Gaza, and the relationship of Trump to sexual predators Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
It may be hard to tell whether Venezuela, Greenland, Iran, Minneapolis, etc. are primary evils, with distraction just a bonus, or whether those unprecedented global and national disasters are intended to distract attention.
In some ways it doesn’t matter. Venezuela, Greenland, Iran, Minneapolis, etc. are just going to be made worse and will not go away.
We need to make sure that we do not forget Ukraine, Gaza and Epstein-Trump, which should not and with our attention will not go away.
Many people have things to hide. Many of those people hide them with lies, distractions, obscurities, payoffs, threats or punishments.
Even some, maybe many, of his supporters suspect that Trump has things to hide, though those supporters may think he, good man that he is, is hiding them for good reasons.
Trump has managed to hide things or explain away whatever was seen as inconsequential or often as fake.
He knows, and those who know him know, that the door marked “E” is turning out to be a challenge. Which explains how much effort has gone into to keeping it closed and blocking the view.
In criminal law, when a defendant or witness invokes the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, the instruction to the jury is that it may not infer guilt from that silence.
In life outside the courtroom, when someone tries to block the view of what actually happened, we do infer something from it. There is some possibility, we reasonably think, that blocking the view means that someone is hiding something.
The door marked “E” is opening a crack. We may see more if the congressional demand for complete FBI files is complied with, but there are many possible and likely obstacles to that.
Trump has managed to keep all other doors into his life closed so far, and has been very successful at it. If and when we get this door opened and see it all, we may be both astonished and unsurprised.
Bob Schwartz 