Anonymous Masks Identity to Distract From Op-Ed's Emptiness
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
10 September 18
This was a very strongly, clearly written piece by someone who was staking
out what we felt was a very principled position that deserved an airing.
- New York Times Op-Ed editor James Dao, September 5, 2018
Well, no, that wasn't what the Anonymous Op-Ed was, although it makes sense
in our dishonest world for the Times to sell it that way. The Anonymous
Op-Ed was a cleverly constructed Rorschach blot that invited the reader to
see any number of positions, principled and unprincipled, but offered none
itself. The Anonymous Op-Ed offered little if anything that hasn't gotten
plenty of airing. The Anonymous Op-Ed reads as if it were written by
committee or as if it were designed as a squirrelly hoax. The Anonymous
Op-Ed touches on plenty of serious issues without actually getting serious
about any of them. Let's go to the text.
President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a
modern American leader.
That would be a good hook if it were true. A criminal indictment of the
president would be unprecedented, but Anonymous doesn't predict that.
Republican loss of control of both houses of Congress might produce
unprecedented results, but Anonymous doesn't predict that, either. The
unprecedented test facing the president "is that many of the senior
officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to
frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations." This isn't
unprecedented at all; President Nixon faced much more serious internal
opposition in 1974. Depending on the specifics of Trump's agenda and
inclinations, Anonymous might be describing good staff work. Anonymous does
not provide specifics. Having over-promised the importance of the message,
Anonymous then gives the game away:
We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies
have already made America safer and more prosperous.
Anonymous seems to think the Trump administration is somehow separate from
President Trump, a neat bit of doublethink for people who want to pick and
choose where their loyalties lie, as Anonymous immediately tried to explain:
But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president
continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our
republic.
Illustrated with particular issues, this could be a potent argument.
Anonymous offers no particulars of bad policies thwarted or good policies
preserved. Anonymous merely engages in the popular evasion of an ad hominem
anti-Trump rant, here centered on "the president's amorality," undefined and
unargued. In place of actual argument, Anonymous slips in a familiar lie:
Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity
for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free
people.
Is there anyone who doesn't realize that most Republicans aren't anything
like honest conservatives? And those supposed "ideals long espoused by
conservatives" can't stand up under close scrutiny:
."Free minds" is the opposite of what Republican lock-step ideologues
display in running the country, for example refusing even to allow hearings
on a legitimate Supreme Court nominee. Free minds are anathema to the
right-wing think tanks that have so successfully narrowed and conformed
public debate over the past forty years.
."Free markets" don't exist, can't exist, and are wholly unacceptable to
successful capitalists, but we're supposed to believe in them anyway?
."Free people" as a Republican or conservative ideal is just a sick joke.
Ask the free people of Afghanistan or Iraq or Latin America or any other
country where the US has waged freedom. Ask the people of the US who have
been gerrymandered, denied voting rights, crushed by predatory banks and
fake universities, jailed for behavior that elites indulge with impunity,
turned into profit centers by corrupt private prisons, abused for the race,
ethnicity, and other circumstances of their birth. Yes, ask those free
people.
Anonymous offers no evidence of caring for any of this, or for any other
articulated humane concerns. The only values Anonymous actually affirms,
albeit sketchily, are implied values at best:
Don't get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative
coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation,
historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.
."Effective deregulation" is meaninglessly neutral, but in this
administration it includes killing people with coal waste, subjecting public
land to extraction destruction, arming school teachers, protecting payday
loan sharks, and so on. No wonder Anonymous gives no specifics.
."Historic tax reform" presumably refers to the tax bill that makes the rich
richer, but also hemorrhages the national debt, providing a future, fatuous
argument for gutting Social Security and other programs for those free
people who need to be free of support. Sweet.
."More robust military" is just scary, given the performance of recent
decades, the horrendous cost, the unaudited waste, or the lack of any
rational justification by any conceivable cost/benefit analysis. And
military expansion isn't a Trump achievement, it's a bi-partisan corruption
that cannot be discussed rationally in public.
."And more.." Anonymous doesn't say.
In the midst of a long passage of more ad hominem Trump-trashing, Anonymous
makes a startling claim about the executive branch of the US government, if
one is to take the claim literally:
From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior
officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in
chief's comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations
from his whims.
If Anonymous is to be taken at face value, that means there are eight of 15
cabinet members ("most") working to limit the president's authority, not to
mention literally hundreds if not thousands of other sub-cabinet officials
all doing the same, although not presumably in the same way or for the same
reasons. One might or might not hope any of this was true, but Anonymous is
a relentless self-promoter and not to be believed without independent
verification.
Anonymous offers a long, largely empty aside about foreign policy that omits
Iran, Syria, Myanmar, the Philippines, or any of the other places where
Anonymous and his allies have managed to persuade their president to do
anything that improves the prospects for peace. Instead, Anonymous puts
heavy emphasis on "hold[ing] Moscow accountable," using kneejerk Cold War
rhetoric to denigrate one of the few decent ideas the president has
expressed, reducing US-Russian tensions. This would be complicated by the
as-yet-unresolved role Russia played in the US 2016 election, but Anonymous
ignores that altogether. It's still all about Trump's behavior couched in
non-specific ad hominem terms:
Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the
cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process
for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a
constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration
in the right direction until - one way or another - it's over.
What does "early whispers within the cabinet" actually mean? Anonymous and
others were considering removing the president in early 2017? Anonymous
doesn't say, of course, but offers instead the craven rationalization that
"no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis." That is so bogus. In
the first place, the 25th Amendment is designed to resolve a constitutional
crisis created by a dysfunctional president. More to the point, given the
uncertain legitimacy of Trump's election and his willingness to violate the
Constitution for self-gain (emoluments clause), the US has been in a
constitutional crisis at least since Inauguration Day. Anonymous is a
shape-shifting self-server who pretends to be on the side of the angels
("the right direction").
Anonymous offers few clues as to what that "right direction" is, and those
Anonymous gives (above) are neither reassuring nor democratically
determined. Anonymous seems to acknowledge that with the mysterious
phrasing: "in the right direction until - one way or another - it's over."
Anonymous is anticipating an ending, maybe predicting one, maybe promoting
one. Anonymous remains a slippery, unreliable witness. Anonymous wallows in
imprecise distractions:
The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but
rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low
with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.
Wait, what? Trump is all OUR fault, even though a majority of voters opposed
him? Anonymous is pushing liberal guilt on us, with no basis in fact, and
for no stated reason. Anonymous is also lying. Political discourse has been
uncivil for decades. Gingrich Republicans pioneered the new incivility that
culminated in impeachment for a blow job, a constitutional process in which
one of the players made his bones to earn a seat on the Supreme Court.
Incivility for Bush and Cheney was rife, only partly because they lied us
into war. And the Republican racist boycott of Obama initiatives (with Trump
playing birther tunes in the background) only formalized the incivility of
today. And incivility isn't the issue, it's a ruse to allow people to avoid
facts, truth, evidence, reality, integrity. Anonymous has none of these, as
illustrated by his fawning appeals to "our shared values" (unnamed) and
"choosing to put the country first" (as if that was one clear thing we all
agree on).
Anonymous is, if not a hypocrite, clearly someone who refuses to speak the
truth in plain language. Anonymous does not take a clear stand and try to
defend it. But Anonymous appears to have a real, hidden agenda. What is that
agenda, and who benefits from it?
The message Anonymous seems most intent on conveying is: don't worry, folks,
the country is in good hands, we're principled people, we weren't elected to
anything, but we have your best interests in mind, stay calm and trust us.
Sounds like Republican Plan B to me. Maybe it works like this: the fall
elections go badly enough for Republicans that they feel the need to do
something to stabilize the country and maintain power, a neat trick if they
can pull it off. Maybe they can do that by sacrificing Trump, one way or
another, as anonymous says. The Anonymous Op-Ed lays the groundwork for
that, for replacing Trump with Vice President Mike Pence. Anonymous has
assured us that the secret government of which he's a part is made up of all
honorable men (and women), they just want to save the republic, everything
will be fine if we're just civil about it. Well, we'll see about that, one
way or another.
And thanks to the Times for airing that "very principled position."
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William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio, TV,
print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the Vermont
judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of America, Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination
from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission
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