On Tuesday evening, it was announced that White House aide Stephen Miller had become yet another administration* employee to test positive in the COVID-19 hot spot. I guess karma was all out of bubonic plague.

I decline, in this case, to be kind. My reasons can be found in the latest revelations in The New York Times regarding the legion of monsters, led philosophically and every other way, by Stephen Miller, that set American immigration policy rolling down the road toward sadism and outright depravity.

(Any doubt that Rosenstein was a pure careerist who would've sold the Constitution for a window seat on Air Force One is laid to rest forever with his involvement in this sadistic exercise.)

And, to paraphrase Mark Felt in the parking garage, this was a Miller operation.

Pitching a fit because your government is not ripping children from their parents fast enough or thoroughly enough. Just as the Founders intended.

I also was struck by the strange synchronicity in the news on Tuesday. Just as we were learning what monsters there are in our government today, our attention also was drawn to the fact that former CIA director Michael Hayden had cut an ad for some anti-Trump Republican political shop announcing his support for Joe Biden and darkly warning that re-electing this president* might mean the end of America as we know it. Hayden, of course, is something of an expert at what happens to a democratic republic when monsters are allowed to set national policy. After all, during the last failed Republican presidency, Michael Hayden was one of them.

Tom WilliamsGetty Images

Cruelty comes in many forms. Where this presidency* has family separation, the Avignon Presidency of George W. Bush had torture. Where this administration* trashed this country's image as a refuge for those fleeing poverty and political oppression, that administration undermined this country's image as a defender of due process and the rule of law. Where this administration* has Stephen Miller, that administration had John Yoo. Where this administration* had Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein, that administration had the likes of Michael Hayden.

We were torturing people before Hayden took over at the CIAHis direct contribution to that administration's lawlessness was setting up the illegal warrantless surveillance while he was running the National Security Agencybut the torture program had no more enthusiastic ex post facto defender than he was. The now-semi-famous Senate report on the torture program mentions Hayden 200 times; there even is a special appendix detailing Hayden's fast-and-loose relationship with the truth regarding the program. On the Senate floor, Senator Dianne Feinstein blistered the CIA for torturing people and read Hayden out for barbering his testimony on the topic.

(Another prominent former CIA director who is now a prominent voice against this administration*, John Brennan, who's currently pushing a memoir all over television, was involved during the Obama Administration in the latter stages of the brutal bureaucratic and political war over the Senate torture report that included surveillance of the Senate staffers who were working on the report.)

I am happy that Michael Hayden, who suffers from aphasia as a result of a stroke, could muster the strength to cut the ad that he did. There has been no more compelling political imperative in my lifetime than ending this carnival of fools. I am more than willing to accept John Brennan's help, too. But, as Milan Kundera wrote, the struggle of man against power is the power of memory against forgetting. It's important never to forget that, if you get this country frightened enough or angry enough, it is more than happy to invite monsters to sit in the councils of government, and then to forget that it ever happened. A country that would torture would rip children from their mother's arms. Put not your trust in princes, the psalmist warns us, for all their plans come to nothing.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

See the original post:

Stephen Miller Leads the Legion of Monsters - Esquire