"Mueller and the resistance" Letter to the editor Tom Denton

Mueller and the Resistance

Meg McArdle of the Washington Post, like other conservative columnists, condemns a “cosmopolitan class,” bent on reversing the 2016 election results, that now stands humbled for pinning its hopes on the Mueller report. ( https://wapo.st/2JYxkb8https://wapo.st/2JYxkb8)  To that group she connects the “#resistance” that “made things worse.”  Note: I identify with the “resistance,” and I didn’t hold my breath Waiting for Mueller, glued to every media report.  I would have celebrated a report with clear, prosecutable evidence, but didn’t organize my actions anticipating it.    Let's not forget the purpose of the investigation--exploring Russian interference in our election--or the voluminous evidence that did emerge, unchallenged, from Mueller's search:  evidence of the Trump team's shockingly unethical behaviors; many guilty pleas to crimes committed by Trump associates; streams of examples of Trump's lies, self-dealing, and violations of norms that have held our political establishment together for centuries.

Further release of the report's details will offer new revelations that will diminish Trump's current bravado.  Nevertheless, I accept the report's general conclusions . . . and will continue to do what I've been doing for the past two years.  In 2017 we elected local county legislators.  In 2018 we worked for a year to elect a congressional representative in a swing district, state legislators whose victories led to a Democratic takeover of Albany, and a county sheriff who ousted an incumbent.  This year we plan to put in office a county executive, more Democratic legislators, more town officials.  And of course, in all of this we are preparing for 2020.  We are doing the work.  We haven't relied on a great Mueller gift.  This resistance is doing the hard work.  We haven't been "contravening civic norms,” as McArdle claims; we've been using them.

McArdle draws a misleading caricature of the opposition to Trump, one that is more accurately pointed at her own political class of pundits and that doesn’t describe those of us working at the ground level.

Publishing history:

Daily Freeman                      3/28/19

New Paltz Times                   4/4/19