It can’t be anything like a surprise that Neo-Conservative Mr. Ferguson attacks, again, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and The Green New Deal (GND) in his regular Sunday Times column:

Last week I began to understand how the Democrats will lose the 2020 presidential election. The reality is that they are not one party, but two: a liberal and a socialist. The former can beat Trump — but not if it is associated with the latter. Socialism is a term for so long regarded as anathema in the US that it used to be avoided altogether: instead of “socialism”, one said either “progressive” or “the s-word”.

These days, however, the s-word is no longer taboo. The Democrats, in their eagerness to recruit a new generation of young voters, have admitted a faction of radical ideologues into their midst.

Exhibit A is the Green New Deal unveiled on Thursday by the Bronx’s very own La Pasionaria, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and the rather less glamorous 72-year-old Massachusetts senator Ed Markey.

Mr. Ferguson backtracks just a bit, in the interest of maintaining something resembling bourgeois political respectability, perhaps his comments on Keynes were a valuable object lesson to him, on the Environmental Question?

Now don’t get me wrong: I’m not in denial about climate change. Yes, the evidence is pretty compelling that manmade emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases are causing average temperatures to rise and the weather to become more volatile.

Mr. Ferguson fails to see the relevance another key part of this GND:

But I am not quite sure how this is “related” to the “large racial wealth divide” and “gender earnings gap” referred to in the Green New Deal on page 3 or the “systemic racial, regional, social, environmental and economic injustices” on page 4.

The Green New Deal asserts that climate change has “disproportionately affected indigenous peoples, communities of colour, migrant communities, deindustrialised communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities and youth”.

The Ferguson myopia is based not in the facts of contemporary life for the 99%, who do not share the ratified air of a Think Tank, where 1929 went to live. The collapse of the Neo-Liberal Swindle, and the destruction of the institutions of the Welfare State through Austerity, and the fact that the poorer and the darker you are has relevance to your exposure to the pollution, and garbage of our collective Consumer Society.

But never at a loss for a self-serving pseudo-argument, that is argument’s  place-holder:

However, this drearily familiar list of the victims of patriarchy and white supremacy bears only a tangential relationship to the real Americans who were killed or lost their homes in last year’s Californian wildfires.

Mr. Ferguson is an unapologetic Imperialist, and try as he might that Imperialism cannot be separated  from White Supremacy! The British Empire was based on ‘White Man’s Burden’ : to civilize the heathens!  The victims of California wildfires, mere self-serving divertissement, to put it in highfalutin terms.

More of Ferguson’s project of self-rescue  awaits the patient reader:

The measures proposed in the Green New Deal to “achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions” are breathtaking. More nuclear power stations? Er, no. Comrades, we’re talking about a “10-year national mobilisation” on the scale of the Great Patriotic War . . . sorry, I meant the Second World War. By the end of the Green Leap Forward, 100% of US power demand will be met from “clean, renewable and zero-emission energy sources”, which means geothermal, hydro, solar and wind. Nukes are out, according to the FAQ sheet on the “10-Year Plan” released by AOC’s office.

The Green New Deal, as conceptualized by Ferguson, is Stalinist! But Mr. Ferguson polemic seems never ending, as he seeks to include all that he deems relevant to the current political moment, and GND as an utterly alien idea. Ferguson cannot be unaware of FDR’s New Deal, his polemic demands that that history and the evolution of that New Deal, over time, retains its status as alien that demonstrate the imperative of the Propagandist.

Old Socialist

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/the-s-word-will-scupper-democrats-2020-hopes-wfhfv7kh3

Headline:Washington’s consensus is dangerously interventionist

Sub-headline: The US does not have the resources to direct the destinies of faraway nations

American Foreign Policy Arrogance and Interventionism began with the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, proclaiming that the whole of the Western Hemisphere, was its ‘Sphere of Influence’: a term now discarded by the Think Tank Foreign Policy Pseudo- Scientists or better yet Metaphysicians.

The American National Security State swallowed whole the Republic, with the dropping of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As the American Empire, and its Marshal Plan and NATO, made Europe and its economic/political rehabilitation the cornerstone of its Cold War, against one time ally The Soviet Union and its Monster-In-Chief Stalin.

Kudos to Mr. Ganesh for the mention of Eisenhower’s 1961 speech, but the nagging question remains, why would any reader, especially an American older than sixty, accept the political observations of a greenhorn like Mr. Ganesh? When their historical memory is a more reliable source of that pertinent history. And the politics of the present, refracted through these insights, that combination of history and memory offers an internal ‘compass’ more reliable that the comments of a journeyman.

Political Observer

https://www.ft.com/content/2f399b8c-2938-11e9-88a4-c32129756dd8

The ‘Rule of Law’ used to be the calling card of Richard Nixon and his henchmen, that led to Kent State and other crimes!
Here is some relevant context for your ‘schadenfreud’ :

Headline: Red and Yellow Vests in joint strike, but can they become joint force?

Headline: Macron fights yellow vest protests with ‘anti-wreckers’ law

Sub-headline: Opponents of planned curbs say they threaten civil liberties

M. 37%’s attempt to bring Social Peace to France has now led him to fully express the totalitarianism of his Jupertarian Politics!

What Financial Times reader can forget this from January 23, 2019?

Headline: France’s richest gain most from Emmanuel Macron’s tax reforms

Sub-headline: Figures reinforce perception that French president favours the well-off and fuel calls for wealth tax

https://www.ft.com/content/728cc752-1e7e-11e9-b126-46fc3ad87c65

Or this from January 22,2019:

Headline: Paris vows to extend labour reforms despite gilets jaunes

Sub-headline: Macron aides say protests have spurred government to redouble liberalisation efforts

…

According to Ms Pénicaud, between 300,000 and 400,000 jobs in France cannot be filled because of a lack of qualified applicants — 80,000 of them in the information technology sector.

“Our challenge is upskilling the nation,” she said, adding that entrepreneurs and employers appreciated last year’s reforms to simplify the labour code but that half of companies complained of recruitment problems. “They say: ‘We are no longer scared of hiring but we can’t find the skills’,” she added.

In Mr Macron’s overall programme, Ms Pénicaud said, “in order to reform France to give it a future, to give it economic and social momentum, one of the big priorities is the step-by-step transformation of the labour market”.

…

https://www.ft.com/content/3e2bce58-1e57-11e9-b126-46fc3ad87c65

Macron, in his desperation to save his Neo-Liberalization Project, with the help of The  Financial Times acting as his propaganda callabos, in opposition to the “casseurs” (wreckers): as the representatives of a French People too used to being ‘coddled’ by the Welfare State, are in need of the corrective of the unpleasant but necessary imposition of ‘Market Discipline’!

Christophe Castaner, interior minister, has led a crackdown on the so-called “casseurs” (wreckers) after groups of mostly young men who joined gilets jaunes demonstrations in Paris and other cities attacked government buildings, looted shops and set fire to vehicles.

The security forces in turn have been condemned by French liberals and the left, and by many of the gilets jaunes, for excessive use of force against demonstrators. They have fired more than 9,000 rounds of rubber bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters. Several demonstrators have lost an eye or suffered head and jaw injuries that they blame on the missiles.

https://www.ft.com/content/be8557c0-2895-11e9-88a4-c32129756dd8

Old Socialist

Headline:Trump’s shutdown forfeit exposes weakness of populism

Sub-headline: If their livelihoods are compromised, expect voters to look for an escape

Its always a challenge to read Mr. Ganesh’s cultivated myopia about American politics. Or should I call it Political Calvinism, awash in tepid moralizing, aided by a well deserved scolding to the American electorate?

It has been crucial to the recent success of populism that not much has been asked of people. If their livelihoods are compromised, expect a decisive number of voters to look for an escape, and to scan the terrain for politicians to punish. They might settle on the wrong ones. Liberals are always susceptible, and Mr Trump might have been able to blame them had he not taken such early possession of the shutdown. But whoever they thump, the public’s reaction to a month’s worth of hassle was not to grin, bear it and dig for victory.

The idea that life is more than convenience and gross domestic product is still populism’s emotional edge over arid technocracy. But the point is to keep it as an idea. Test the reality, and populists might find their cherished masses are a terrible disappointment to them.

Mr. Trump is former Game Show host whose shtick has no staying power, its all bluff and bluster and malign twitter tantrums. Trump has McConnell, the vulgar Dixiecrat, to lead the Republican Party.  That has purged the Eisenhower wing of the Party, that went straight into the awaiting arms of Obama. Mr. Ganesh ignores the  ‘Populists’ , just the New-New Dealers,  like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar , Rashida Tlaib and their ability to upset the remains of the Neo-Liberal Swindle, meaning the utterly corrupt Clinton Coterie led by Nancy Pelosi.

Ocasio-Cortez has shown the power of just one voice, in sum, her comments on the 70% Marginal Tax Rate! Attacked by all the voices of bourgeouise political respectable Economic Thinkers and their journalistic fellow travelers – the Marginal Tax Rate during the post-war boom of the Eisenhower years, were from 95%  to 91 %. I think that this one issue can offer the possibility of that ‘test of reality’ that Mr. Ganesh finds wanting in the Populist’s con game, and the political hoard that elected them: its all about moral failure writ as politics.

American Writer

https://www.ft.com/content/659464f2-23d2-11e9-8ce6-5db4543da632

Mr Ferguson has the annoying habit of inventing neologisms, like the utterly forgotten  ‘Chimerica’ and now ’emocracy’ as serviceable description of reality, that is more about reinforcing ideology,than the purported ‘reality’ he attempts to describe. This ’emocracy’ is the invention that serves the ideological ends of attacking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and some rhetorical hangers-on. What passes for cleverness, in the mind of Posh Boy Mr. Ferguson, looks comically maladroit to this reader, or more pointedly just dull-witted.

There was a time when appeals to emotion over facts were regarded as the preserve of the populist right. But truthiness — the quality of being ideologically convenient, though not actually true — is now bipartisan. Last week on the CBS show 60 Minutes, host Anderson Cooper confronted the 29-year-old congresswoman and social media sensation Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with some of her many factual errors. Her reply was that of a true emocrat: “I think,” she replied, “there’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually and semantically correct than about being morally right.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/feeling-beats-truth-in-our-indignant-emocracy-fn2d6rhpg

Mr. Ferguson as is usual, for a Neo-Conservative, obsessed with degeneration and decay. Has he found the perfect Apostate in Ocasio-Cortez ? Except that the appeal to ‘morality’ in no way fits his dubious frame of ’emocracy’ defined as the rule of politically inspired/exploited emotions! Call the propaganda offensive on Rep.Ocasio-Cortez failed in the terms, the parameters Ferguson sets for himself.

A good illustration of what Ocasio-Cortez means by morally right was her claim, in an interview on Monday, that “the world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change”. Another was her assertion that “a vast majority of the country doesn’t make a living wage”.

She may be young, female, Hispanic, good-looking and left wing — in every way the anti-Trump — but Alexandria Occasionally-Correct shares with the president a genius for the crucial tool of emocratic politics: social media, where moral truthiness always travels faster than the boring old dry-as-dust vérité.

Mr. Ferguson moves on to more pertinent territory, and muddies the waters to prove his dubious theorizing about ’emocracy’ with his comments on the MAGA Boys and a Gillette commercial, to round out his rant on Leftist Rep. Ocasio-Cortez.

Here is Mr. Ferguson sounding the notes once reserved for that hysterical Prophet of Doom Alan Bloom:

Emocracy manifests itself in many places: on campuses, for example, where trigger warnings and safe spaces exist to protect students’ feelings, and in the #MeToo movement, where “I believe her” often trumps due process. But it is the media, both social and traditional, that have made emocracy ubiquitous.

Call this what it is the hysterical gasps of the Patriarchy and its Politics, facing the fact that their power to bully,shame, and defame its opposition is a project that in the wake of the 2008 Depression, and its most proximate cause, a collapsed Free Market Swindle, has produced a Left-Wing Populism: a revival of the spirit of The New Deal, that has mass political appeal.  Call Mr. Ferguson’s polemic by its name, an incitement to moral panic!

Old Socialist

The world of the Foreign Policy Technocrat is more like the Vatican, than the Think Tank or the Academy where these failed  ‘experts’ proliferate . Mr. Fitzsimmon’s latest pronouncement in the ‘American Interest’ demonstrates that the employees and academic hangers -on, that people the American National Security State, are always looking to publicly shame/expel the Apostates, in the midst of their self-declared virtue.

Mr. Fitzsimmons platitudes about ‘Liberalism’ as the bringer/deliver  of  ‘Free Markets’ , ‘Wealth Creation’ and ‘Human Rights’ are continually cited as proof of the free-floating virtues of that ‘Liberalism’. Mr. Fitzsimmon’s offers no empirical proof of these asserted virtues. Yet he asks of Mearsheimer for what he can’t supply! But the reader can supply the proof that the ‘Free Market’ collapsed in 2008 and the Self-Correcting Market has yet to manifest itself!  Look, now, to the American intervention into the internal politics of Venezuela, that makes a mockery of Mr. Fitzsimmon’s political moralizing about Human Rights and its concomitant of self -determination !

This reader welcomes what Mr. Fitzsimmon’s derides Mearsheimer for: ‘It is a tool of polemics, not analysis’  The insular , self-congratulatory, not to speak of the morally, ethically vacuous world, of the Foreign Policy Technocrat is in desperate need of more scathing critique! Some selective quotation from Mr. Fitzsimmons polemic masquerading as political rationalism.

…
Oppenheimer definition of liberal hegemony—which could serve for all of the authors—is “an ambitious strategy in which a state aims to turn as many countries as possible into liberal democracies like itself while also promoting an open international economy and building international institutions.” While these tendencies have existed throughout modern U.S. history, it was the end of the Cold War and the “unipolar moment” that the authors believe freed American leaders to pursue liberal hegemony in earnest.

In practice, Walt explains, this pursuit “involved (1) preserving U.S. primacy, especially in the military sphere; (2) expanding the U.S. sphere of influence; and (3) promoting liberal norms of democracy and human rights.” This is an accurate enough description of U.S. foreign policy, but do these features add up to “liberal hegemony”?
…

Mearsheimer seems particularly emotional about Washington’s role in precipitating Russian aggression in Ukraine, which he believes “anyone with a rudimentary understanding of geopolitics should have seen . . . coming.” He might consider that anyone with a rudimentary understanding of actual foreign policy decision-making would appreciate that most choices involve balancing risks with imperfect options. When things go badly, this is not dispositive evidence of cluelessness, or even of surprise.

He continues with the rather extraordinary assertion that, “Western elites were surprised by events in Ukraine because most of them have a flawed understanding of international politics. They believe that realism and geopolitics have little relevance in the 21st century and that a ‘Europe whole and free’ can be constructed entirely on the basis of liberal principles.” Needless to say, no “Western elites”—much less “most of them”—are quoted expressing any such foolishness.

This kind of argumentation is known as the fallacy of the straw man. It is a tool of polemics, not analysis. Walt’s and Mearsheimer’s readers should be on guard accordingly.

https://www.the-american-interest.com/2019/01/23/liberal-hegemony-is-a-straw-man/

I recommend Perry Anderson’s ‘American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers’ as a more valuable exploration of the topic, than Mr. Fitzsimmons’ weak journalist polemic.

Political Observer

Headline: France’s richest gain most from Emmanuel Macron’s tax reforms

Sub-headline: Figures reinforce perception that French president favours the well-off and fuel calls for wealth tax

https://www.ft.com/content/728cc752-1e7e-11e9-b126-46fc3ad87c65

Macron is  ether a clueless Technocrat fired by a ‘Reforming Zeal’, the master of the political deadpan, or just another political opportunist: the choices ramify as the considerations present themselves.

But for The Financial Times to unmask their Golden Boy, M. 37%, and his Neo-Liberal Project as ‘Liberalization’ is an act of  self-serving opportunism?

Headline: Paris vows to extend labour reforms despite gilets jaunes

Sub-headline: Macron aides say protests have spurred government to redouble liberalisation efforts

…

According to Ms Pénicaud, between 300,000 and 400,000 jobs in France cannot be filled because of a lack of qualified applicants — 80,000 of them in the information technology sector.

“Our challenge is upskilling the nation,” she said, adding that entrepreneurs and employers appreciated last year’s reforms to simplify the labour code but that half of companies complained of recruitment problems. “They say: ‘We are no longer scared of hiring but we can’t find the skills’,” she added.

In Mr Macron’s overall programme, Ms Pénicaud said, “in order to reform France to give it a future, to give it economic and social momentum, one of the big priorities is the step-by-step transformation of the labour market”.

…

https://www.ft.com/content/3e2bce58-1e57-11e9-b126-46fc3ad87c65

Capitalism, in its Neo-Liberal iteration, has not ,nor will it ever, emaciate itself from the mirage of never ending Growth Model,  and recognize that the Development Model is the only viable solution to the present economic conundrum!

Neo-Liberal apologists needn’t fear as Macron’s  labour minister, technocrat Muriel Pénicaud, not ‘Paris’ declares  to redouble liberalisation efforts . In sum, there will be no social peace, in France, for the foreseeable future!

Some of the political questions are these: Will the French public tire of the gilets jaunes, and their activism in it many forms/iterations?  Will an exasperated  French public tire of Macron’s Neo-Liberal Project?

Which leads to other conjectures: Will Macron’s toxic aspiration to lead the EU ( The fulfillment of his Jupertarian Politics?) as replacement for Merkel, lead him to make more disastrous miscalculations, like not even considering the possibility of the political rise of the gilets jaunes?

Political Cynic

Approaching Mr. David  Runciman’s essay published by The Times Literary Supplement on January 11, 2019, I have some thoughts, aided by other writes, who offer valuable insights into Popper’s thought/writings in general and specific ways.

Headline: Closed Minds

Sub-headline: The rise of conspiracy thinking

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/conspiracy-theories/

Mr. Runciman ‘reviews’ Michael Ignatieff and Stefan Roch, editors Rethinking Open  Society:New adversaries and new opportunities. Michael Ignatieff and Stefan Roch, editors What he focuses upon is Popper’s comments on the ‘conspiracy theory of society’:

The Austrian philosopher Karl Popper introduced a host of terms and phrases into academic discourse over his lifetime. They include “the open society”, “piecemeal social engineering” and “falsifiability”. But only one phrase coined by Popper has entered everyday language, though Popper himself is rarely (if ever) identified with it. In the second edition of The Open Society and its Enemies, published in 1952 (the original appeared in 1945), Popper included a new section where he discussed the anti-scientific view that a social phenomenon could be explained by “discovering the men or groups who are interested in the occurrence of this phenomenon (sometimes it is a hidden interest which has first to be revealed) and who have planned and conspired to bring it about”. Popper’s name for this way of thinking is “the conspiracy theory of society”.

Mr. Runciman takes the capacious notion of that ‘conspiracy theory of society’ and applies it to political manifestations of the political present. Yet what does Popper’s idea/construct have to do with the present manifestation of ‘conspiracy thinking’ in the contemporary world? Is this a mere shift of focus? or a misapplication of a societal critique, to very specific political phenomenon have legitimacy! In the political world of a collapsed Neo-Liberalism ‘Populism’ has become a threat to those who consider themselves ‘Liberals’. That Populism being founded upon ‘conspiracy’.

We now live in an age when the idea of the “conspiracy theorist” has become ubiquitous. It is how many of the politicians who are identified in this volume as the new enemies of the open society are routinely described. Donald Trump is sometimes called “the Conspiracy Theorist-in-Chief”. Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, the Law and Justice Party in Poland, the League in Italy: all these leaders and movements seek to explain phenomena they dislike as the result of secret plots against them. The plotters vary from case to case, though the cast list is depressingly familiar: it’s the EU, or the banks, or the Russians, or the deep state, or, inevitably, the Jews. Jan-Werner Müller, in his essay in this collection, calls conspiracy theory part of “the logic of populism”. If populist politicians represent the overwhelming majority of solid citizens (“the people”), and yet those politicians are not getting their way, it must be because hidden forces have secretly blocked them.

The reader need only look at Mr.  Ignatieff, acolyte of  Isaiah Berlin and Responsibility to Protect (R2P) architect, and his Neo-Conservative allies, and those pretending to the status of ‘Liberal’ ,as evidence of  their status as the agents of political rationalism, or more aptly labeled fellow travelers : Anne Applebaum, Niall Ferguson , Timothy Garton Ash, Michael Ignatieff , Robert D. Kaplan, Mark Lilla , Jan-Werner Müller , Sir Roger Scruton among others.

https://www.ceu.edu/rethinking-open-society/book

For indispensable insights into Popper see Katrina Forrester’s review of ‘After ‘The Open Society’: Selected Social and Political Writings’ by Karl Popper, edited by Jeremy Shearmur and Piers Norris Turner.

In After ‘The Open Society’, Jeremy Shearmur and Piers Norris Turner have collected a range of his published and unpublished essays, letters and lectures that tell the story of this transformation. To the picture Popper presented of himself in his autobiography Unended Quest (1976), this volume adds a map of his intellectual development during his later years. He was sympathetic to Marxism at the beginning of his political life, but ended up a reactionary neoliberal. He was not alone: as he slid to the right, so did the liberal consensus. The essays here tell both stories. Popper begins the volume as the kind of liberal who cares about equality and ‘the social question’. By the end, he is a free marketeer, angry with the spoilt, irresponsible younger generation, with their complaints about capitalism, their drugs and their alcohol – by all accounts, a grumpy old man. This is a far cry from Marxism, but a far cry too from the man who in The Open Society aimed at uniting the dispersed left – liberals and socialists – under the banner of ‘humanitarianism’.

In the long march from socialism to neoliberalism, it is hardly a surprise to find that Popper was at his most interesting when he tried to combine the two. In the 1940s, he attempted to develop a political theory that would provide a practical basis for agreement among the anti-communist left. ‘Nothing is so important at the present time,’ he wrote in 1944, ‘as an attempt to get over the fateful dissention within the camp of the friends of the “open society”.’ He rejected the traditional, essentialist question of political philosophy – ‘What is the state, what is its true nature, its real meaning?’ – and asked instead: ‘What do we demand of the state? How do we want the state to be ruled?’ His answer formed part of what has been called his ‘negative utilitarianism’. Politics, he argued, should work towards the minimisation of human suffering, not the maximisation of human happiness. For Popper, this was a point on which the left could agree.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n08/katrina-forrester/tocqueville-anticipated-me

Here Prof. Forrester offers a definition of  the ‘conspiracy theory of society’ that is at odds with the definition presented by Prof. Runciman:

He objected to what he called the ‘conspiracy theory of society’ – namely, the idea that the capitalist system is evil or morally base.

I’m posting three screen captures from Charles Pigden’s Popper Revisited or What is Wrong with Conspiracy Theories? from 1995:

https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/popper-revisited-or-what-is-wrong-with-conspiracy-theories-xG1LOZeInk

The second page of Prof. Pigden’s essay, as I have posted it,seems to  confirms Mr. Runciman’s claims, yet further reading seems to confirm the opposite. Prof. Pigden simply examines the claims of Popper, in the mode of an honest critic. Would that the reader of Mr. Runciman’s essay could say the same of its author.

Political Observer

@onomasticator

It is a moral challenge riding herd on all the apostates on this comments section! I being one of those ‘undesirables’ . Your polemic is impressive, in its way, yet your faith in the morally upright Mr. Mueller reminds me of David Bromwich’ s essay at The London Review of Books:

Comey’s memoir has now surpassed the combined sales of Michael Wolff’s portrait of the Trump White House, Fire and Fury, and Hillary Clintons’s election elegy What Happened. The book, written in an idiom identical to the one he uses in interviews and press briefings, is clearly the work of an un-ghosted author, and it contains passages most unusual for an official memoir:

There is a place I have visited on the coast of North Carolina where two barrier islands come close together. In the narrow passageway between them, the waters of the Atlantic Ocean meet the waters of the huge and shallow sound that lies behind the islands. There is turbulence in that place and waves appear to break even though no land is visible. I imagine that the leaders of the Department of Justice stand at that spot, between the turbulent waters of the political world and the placid waters of the apolitical sound. Their job is to respond to the political imperatives of the president and the voters who elected him, while also protecting the apolitical work of the thousands of agents, prosecutors, and staff who make up the bulk of the institution. So long as the leaders understand the turbulence, they can find their footing. If they stumble, the ocean water overruns the sound and the department has become just another political organ. Its independent role in American life has been lost and the guardians of justice have drowned.

This depth of formal piety cannot be faked; the passage shows the burden (as Comey sees it) of maintaining constitutional and legal restraints on Donald Trump.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/2018/08/09/david-bromwich/american-breakdown

I’ve placed  in bold what I think is relevant to your faith in Mueller, as mirrored in Bromwich’s faith in Comey. The mendacity of the FBI, and its record of political nihilism is exemplified by J.Edgar Hoover and his exercise of unchecked power over generations. Consider the latest cover up of the 20 year record of its ‘Crime Lab’ incompetence to be just the recent of its self-servingly mendacious incompetence!

Regards,

StephenKMackSD

https://on.ft.com/2FKPjOn