CSI: American Carnage (Saturday, January 4, 2020)
WASHINGTON — The Times guy enters the Off-the-Record very late. Fog is rolling in up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, and a thin mist moistens all on the street, like it’s old cookie dough. The street has an unreal look. The Times guy spies the Post guy sitting at a table near the bar, walks over, and sits. Brewdog! he shouts to the barkeep. The Post guy says, Hey, I thought you were still in New York. The Times guy says, I was, but they wanted me down here. The Post guy says, We both missed the boat. Shoulda been in Mar, that’s where the action is. Nobody knows shit up here. Nobody in the White House, nobody on the Hill, nobody nowhere. The Times guy says, Yeah. If we’d been to a couple of parties at Mar, we could’ve picked up on this Iran thing – Donald was telling everybody wearing a party hat that something big was about to drop, and he wasn’t talking Times Square. Something very big. The biggest. Not a single one of my people knew a thing, and you know what that means. The Post guy says, Donald and a couple of cronies were the only ones who knew anything. My guess is that only Donald knew. The Times guy says, That means only Donald knows what’s going on, which means only he can tell the American people what’s what. The Post guy says, Good luck with that. My bet is we’ll never know. I mean, first they said it was in response to plans detected. Then there were a lot of questions. So they ratcheted up. Attacks were on the way. American lives at stake. What plans? What attacks? If you don’t go before Congress, you don’t have to tell. Pompeo can spin endlessly. He can hop on one foot. And then he can hop on the other foot. Like, when, since we went into Iraq, have American lives not been at stake? Do you think any of these people care about that? The Times guy says, Why all of a sudden is there a deep concern for American lives? Or human life of any kind? Good question. Did you know that if you take all of these endless, death-dealing wars since 9/11, at least 480,000 people have been killed directly? 244,000 civilians. If you start adding in indirect deaths – disease, starvation, displacement, stuff like that — you’re talking millions. Millions of deaths! Those are human deaths. After all that lackadaisical waste, all the casual mistakes, why all of a sudden is human life important? That’s all I’m asking. A simple question. Maybe we can ask Stephanie. Maybe the White House press office has the answer. Why is human life important? The Post guy says, Hey, it’s 2020. The Times guy says, Yeah. You kill to save human life. And win an election. Where have I heard that before? On the bright side, nobody believes anything the President of the United States has to say. About anything. The Post guy sighs. The Times guy shouts, Barkeep! Rye chasers. – Saturday, January 4, 2020