Mike, I have long appreciated your analyses of where we are and how we got here and could not agree more with the breadth of those many analyses. There was and continues to be an abject failure by so many who should know better to have stood up while the election was supposedly in doubt and challenged the Trump narrative. That said, I believed then and continue to hold to the belief that speaking truth to power before the election would have made no difference in its outcome. Whether it was the surgical application of Musk’s money, fraud at the ballot box or simply a failure of Harris and the Democratic Party to both get out its message or understand the extent to which the MAGA movement and its benefactors had mastered social media and its ability to control the narrative, Trump was going to be elected last November. Once in office, the “where we are today” story was already written and the ability to stop its metastasis simply a fever dream. Stopping the spread of authoritative rule…holding Trump and his acolytes accountable… requires a branch of government willing and able to stand up, push back and effectively constrain. That is simply not happening and will not be happening anytime soon. The House and Senate abdicate their constitutional obligations. The DoJ, rather than standing for constitutional constraint, flaunt without embarrassment any attempt by anyone, in government and outside government to object…to expose and to cry out “J’accuse” as is the case with Mr. Bolton. Instead of the rule of law we have the rule of retribution, supported by a federal agencies (FBI, DEA, etc.) which joyfully join in the feeding fest rather than standing against the abuse. The Courts have putatively stood as a bulwark against the abuse only to be slapped down by a Supreme Court bench which has mastered the art of rendering decisions in secret (it’s so-called “Emergency Docket”) that have devastating effect on the country and its future without feeling any obligation (or perhaps better characterized as courage) to explain why they are so willing to join in a feeding frenzy which, with each passing day, makes the Court’s role superfluous. Perhaps we can count on the military to hold fast to our traditions and stand by the Constitution? Ah…no.
I wish I could see a way out of this. For my sake and the sake of my children and grandchildren I wish it were otherwise. I understand that as a country we have gone through similar periods of division and violence beginning with the fight between Federalists and Republicans in Jefferson’s time that nearly brought the government down and the violence of and the lead up to the Civil War. In both instances the divisions seemed insurmountable and, in the case of the Civil War, nearly was. Perhaps what we are seeing today is just another spasm of political violence that has shaken the country before. I would defer to Heather Richardson on that.
Regrettably I think not. There is an inevitability to all this that makes it hard to not think otherwise. Is resistance futile (as the Borg would say). It is certainly necessary and must continue but is it enough.
You make many good points, but I wish you would acknowledge the many dedicated public servants who have not complied. At DOJ, waves of resignations have made news several times this year. At FBI, people like Mike Feinberg are speaking out against this administration. You are correct that these agencies, as a whole, are doing what the regime wants them to do, but there is little joy among the rank and file. The low morale of ICE agents made news in July.
Enough with the backhanded compliments and hindsight, justified as they may be.
I’m hoping that the DOJ’s overt action will be enough to push Bolton into coming out blazing with all the guns of his considerable intellect. He’s exactly the kind of Republican we need for the resistance. Former statesmen of the world unite!
Bolton’s personality is not a sanguine one. He’s not going to be at all calm about the Regime’s home invasion.
“We are inside constitutional collapse.” There, someone finally said it. Over on Bluesky, I posted “We’re gonna need a better Constitution.” Admittedly, I was riffing on the famous line from the movie Jaws, but I was not being glib in the least. I’m deadly serious. So how, in your opinion, Mike, do we accomplish that, short of a bloody civil war? Any thoughts come to mind?
Mike, you have given perfect expression to what I see and have been seeing but could not articulate. I agree with you. The volcano has been rumbling and it’s now releasing its early contents.
The US is today in the same situation Poland was 2015-23. The way out is to gather everybody who wants the constitutional system preserved into one voting block. Accept that AFTER you win back and AFTER you restore the whole system, the usual political fights will resume, this is normal. But, for a while, you have to accept standing together with people you would normally despise for their views, fight in street demonstrations etc. The only criterion is to whether one supports the rule of the law, or one wants to be ruled by a Tsar/some Holy Assembly.
That "one voting block" has to be large enough to make election cheating unfeasible. So not 51%, much better. And if there is no significant majority of citizens wanting restoration of the rule of law, then actually the Monarchy proponents get it right - people want a King, not some wimpy Democracy.
Well done. We have to keep hammering on this foolish projection and reversal, as the more it becomes transparent, the easier for people to keep track of the collapse of this regime (not the country), and to rise again behind reality, to weed out the psychopathic forces whispering in our ears and breaking down our doors. We need to keep drawing the lines ever clearer, juxtaposing the truth being hacked and projected onto a cardboard cutout. The mental health of the country is in need of rehab, getting the MAGAverse to rejoin reality. It will become easier when we also quit accommodating the donor class, their phony "liberalism", and insist on deeply democratizing the economy for a return to a robust middle class. It's a radical idea, made essential by the impending hijacking of normal levers of power. Be not afraid of it -- it's cleansing, clarifying!
Extending on Mike’s essential point, it is critical that we no longer assume the existence of the scheduled 2026 elections, let alone 2028. It is not likely that the current regime will just allow the people their voice. Military deployments to major cities are how elections get “postponed” and until the administration sees massive outpourings of popular dissent, until the population is effectively ungovernable in its current form, the regime will not change course. We cannot rely just on the expectation of elections.
Time for the Dems to establish "Project 2026", an all out effort to win the midterms - this should be composed of nonlinear thinkers who reject the current Dem flailing attempts to rein in Project 2025. Gavin Newscom is a good role model. Assymetric political warfare will be necessary to win the House and maybe the Senate. 2026 is a must-win for Franklin's " a republic, if you can keep it."
Scholar Thavolia Glymph may have coined the phrase, 'the contested meaning of domestic sanctuary' and it came to mind after this morning's event. It's the FBI's job to uphold the law and now it's Bolton's job to teach them how. He just might be the guy for the job.
While it is of course correct that raiding John Bolton's home over his criticism of the current administration crosses yet more lines, I find it exceptionally difficult to have any sympathy for the man himself given that the policies he pushed in years past, such as the invasion of Iraq built on lies about Saddam Hussein's complicity in the September 11, 2001 attacks and his supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction, created the conditions in which a man like Donald Trump could ascend to the Presidency. (Does anyone else remember him rhetorically eviscerating Jeb Bush on the debate stage when Gov. Bush claimed that "my brother kept us safe" and Trump retorted by noting that the Twin Towers fell during said brother's Presidency?)
Bolton isn't an honourable statesman with a sterling history of public service. Bolton is complicit in this regime's offences not just from his recent stance of "neutrality" (he served in the first Trump administration, after all) but also due to having created the conditions in which someone like Trump could be a serious candidate at all. He supported the leopard; now his face is being eaten.
This isn't about defending Bolton personally or validating his foreign policy record. This is about defending the constitutional framework that protects all of us from regimes that treat political disagreement as criminal activity. If we only protect constitutional rights for figures whose past we approve of, we've already surrendered to the tribal logic that animates Trump's revenge machine. Constitutional government cannot survive the precedent that federal law enforcement can target citizens based on their ideological sins rather than actual crimes.
I'm well aware of that. This is not the justice John Bolton deserves. (The justice he deserves, in my opinion, is to be in chains at The Hague, alongside all the other members of the rogues' gallery littering modern geopolitics.) As a principled matter you are completely correct. This raid, with this rationale, was a man being placed on the wrong side of conservatism, as part of the group the law binds but does not protect. That he was happy to be on the other side of that dynamic for so long does not change that nobody deserves to be on the side he is now on.
In this one matter, Bolton must be vindicated. Robert Bolt's Devil must receive benefit of law--but we must also not forget that he is still the Devil, and that he helped create the conditions in which this state of affairs became a reality. We cannot normalise what the current administration is doing but we also cannot normalise those, such as Bolton, who created the conditions in which the current administration was possible.
I do not. I trust that you can keep an eye both on Bolton's innocence in this matter and his (possible) guilt in many others (if not actual criminal guilt, then at least moral guilt for having vocally supported the military actions he has), and not let his unjust persecution over the former overshadow his potential culpability in the latter.
Others, I find, cannot always keep this separation. As an acquaintance of mine observed about Stephen Douglas and 1850s Republicans:
In this case, Fehrenbacher tells us, Lincoln’s Illinois Republicans felt compelled to declare him the Republican Party’s “first and only choice for U.S. Senate” because the seat’s incumbent Democrat, Stephen A. Douglas, had recently won the support and admiration of many anti-slavery Republicans, especially Republican bigwigs “back East.”
This was because Douglas, a great defender of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, had nevertheless waged a searing campaign against accepting the Lecompton Constitution (a basically fraudulent pro-slavery constitution passed by slavocrats in a rigged election in Kansas). This has put Douglas in rebellion against his own party, including President Buchanan. People in the 1850s were no different than people today, so Douglas’s rebellion against the Democrats caused many Republicans to find a “strange new respect” for him. Prominent national Republicans, including even William “Higher Law” Seward and the powerful publisher Horace Greeley, were beginning to pressure Illinois Republicans to endorse Douglas for the Senate seat, despite his continuing support for the Kansas-Nebraska Act and popular sovereignty!
In other words, because Douglas's views on one issue (rejecting the Lecompton Constitution) happened to align with the Republicans' views, and he did this in opposition on that issue to the rest of his party, they overlooked the many ways in which his views did not otherwise align with theirs, on issues they professed also to find important!
That is what I am warning against: rehabilitating someone like John Bolton (or the Cheneys, for another example) simply because of alignment on one issue, no matter how pressing and important that one issue might be.
And in this case, I submit, it is his positions and actions on so many other issues (ditto the Cheneys) that have led to the point of this single-issue alignment even being necessary. It is lines like "His decades of public service, his genuine expertise, his legitimate policy concerns" that twig my alarm bells and prompt me to warn against seeing Bolton in any light other than what he should be seen in--a man with blood on his hands who is being unjustly persecuted over something else entirely but richly deserves prosecution for his actual offences--because what he did in public service, what he used that expertise for, his proposed policy solutions to those concerns, all helped lay the groundwork for the crisis and the collapse the United States is facing now. (And, as an immediate concern for me, is likely to snatch up my country within it, having such a long land border with the US, such as happened with Austria, Switzerland and Sweden in the 1930s and 1940s, or with Finland and Mexico during the Cold War.)
Bolton is being unjustly persecuted in this matter and deserves a full-throated defence, if not for his own sake, then for everyone else's. ("Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!") But let us not ignore his complicity in that persecution, the persecution which he faces and that which many others are facing.
EDIT: To give a more recent example of this tendency, consider Liz Cheney after her work on the January 6 Select Committee. During the hearings and after the report came out, Cheney was lauded by many (self-professed) liberals and centrists for how she had handled her role as vice-chair and her willingness to sacrifice her career in Congress over the matter. As I recall, Robert Reich even suggested that she should be the Democratic Party's nominee for Vice President in 2024.
All these people let their admiration for Liz Cheney blind them to the fact that she agrees with them on very little other than "January 6 was an attempt to overthrow democratic governance" and ended up looking very foolish, to their peers who had at the least tempered their admiration for Cheney, for all their effusive praise when the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson came out and Cheney praised the Court for overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Seems to me that much of Mike's argument against false equivalency, phony objectivity, and both sides rhetoric is making precisely the point you are so focused on noting that Bolton's refusal to endorse Harris over Trump and anti-anti Trump alignment has helped make himself complicit in his own persecution by the second Trump Administration. Certainly its not a point that's being ignored when its one of the primary themes being highlighted in the article.
As for your concern about not rehabilitating individuals who are aligned on one issue, no matter how important that one issue might be, I would suggest that it is not necessary to rehabilitate anyone for your to work cooperatively with them and use their skills and talents to advance the one issue on which you are aligned. That is how I feel about Liz Cheney and her contributions to the J6 committee and investigation, and we can be thankful she dedicated her skills and talents to that cause without rehabilitating her positions or personal character with regards to anything else.
As for the relative importance of the issue, it seems to me that defending Bolton from unjust, politicized prosecution, is a defense of the constitutional framework that protects all of us from regimes that treat political disagreement as criminal activity. This is not an ideological fight, or at least it should be from the viewpoint of an American who is loyal to the Constitution, and we should accept any and all Americans who align on this issue for the time being. For now anyway, the conversation is more fundamental and moral than any ideological differences and disagreements we may have with Bolton or Cheney, or anyone else, and we need to work together in opposition to something that must be defeated for all our sakes before we can hope to get back to an ideological conversation. Because right now we are so far away from the place that we could even have a normal political conversation about what would be good policy or the regrettable policy positions in Bolton's past. We are just damned at the moment to live in a world where ideology has become a luxury and will largely remain as such until this is defeated. That sucks, but the mirror world where the constitutional system collapses permanently and we can never get back to the luxury of ideology sucks a lot more.
I don't think MAGA has the mass to breach American constitutional and institutional safeguards.
By "mass" I mean they won't have the ideologically committed (police) personnel or the base of public support to take control throughout the country. We might end up with an asymmetrical fascism. States where the local elected officials, police, prosecutors, and jury pools are onboard will be oppressive. In states where they are not, life will go on much as before. About 90% of the total law enforcement personnel in the USA are controlled by states and especially municipalities.
The volunteer military isn't going to get wholly onboard, either. More passive resistance than active resistance like resignations. Troops can be ornery. The 29-day state National Guard mobilizations at less than full pay and benefits are causing complaints. Recruiting and retention will suffer and then what do they do?
Already they're losing before grand juries and being somewhat slowed by the courts. The Constitution, laws, and the derived jury instructions remain the same.
It's going to be a tough four years, but until I see a real breach of the Constitution, not just a tendentious bending of it, I think we can tough it out.
This is so well written, thank you. I’d also like to mention my first Substack from late Feb/early March - Chin Deep In A Constitutional Crisis Parts 1-4, then another soon after that, Put The Blame on Mame, and my most recent, High Time We All Talk With Military Family/Military Friends
Constitutional Collapse in Real Time is the most complete and accurate analysis I have read since my involvement in the Trump-GOP destruction of Democracy. I would use every expression to extoll this fine writing.
: You're spot on; on the money; you put your finger on it; what you have written about so completely is the heart of the matter; your piece is dead on; you nailed it; that’s the ticket- your commentary is outstanding.
The piece is not about John Bolton, it's about what ails this country- at least this is my take on the 8/22/25 Brock Commentary.
AIL: Apathy, Indifference to cause, and lack of Unity
I'm a cancer doc, a medical oncologist. I diagnose disease related to the uncontrolled growth we term "malignancy." There are many papers written about "The Hallmarks of Cancer." What we are all witnessing is the malignancy in our government that has manifested in real-world form (we call this phenotype) as Donald Trump and his enablers. I would argue that Trump was born with a genotype that was probably normal. But the influence of one's environment, what we call epi-genetics, has created a malignant human being. And as the saying goes, "birds of a feather, flock together." Thus, we have Trump and an unethical GOP in both the House and the Senate, so into greed and power, that they will say and do anything.
To this, one can add the enablers of Trump in our citizenry-- the educated and the factually naive. For whatever the modus operandi of this faction, they see Trump as the King, despite his soul being exposed to anyone perceptive. And thus, we have the perfect storm, and this has put us dead center into fascism. On a Fascist scale of 4, we are at 2, with worse to come.
Mike is also spot on in saying that we do not want to admit to this reality (i.e., we have lost our democracy and we are halfway to a total totalitarian State. Like a malignant condition, fascism knocks on your door and announces itself. But if you are not alert, not proactive, it enters and makes itself right at home. It is again like cancer. You've been diagnosed, and the harsh reality of it is overwhelming in the anxiety born of the realization that a part of you that you love is now being flushed down the drain. Why didn't I lock my car? Why didn't I stow my Glock in a secure storage box? Why did I return to the same restaurant that had served me slop three times before? Why did the masses of people allow one violation of the Constitution after another- freedom of speech, freedom of the press, right to peaceful assembly, due process, as well as not violating the Constitution's Emolument clause? We, the People, stood down while Lady Liberty was being raped by someone already convicted of sexual abuse. We humans don't learn.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". - George Santayana (1863-1952)
 Don't blame the weakness in the Democratic Party. We all were given ample warning when the popular candidate was Bernie Sanders. Yet, the DNC selected "good ol' boy" Hilary Clinton—same nonsense when Biden ran for a 2nd term in the face of a periodically neuronally challenged senior. I know a lot of the cognitively challenged, given my age of almost 83. We've lived much longer in this country, but we have not prioritized certain aspects (e.g., cognitive decline).
And the country rallied with "No Kings," but what has happened since then? The fire grows cold; at least it seems that way. Calling our Representatives and Senators is often a joke because, like almost everything in America, there is a lack of accessibility to those in positions of power. I am on call 24/7. I answer my cell phone and provide help to anyone, and often to total strangers. When was the last time you were able to access someone in your district, or your State senator? Our taxpayer dollars were not used as they should have been, and we should have bitched about this until it was fixed.
Mike discussed the issue of false equivalence in early commentaries. But such absurd behavior to compare the Biden "Crime Family" with a well-documented generational "Family of Fraudsters," well, when those who should know what "degree" means and the difference between "yes, corrupt" versus a life-long pursuit of "deal-making" that is underscored by self-aggrandizement and malicious greed, that's where the buck should have stopped. And the mainstream media came on board too late with their criticism of the Trump reality and dwelt far too long in normalization and then rationalization of his grade-school vulgarisms, his racism, his misogynism, and his overt insatiable greed.
If we were but to listen to the wisdom of the ages, perhaps, we would not be in the mess we are in now. Yes, we are living in a deep State, but this Deep State is neck-high in personalities that can only be described as "excremental."
Personally, I think the electorate and the Democratic Party have gone beyond the tipping point. Maybe if we had opened our ears, eyes, hearts, and minds years ago and taken seriously these words, we would not be faced with a Mussolini, Hitler, or Putin clone:
"Our lives begin to end the day that we become silent about things that matter."
Mike, I have long appreciated your analyses of where we are and how we got here and could not agree more with the breadth of those many analyses. There was and continues to be an abject failure by so many who should know better to have stood up while the election was supposedly in doubt and challenged the Trump narrative. That said, I believed then and continue to hold to the belief that speaking truth to power before the election would have made no difference in its outcome. Whether it was the surgical application of Musk’s money, fraud at the ballot box or simply a failure of Harris and the Democratic Party to both get out its message or understand the extent to which the MAGA movement and its benefactors had mastered social media and its ability to control the narrative, Trump was going to be elected last November. Once in office, the “where we are today” story was already written and the ability to stop its metastasis simply a fever dream. Stopping the spread of authoritative rule…holding Trump and his acolytes accountable… requires a branch of government willing and able to stand up, push back and effectively constrain. That is simply not happening and will not be happening anytime soon. The House and Senate abdicate their constitutional obligations. The DoJ, rather than standing for constitutional constraint, flaunt without embarrassment any attempt by anyone, in government and outside government to object…to expose and to cry out “J’accuse” as is the case with Mr. Bolton. Instead of the rule of law we have the rule of retribution, supported by a federal agencies (FBI, DEA, etc.) which joyfully join in the feeding fest rather than standing against the abuse. The Courts have putatively stood as a bulwark against the abuse only to be slapped down by a Supreme Court bench which has mastered the art of rendering decisions in secret (it’s so-called “Emergency Docket”) that have devastating effect on the country and its future without feeling any obligation (or perhaps better characterized as courage) to explain why they are so willing to join in a feeding frenzy which, with each passing day, makes the Court’s role superfluous. Perhaps we can count on the military to hold fast to our traditions and stand by the Constitution? Ah…no.
I wish I could see a way out of this. For my sake and the sake of my children and grandchildren I wish it were otherwise. I understand that as a country we have gone through similar periods of division and violence beginning with the fight between Federalists and Republicans in Jefferson’s time that nearly brought the government down and the violence of and the lead up to the Civil War. In both instances the divisions seemed insurmountable and, in the case of the Civil War, nearly was. Perhaps what we are seeing today is just another spasm of political violence that has shaken the country before. I would defer to Heather Richardson on that.
Regrettably I think not. There is an inevitability to all this that makes it hard to not think otherwise. Is resistance futile (as the Borg would say). It is certainly necessary and must continue but is it enough.
You make many good points, but I wish you would acknowledge the many dedicated public servants who have not complied. At DOJ, waves of resignations have made news several times this year. At FBI, people like Mike Feinberg are speaking out against this administration. You are correct that these agencies, as a whole, are doing what the regime wants them to do, but there is little joy among the rank and file. The low morale of ICE agents made news in July.
Enough with the backhanded compliments and hindsight, justified as they may be.
I’m hoping that the DOJ’s overt action will be enough to push Bolton into coming out blazing with all the guns of his considerable intellect. He’s exactly the kind of Republican we need for the resistance. Former statesmen of the world unite!
Bolton’s personality is not a sanguine one. He’s not going to be at all calm about the Regime’s home invasion.
I hope it’s high powered attorneys. Il douche is immune to intellect.
“We are inside constitutional collapse.” There, someone finally said it. Over on Bluesky, I posted “We’re gonna need a better Constitution.” Admittedly, I was riffing on the famous line from the movie Jaws, but I was not being glib in the least. I’m deadly serious. So how, in your opinion, Mike, do we accomplish that, short of a bloody civil war? Any thoughts come to mind?
Mike, you have given perfect expression to what I see and have been seeing but could not articulate. I agree with you. The volcano has been rumbling and it’s now releasing its early contents.
The US is today in the same situation Poland was 2015-23. The way out is to gather everybody who wants the constitutional system preserved into one voting block. Accept that AFTER you win back and AFTER you restore the whole system, the usual political fights will resume, this is normal. But, for a while, you have to accept standing together with people you would normally despise for their views, fight in street demonstrations etc. The only criterion is to whether one supports the rule of the law, or one wants to be ruled by a Tsar/some Holy Assembly.
That "one voting block" has to be large enough to make election cheating unfeasible. So not 51%, much better. And if there is no significant majority of citizens wanting restoration of the rule of law, then actually the Monarchy proponents get it right - people want a King, not some wimpy Democracy.
This is the best exposition on what is happening to us and how it is happening I have read. Thank you. Very well reasoned and clearly expressed.
Well done. We have to keep hammering on this foolish projection and reversal, as the more it becomes transparent, the easier for people to keep track of the collapse of this regime (not the country), and to rise again behind reality, to weed out the psychopathic forces whispering in our ears and breaking down our doors. We need to keep drawing the lines ever clearer, juxtaposing the truth being hacked and projected onto a cardboard cutout. The mental health of the country is in need of rehab, getting the MAGAverse to rejoin reality. It will become easier when we also quit accommodating the donor class, their phony "liberalism", and insist on deeply democratizing the economy for a return to a robust middle class. It's a radical idea, made essential by the impending hijacking of normal levers of power. Be not afraid of it -- it's cleansing, clarifying!
This is so grim
Extending on Mike’s essential point, it is critical that we no longer assume the existence of the scheduled 2026 elections, let alone 2028. It is not likely that the current regime will just allow the people their voice. Military deployments to major cities are how elections get “postponed” and until the administration sees massive outpourings of popular dissent, until the population is effectively ungovernable in its current form, the regime will not change course. We cannot rely just on the expectation of elections.
Time for the Dems to establish "Project 2026", an all out effort to win the midterms - this should be composed of nonlinear thinkers who reject the current Dem flailing attempts to rein in Project 2025. Gavin Newscom is a good role model. Assymetric political warfare will be necessary to win the House and maybe the Senate. 2026 is a must-win for Franklin's " a republic, if you can keep it."
Scholar Thavolia Glymph may have coined the phrase, 'the contested meaning of domestic sanctuary' and it came to mind after this morning's event. It's the FBI's job to uphold the law and now it's Bolton's job to teach them how. He just might be the guy for the job.
While it is of course correct that raiding John Bolton's home over his criticism of the current administration crosses yet more lines, I find it exceptionally difficult to have any sympathy for the man himself given that the policies he pushed in years past, such as the invasion of Iraq built on lies about Saddam Hussein's complicity in the September 11, 2001 attacks and his supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction, created the conditions in which a man like Donald Trump could ascend to the Presidency. (Does anyone else remember him rhetorically eviscerating Jeb Bush on the debate stage when Gov. Bush claimed that "my brother kept us safe" and Trump retorted by noting that the Twin Towers fell during said brother's Presidency?)
Bolton isn't an honourable statesman with a sterling history of public service. Bolton is complicit in this regime's offences not just from his recent stance of "neutrality" (he served in the first Trump administration, after all) but also due to having created the conditions in which someone like Trump could be a serious candidate at all. He supported the leopard; now his face is being eaten.
This isn't about defending Bolton personally or validating his foreign policy record. This is about defending the constitutional framework that protects all of us from regimes that treat political disagreement as criminal activity. If we only protect constitutional rights for figures whose past we approve of, we've already surrendered to the tribal logic that animates Trump's revenge machine. Constitutional government cannot survive the precedent that federal law enforcement can target citizens based on their ideological sins rather than actual crimes.
I'm well aware of that. This is not the justice John Bolton deserves. (The justice he deserves, in my opinion, is to be in chains at The Hague, alongside all the other members of the rogues' gallery littering modern geopolitics.) As a principled matter you are completely correct. This raid, with this rationale, was a man being placed on the wrong side of conservatism, as part of the group the law binds but does not protect. That he was happy to be on the other side of that dynamic for so long does not change that nobody deserves to be on the side he is now on.
In this one matter, Bolton must be vindicated. Robert Bolt's Devil must receive benefit of law--but we must also not forget that he is still the Devil, and that he helped create the conditions in which this state of affairs became a reality. We cannot normalise what the current administration is doing but we also cannot normalise those, such as Bolton, who created the conditions in which the current administration was possible.
Surely, you don't count me as one of Bolton's apologists? I had thought my piece conveyed quite a bit of pathos, if anything.
I do not. I trust that you can keep an eye both on Bolton's innocence in this matter and his (possible) guilt in many others (if not actual criminal guilt, then at least moral guilt for having vocally supported the military actions he has), and not let his unjust persecution over the former overshadow his potential culpability in the latter.
Others, I find, cannot always keep this separation. As an acquaintance of mine observed about Stephen Douglas and 1850s Republicans:
In this case, Fehrenbacher tells us, Lincoln’s Illinois Republicans felt compelled to declare him the Republican Party’s “first and only choice for U.S. Senate” because the seat’s incumbent Democrat, Stephen A. Douglas, had recently won the support and admiration of many anti-slavery Republicans, especially Republican bigwigs “back East.”
This was because Douglas, a great defender of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, had nevertheless waged a searing campaign against accepting the Lecompton Constitution (a basically fraudulent pro-slavery constitution passed by slavocrats in a rigged election in Kansas). This has put Douglas in rebellion against his own party, including President Buchanan. People in the 1850s were no different than people today, so Douglas’s rebellion against the Democrats caused many Republicans to find a “strange new respect” for him. Prominent national Republicans, including even William “Higher Law” Seward and the powerful publisher Horace Greeley, were beginning to pressure Illinois Republicans to endorse Douglas for the Senate seat, despite his continuing support for the Kansas-Nebraska Act and popular sovereignty!
In other words, because Douglas's views on one issue (rejecting the Lecompton Constitution) happened to align with the Republicans' views, and he did this in opposition on that issue to the rest of his party, they overlooked the many ways in which his views did not otherwise align with theirs, on issues they professed also to find important!
That is what I am warning against: rehabilitating someone like John Bolton (or the Cheneys, for another example) simply because of alignment on one issue, no matter how pressing and important that one issue might be.
And in this case, I submit, it is his positions and actions on so many other issues (ditto the Cheneys) that have led to the point of this single-issue alignment even being necessary. It is lines like "His decades of public service, his genuine expertise, his legitimate policy concerns" that twig my alarm bells and prompt me to warn against seeing Bolton in any light other than what he should be seen in--a man with blood on his hands who is being unjustly persecuted over something else entirely but richly deserves prosecution for his actual offences--because what he did in public service, what he used that expertise for, his proposed policy solutions to those concerns, all helped lay the groundwork for the crisis and the collapse the United States is facing now. (And, as an immediate concern for me, is likely to snatch up my country within it, having such a long land border with the US, such as happened with Austria, Switzerland and Sweden in the 1930s and 1940s, or with Finland and Mexico during the Cold War.)
Bolton is being unjustly persecuted in this matter and deserves a full-throated defence, if not for his own sake, then for everyone else's. ("Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!") But let us not ignore his complicity in that persecution, the persecution which he faces and that which many others are facing.
EDIT: To give a more recent example of this tendency, consider Liz Cheney after her work on the January 6 Select Committee. During the hearings and after the report came out, Cheney was lauded by many (self-professed) liberals and centrists for how she had handled her role as vice-chair and her willingness to sacrifice her career in Congress over the matter. As I recall, Robert Reich even suggested that she should be the Democratic Party's nominee for Vice President in 2024.
All these people let their admiration for Liz Cheney blind them to the fact that she agrees with them on very little other than "January 6 was an attempt to overthrow democratic governance" and ended up looking very foolish, to their peers who had at the least tempered their admiration for Cheney, for all their effusive praise when the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson came out and Cheney praised the Court for overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Seems to me that much of Mike's argument against false equivalency, phony objectivity, and both sides rhetoric is making precisely the point you are so focused on noting that Bolton's refusal to endorse Harris over Trump and anti-anti Trump alignment has helped make himself complicit in his own persecution by the second Trump Administration. Certainly its not a point that's being ignored when its one of the primary themes being highlighted in the article.
As for your concern about not rehabilitating individuals who are aligned on one issue, no matter how important that one issue might be, I would suggest that it is not necessary to rehabilitate anyone for your to work cooperatively with them and use their skills and talents to advance the one issue on which you are aligned. That is how I feel about Liz Cheney and her contributions to the J6 committee and investigation, and we can be thankful she dedicated her skills and talents to that cause without rehabilitating her positions or personal character with regards to anything else.
As for the relative importance of the issue, it seems to me that defending Bolton from unjust, politicized prosecution, is a defense of the constitutional framework that protects all of us from regimes that treat political disagreement as criminal activity. This is not an ideological fight, or at least it should be from the viewpoint of an American who is loyal to the Constitution, and we should accept any and all Americans who align on this issue for the time being. For now anyway, the conversation is more fundamental and moral than any ideological differences and disagreements we may have with Bolton or Cheney, or anyone else, and we need to work together in opposition to something that must be defeated for all our sakes before we can hope to get back to an ideological conversation. Because right now we are so far away from the place that we could even have a normal political conversation about what would be good policy or the regrettable policy positions in Bolton's past. We are just damned at the moment to live in a world where ideology has become a luxury and will largely remain as such until this is defeated. That sucks, but the mirror world where the constitutional system collapses permanently and we can never get back to the luxury of ideology sucks a lot more.
Sad, and well stated.
I don't think MAGA has the mass to breach American constitutional and institutional safeguards.
By "mass" I mean they won't have the ideologically committed (police) personnel or the base of public support to take control throughout the country. We might end up with an asymmetrical fascism. States where the local elected officials, police, prosecutors, and jury pools are onboard will be oppressive. In states where they are not, life will go on much as before. About 90% of the total law enforcement personnel in the USA are controlled by states and especially municipalities.
The volunteer military isn't going to get wholly onboard, either. More passive resistance than active resistance like resignations. Troops can be ornery. The 29-day state National Guard mobilizations at less than full pay and benefits are causing complaints. Recruiting and retention will suffer and then what do they do?
Already they're losing before grand juries and being somewhat slowed by the courts. The Constitution, laws, and the derived jury instructions remain the same.
It's going to be a tough four years, but until I see a real breach of the Constitution, not just a tendentious bending of it, I think we can tough it out.
This is so well written, thank you. I’d also like to mention my first Substack from late Feb/early March - Chin Deep In A Constitutional Crisis Parts 1-4, then another soon after that, Put The Blame on Mame, and my most recent, High Time We All Talk With Military Family/Military Friends
Thank you again
Morris Code
Constitutional Collapse in Real Time is the most complete and accurate analysis I have read since my involvement in the Trump-GOP destruction of Democracy. I would use every expression to extoll this fine writing.
: You're spot on; on the money; you put your finger on it; what you have written about so completely is the heart of the matter; your piece is dead on; you nailed it; that’s the ticket- your commentary is outstanding.
The piece is not about John Bolton, it's about what ails this country- at least this is my take on the 8/22/25 Brock Commentary.
AIL: Apathy, Indifference to cause, and lack of Unity
I'm a cancer doc, a medical oncologist. I diagnose disease related to the uncontrolled growth we term "malignancy." There are many papers written about "The Hallmarks of Cancer." What we are all witnessing is the malignancy in our government that has manifested in real-world form (we call this phenotype) as Donald Trump and his enablers. I would argue that Trump was born with a genotype that was probably normal. But the influence of one's environment, what we call epi-genetics, has created a malignant human being. And as the saying goes, "birds of a feather, flock together." Thus, we have Trump and an unethical GOP in both the House and the Senate, so into greed and power, that they will say and do anything.
To this, one can add the enablers of Trump in our citizenry-- the educated and the factually naive. For whatever the modus operandi of this faction, they see Trump as the King, despite his soul being exposed to anyone perceptive. And thus, we have the perfect storm, and this has put us dead center into fascism. On a Fascist scale of 4, we are at 2, with worse to come.
Mike is also spot on in saying that we do not want to admit to this reality (i.e., we have lost our democracy and we are halfway to a total totalitarian State. Like a malignant condition, fascism knocks on your door and announces itself. But if you are not alert, not proactive, it enters and makes itself right at home. It is again like cancer. You've been diagnosed, and the harsh reality of it is overwhelming in the anxiety born of the realization that a part of you that you love is now being flushed down the drain. Why didn't I lock my car? Why didn't I stow my Glock in a secure storage box? Why did I return to the same restaurant that had served me slop three times before? Why did the masses of people allow one violation of the Constitution after another- freedom of speech, freedom of the press, right to peaceful assembly, due process, as well as not violating the Constitution's Emolument clause? We, the People, stood down while Lady Liberty was being raped by someone already convicted of sexual abuse. We humans don't learn.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". - George Santayana (1863-1952)
 Don't blame the weakness in the Democratic Party. We all were given ample warning when the popular candidate was Bernie Sanders. Yet, the DNC selected "good ol' boy" Hilary Clinton—same nonsense when Biden ran for a 2nd term in the face of a periodically neuronally challenged senior. I know a lot of the cognitively challenged, given my age of almost 83. We've lived much longer in this country, but we have not prioritized certain aspects (e.g., cognitive decline).
And the country rallied with "No Kings," but what has happened since then? The fire grows cold; at least it seems that way. Calling our Representatives and Senators is often a joke because, like almost everything in America, there is a lack of accessibility to those in positions of power. I am on call 24/7. I answer my cell phone and provide help to anyone, and often to total strangers. When was the last time you were able to access someone in your district, or your State senator? Our taxpayer dollars were not used as they should have been, and we should have bitched about this until it was fixed.
Mike discussed the issue of false equivalence in early commentaries. But such absurd behavior to compare the Biden "Crime Family" with a well-documented generational "Family of Fraudsters," well, when those who should know what "degree" means and the difference between "yes, corrupt" versus a life-long pursuit of "deal-making" that is underscored by self-aggrandizement and malicious greed, that's where the buck should have stopped. And the mainstream media came on board too late with their criticism of the Trump reality and dwelt far too long in normalization and then rationalization of his grade-school vulgarisms, his racism, his misogynism, and his overt insatiable greed.
If we were but to listen to the wisdom of the ages, perhaps, we would not be in the mess we are in now. Yes, we are living in a deep State, but this Deep State is neck-high in personalities that can only be described as "excremental."
Personally, I think the electorate and the Democratic Party have gone beyond the tipping point. Maybe if we had opened our ears, eyes, hearts, and minds years ago and taken seriously these words, we would not be faced with a Mussolini, Hitler, or Putin clone:
"Our lives begin to end the day that we become silent about things that matter."
-Martin Luther King