The French poet Alain de Lille wrote in 1175 AD, “. . . a thousand roads lead a man forever toward Rome.” In modern usage, “All roads lead to Rome” is meant to convey the center of something. Rome was the center of gravity for the classical Mediterranean world. Washington, D.C., has arisen as our Rome, for good or ill.
Durham’s indictment of Michael Sussman, Perkins Coie law partner and DNC lawyer, brought to mind the trope. If one cares to look closely at it, Sussman’s world is DC, a socio-politically incestuous pit of vipers that resists accountability. Don’t be surprised if Sussman and the DC network of Democratic Party swamp denizens never face justice for fabricating the Trump-Russia humbug. The swamp can get a Nixon (Watergate) but try and make them answer for their behavior? I’m skeptical. The Gordian Knot of intertwining relationships protects them.
We’d be better served if all roads didn’t lead to DC. How? Breakup DC, scatter its federal departments, agencies, and the bulk of its employees to the far corners of the country. If any political chicanery were to take place, investigation and judgment would take place outside the shield of this cripplingly I-got-your-back web.
The Sussman case illustrates the outlines of this tightly knit socio-political hive. All the principal parties in the story, with the exception of Durham, are cozy with each other. According to Durham, Sussman is the man who peddled Trump-Russia collusion to his pals in the Obama administration. Enlisting the preexisting army of federal government operatives to cripple your political opponent is the queen on the political chessboard. It’s exactly what Sussman did in meeting with his old pal James Baker, FBI general counsel, to enroll the DOJ in placing a politically useful moral cloud on the Trump campaign. Trump was hounded throughout 2016 and into most of his presidency.
Don’t forget, later, Mueller and his cadre of Democrat henchmen spent two years (2017-2019) and $32 million to probe Trump-Russia and found . . . nothing!
The connections extend beyond Sussman and Baker. The trial court judge overseeing the case is Judge Christopher R. “Casey” Cooper, Obama appointee and long protégé of Democrat power-broking legal eagles in the Clinton and Obama administrations. Cooper, Baker, and Sussman were veterans of the Clinton DOJ – and many would later move into the Obama regime – and frequently interacted socially and professionally.
Judge Christopher R. “Casey” Cooper
It doesn’t end there. Remember Lisa Page of “smelly Walmart shopper” fame? Her lawyer is Judge Cooper’s wife, Amy Jeffress, who was previously employed as national security adviser to Eric Holder, Obama’s AG. No accusation of conspiracy here, but instead there exists the network of friendships and mutually beneficial relationships that can last a lifetime.
Quite logically, conflicts of interest abound. If this was an honest world, recusals would be the most common feature surrounding the Sussman case, or any case with a partisan in the dock in the snake pit of DC, up to the city’s totality. This rabidly anti-Republican population (Republicans are 6% of registered voters) screams change of venue for any defendant who’ll be helped or harmed by a partisan reputation.
DC’s deeply embedded partisan hostility is just one reason for moving things out of the city. More threateningly, our government no longer represents us, the “us” being anyone whose experience with the country doesn’t emanate from an Ivy League campus, or from 35,000 feet, or passing through on the Acela. If we are to have rule by expertocracy, let’s move them closer to the plebes. For instance, pick any small-to-medium sized city in Kansas to headquarter the Agricultural Department. Say, move the Department of Justice to Lubbock – or any town with a strong commitment to the Second Amendment – if the town will have them. Commerce could head to Tampa or Mobile, since California is out of the running because it is determined to destroy its ports. Move the Pentagon to Camp Lejeune. Dynamite the five-sided edifice in Arlington for more breakwaters on the Chesapeake. HHS could benefit from small town values so place it in any small census tract away from a college campus and between the Rockies and Appalachians. DHS, the homeland security Borg, would benefit from a location like El Paso, Tx., to be closer to a porous border. The same is true for the rest of the cabinet.
Don’t worry, they don’t need to be within spitting distance of each other to fulfill their job descriptions. After all, if it was such a great idea to Zoom our kids’ education, they ought to phone it in too – or more accurately broadband it in – from a long way away.
As for the entangled web of regulatory agencies, find the most aesthetically unpleasant locations in this transcontinental nation. No coastal views or beautiful mountain vistas. We’ve got close to 4 million square miles to work with. The idea is to make these people want to cut short their stays in jobs telling us what to do. Brown and barren hills, blistering cold winters, and 110-degree summers would work wonders. They might want to get real jobs.
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But herein lies a danger: scattering the hive to the winds might infect more locations with their socio-political-cultural decrepitude. An answer might be found in treating federal government employment as a form of minimum-security imprisonment. Workplaces and housing ought to be separated from the surrounding area behind secure fencing with ingress and egress carefully monitored. It might contribute to the impetus to end their incarceration and join the real world.
The above has zero chance of enactment but establishes a preferable end state to work toward. The idea is to avoid the nomenklatura-problem. No doubt, we have made great strides over the past 90 years in Sovietizing our existence. A large and overweening class of apparatchiks, insulated and living a world apart, must be brought to heel before they sabotage our civilization.
All roads should lead to Akron, Peoria, Lubbock, Wichita, Duluth, . . . .
RogerG
*Read Andrew C. McCarthy’s article, “Welcome to the Swamp, Mr. Durham”, National Review Online, February 19, 2022.