I think I’ll start a crime spree now that anything goes

Well, you can scratch Montana from the list of states I want to live in – or even visit, for that matter. I don’t ever want to wake up in a state where a candidate for office can beat up a news reporter, release a statement lying about it, still get endorsed by the faux-president of the United States, win election to Congress and then issue an apology for doing the very thing he said he didn’t do the day before.

It sounds like an episode of The Twilight Zone.

Greg Gianforte’s body slam of Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs is further proof that we have now normalized assault as part of our daily routine, a part of doing business in Donald Trump’s America. This comes next on the list of other crimes we have accepted / ignored / normalized / bragged about / forgotten since Trump began running for president.

* Take sexual assault, for example. You can admit that to a TV reporter on an open microphone, prompting several women to come out and say you did it to them, too, and walk away unscathed.

* Fraud? No biggie. Rip off hundreds of unsuspecting “students” at your fake university, deny everything for years and then write a check to make it go away. Easy peasy.

* Rape? This is fixable with two words: Non-disclosure agreement.

* Theft? How about hiring people to work for you and then refusing to pay them? That may not be theft according to the legal definition, but it’s the same as stealing money in my book, so I’m sticking with theft for now.

* Incitement to riot? Did you watch any of Trump’s rallies? Who do you think inspired the Montana massacre?

* Tax evasion?  Don’t know about this one, but I have my suspicions. Would a pathological liar tell the truth on a tax return? You be the judge.

* And then there’s colluding with a foreign government to rig an American election? The jury is still out on this one, but in my world if it looks like vodka and tastes like vodka, I’m thinking it’s vodka.

In addition, there are things that may not be crimes but, as my wife so eloquently put it, “are things you’re not supposed to do.” I’d put conflict of interest and nepotism in this basket, along with making a mockery of the Hatch Act which prohibits members of the Executive Branch of government from engaging in certain forms of political activity. Yes, I know, the Hatch Act exempts the president, but his shameless tweeting on behalf of bad actors like Greg Gianforte surely violates any reasonable standard for proper presidential behavior.

I’m sure there are others that I’m forgetting, but I think you can start to see my point. The faux president openly and publicly declared the free and independent news media to be “the enemy of the American people,” and the next thing you know a Republican candidate for Congress is body-slamming a reporter who asked a question he didn’t want to answer. This wannabe MMA fighter now gets to go to Washington where he can help decide whether you and I can have Social Security and health insurance, whether poor children can have food and whether women can have a say in what happens to their bodies.

I saw a photo yesterday of a man wearing a t-shirt which said, on the back, “Rope. Tree. Journalist.” Let that sink in for a minute…

Ready?

Click to enlarge

First, someone had to think up a slogan like that and say to himself, “Yep, I can sell that.” Then someone had to screen print those shirts for distribution, and finally, someone (or a lot of someones for all I know) had to pay money to buy them so they could wear them out in public. I can’t think of a word strong enough to describe the obscenity of that.

Trump once declared that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes. I’m sure that’s true. Now, it appears, people who support him wouldn’t be arrested for it, either.

Did I mention The Twilight Zone?