Leaks Like a Pipeline

February 28, 2017

Tonight, one-hundred-twelve days after proving any fool can be elected president, the Donald will address congress. The press, ever hopeful, expect him to talk about his agenda for America – concentrating on a wartime budget that spends more on the military and less on the State Department. They look forward to traditionally forward looking speech. Silly hey?

I don’t see Trump talking about anything other than himself; it’s gonna be an hour, maybe more, of self-praise and critic-bullying. You know, classic Trump.

The whitehouse.gov website says the Donald, “will continue to lay out his agenda to Make America Great Again”, but, offers no detail. Instead, it quickly moves on to listing accomplishments like reviving Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines and eliminating the “Stream Protection Rule.”

Great, but we already knew about the Donald’s undeclared war on the environment. I was hoping for some hint of what’s to come.

But apparently, neither mainstream media nor the government can provide any early insight into tonight’s monologue; I guess we’ll just have to wait for the speech. Unless, of course, something leaks.

After all, there have been lots of interesting leaks. They’ve been like melodies playing counterpoint to the monotonous drone of white noise we hear from the failing White House. Without leaks we wouldn’t know about the Putin, Trump, big oil love triangle. Without leaks we wouldn’t know about Trump’s taste for the exotic in the boudoir or about his crotch entitlement.

Without leaks we wouldn’t know that Sean Spicer, in a gestapo like maneuver, forced White House communication staff to dump their smart phone’s data to allow his goons to examine it for evidence of leaking. This story about leak prevention was leaked before Sean had a chance to leak an alternative story about how the leaks were now under control. (Whee! Like I’ve said before these guys are exhausting.)

I think it reasonable to expect the Donald to complain about leaks tonight. I suppose, like many of us, he struggles with the imperfection inherent in all complex systems – with the engineering principle that “plumbing leaks”. His bureaucracy will leak information, just as certainly as his pipelines will leak poison. It’s only a matter of when.

The republic expects the most dangerous leaks to occur outside of Washington.

In Peace and Justice,
osv