Mike “Lodestar” Pence? Not so fast…
There have been many guesses as to the authorship of the New York Times op-ed piece “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” The truth of the matter is no one really knows who it is, not even those who will later be “vindicated” by a lucky guess. One thing for certain: it almost certainly is not Mike Pence.
That albino mollusk we laughingly refer to as the “Vice President” lacks the backbone, the imagination and the intelligence to author such a piece. Anyway, when searching for a rebel, always avoid the room labeled “evangelical anal-retentive lap dogs.” Whether it’s used as a red herring or not, Pence doesn’t own the not uncommon word “lodestar.” Nevertheless, for the purpose of this article let’s call the op-ed author just that: Lodestar.
We know that Lodestar’s politics suck. Hardly surprising, he works for Trump doesn’t he? Lodestar touts Trump’s “effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.” Stripping the EPA of its mandate to keep the world safe from agencies and corporations that rape the environment is no sane person’s idea of effective deregulation, and a tax cut that hands the lion’s share of the nation’s cash to the richest one percent is only referred to as “historic” in the mouth of the bitterly sardonic. A “more robust military” devoid of pay raises and adequate healthcare for its veterans is nothing more than a cruel joke. Lodestar is either punking us or he’s an idiot.
Next, Lodestar is a coward and a fool. The idea that no one wants to “precipitate a constitutional crisis” by invoking the 25th Amendment is ridiculous. What crisis could conceivably be worse than a Trump presidency anyway, a man who, by Lodestar’s own admission is amoral, “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.” And what exactly is a “constitutional crisis” anyway? Maybe one is overdue.
Finally, Lodestar is not a hero. There is no clear benefit to writing Lodestar’s op-ed save that it may one day serve as a golden parachute. This is nothing new. Albert Speer had one when he failed to implement Hitler’s scorched earth policy at the end of World War II. So the rush on the part of the Left to canonize Lodestar as our most recent Republican Saint is premature to say the least. The best buccaneer on a pirate ship is never a good person.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.