Trump, Trending Towards Treason

THE CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU was established in 2010 as part of the Dodd-Frank financial services reform act, all intended to limit the power and ability of big financial services firms to, quite frankly, further enrich themselves by screwing people out of their hard earned money. The CFPB is one of those government regulatory agencies which simultaneously protects the common citizen from the evil designs of big business - to the extent that big business has evil designs, which, indisputably, it does, at least occasionally. It also serves the interest of the preservation of capitalism, by preventing big business from destroying itself and the capitalistic system through predatory cannibalism, sort of like, say, the Securities and Exchange commission. By providing necessary regulation for the establishment and preservation and enforcement of fair business practices, in other words. In other words, the sort of government agency which conservatives tend to despise. A perfect example of what free market fanatical money freaks call "big government", on which right wing greed mongers blame all social ills, real and imagined, insanely, the very term "big government" having been repeated like a mantra so often that the very term inspires fear and loathing among the uninformed. Donald trump, the current don of the right wing money grubbing crowd, hounded the head of the CFPB into resigning, then broke the law by appointing a replacement, a man who loves money but hates government. According to law, the deputy director of the Bureau should have assumed control. Trump thus continues his pattern of, as Jefferson said, eating out the substance of the people, by quietly dismantling their government. He has placed, quite bluntly, more wolves in more hen houses than a corrupt poultry cartel seeking to destroy competition. Also, he has utterly failed to fill thousands of government jobs with warm bodies of any sort, thus "hollowing out" the government, as a pundit put it. This is because trump and his ilk disdain any person, place, or thing with the potential to ameliorate capitalistic excesses, and its victims. Every executive agency, every cabinet level department is grossly understaffed, one full year into the Trump administration, by design. The government is running on fumes and memory. Has Trump gotten around, at long last, to appointing an ambassador to South Korea? (hint: no) A rather important position to leave unfilled, one might argue. Rex Tillerson, who soon might himself be on the way out, assures us that the state department has indeed not been hollowed out, apparently failing to notice that thousands of experienced, career diplomats have quietly left the building in bewilderment and presumed disgust. Tillerson's crime, it seems, is that he believes that diplomacy can on rare occasion work, and he does not think it is necessarily a good idea for the U.S. to exit the Paris climate change agreement, nor the nuclear bomb treaty with Iran. Trump has said that diplomacy is a waste of time. Treason is narrowly defined in the constitution as leading a military insurrection against the United States. If it were more broadly defined, our political parties might constantly accusing each other of it. If treason were defined more accurately and broadly, president Trump could be accused of it on at least two counts: that he is attempting to destroy the United States and the world by refusing to fight climate change he pretends it doesn't exist), and that he is attempting to destroy the U.s. government by refusing to allow the number of people necessary to operate it to work for it. Also, by appointing people to operate it various agencies and departments who are seeking the destruction of the agencies and departments to which they have been appointed.It is also increasingly likely that Trump cooperated with Russian operatives to assist in his election, and it is perfectly obvious to any competent ethics attorney that Trump's business empire presents a virtual cobweb of conflicts of interests with the presidency, according to Richard Painter, the world's leading authority on the matter. Amazingly, none of this meets the definition of treason, but seems good grounds upon which t initiate impeachment proceedings. To actually commit treason, Trump might have to give a wink an a nod to his white supremacist supporters for further terrorist activity, or incite terrorism or war by re-tweeting anti-Islamic propaganda, or making a few crass fat jokes about the North Korean dictator, while a crude intercontinental ballistic missile lurches lazily towards, say, Mara Lago.