The wording of the NYT’s editorial on [Scott] Pruitt is an interesting window into the liberal elite’s dilemma: “Had Trump spent an entire year scouring the country for someone to…he could not have found a more suitable candidate than…” I’ve forgotten most of my Latin grammar and was never that good at it anyway, but this kind of counterfactual perfect subjunctive (or whatevz) is necessary because the entire premise of the editorial is false. But not in the way they think. It isn’t a question of fact-checking whether DJT himself literally spent a year scouring, with an uncertain answer that requires this kind of constipated verbal hedging. The question is whether corporate America has objectively, demonstrably spent decades planning and working to transform the US government into a mercenary force in their employ. And the answer is yes. They’ve spent decades throwing sh*t at the machinery of democracy at every level to see what sticks. And Pruitt is one of those turds. But the NYT can’t really say that, because then it wouldn’t be the usual shtick — whether Trump will acknowledge the gravitas of the moment, listen to his better angels, etc.. It’d be about something very different, and they’re not ready to go there yet.
(NYT)