Source: marketwatch.com

Wednesday night, I was at a hotel bar in Montana and overheard a few guys talking about the Mueller testimony.

“It sounds like Mueller didn’t read his own report,” one of them said, with a bit of a snicker. “He didn’t seem to know what was in it.”

It sure looked that way a few times to me as well. But here’s some perspective that might be useful. I travel a lot and give talks on some of the history books I’ve written; they’re hundreds of pages long and to be honest, even though I wrote them, I don’t remember every little detail. Folks quote passages from it to me—“you know, from page 112,” they say. That’s how it looked with Mueller, as he was peppered with rapid-fire questions from Republicans, some of whom asked ten questions in their allotted five minutes. Mueller’s performance was bad, but the underlying dynamics of the hearing made it difficult for it to be very good.

Then there is a far more serious point, one that shows how far American civilization has sunk: a legendary lawman laid out some of the most damaging accusations against a sitting president in history—including ten allegations of obstruction of justice—but because he isn’t a smoothie on television, somehow that’s enough for supporters of the president to say that none of it matters. Ten allegations of obstruction of justice—and there’s nothing to see here, folks. That’s what happens when you drink the Kool-Aid. All that seems to matter today in our degraded culture is whether you’re slick on TV, and if you’re not, well, you’re a schmo.

We live in a superficial, image-driven, dumbed-down culture. All that matters is how you look and sound. Trump knows TV, he’s obviously comfortable on it. Mueller is not. Does this convey trust of Trump and distrust of Mueller? Some seem to think so. It apparently doesn’t matter that Mueller, 74, volunteered for the Marines in Vietnam, led men in combat and was awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. It apparently doesn’t matter if Mueller, a lifelong Republican, was appointed to the FBI by George W. Bush, and unanimously confirmed twice by the Senate for that job.

And it apparently doesn’t matter if he went on to be, after J. Edgar Hoover, the second-longest serving director in FBI history, took down terrorists, mafia kingpins and drug lords. It doesn’t matter that all of this reflects a lifetime of service, honor and integrity. While Mueller was dedicating a lifetime to serving his nation, Trump was dodging the draft, partying with accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and hosting a superficial reality show. Yet who do tens of millions of Americans trust? Our nation is sick and in deep trouble.

Also sad is that those lawmakers knocking Mueller’s inability to remember every crossed T and dotted i in the report never bothered to read it themselves. These are the same hypocrites who vote on bills they don’t read. Hell, lawmakers don’t even write legislation anymore; in modern Washington, bills are often written by corporate lobbyists and given to the puppets they have bought off to vote on.

Next time you see your Congressman (if you even know who represents you in Congress, that is), do this: ask them what’s on page 53, section 4 subsection 3b of some bill they’re bragging about. Spoiler alert: They won’t be able to. And to be fair, I wonder how many amendments, articles and clauses to the Constitution President Trump can name; after all he swore to “preserve, protect and defend” it. He claims to have read it, and he never lies, right?

The primacy of how people look and sound is also the work of much of our modern media—specifically cable TV. I switched around between CNN, Fox and MSNBC, and a lot of the coverage was on Mueller’s awkward interaction with lawmakers. The real story was the substance of what he said, of course—how Trump was not cleared of any wrongdoing, ten allegations of obstruction of justice, how he can be indicted the day after he leaves office and so forth. Fox in particular didn’t seem to think these things were nearly as important as the fact Mueller stumbled when mentioning these things.

There was also this: Mueller described ongoing Russian interference in our elections; their assault on our democracy, and how they’re planning more attacks in 2020. We have a president who doesn’t think this is a serious issue—but at least he’s smooth when he says it. That tens of millions of Americans aren’t bothered by any of this is terrifying.