History May Not Echo -- But It Rhymes... In A 46 Year Old Vintage -- Buckley, On Nixon/Mao.

More than a generation ago, William F. Buckley (someone I almost universally disagreed with, save this) quite elegantly (and rightly) excoriated then President Richard Nixon for granting legitimacy to a brutal regime, while gaining essentially nothing. . . for the cause of western style democratic ideals.

He was right to do so. And for the record, it was not Nixon who modernized China's thinking. It was a global economy that threatened to leave the Chinese behind -- stuck in a dark underworld of 19^th Century agrarian industry. [So China moderated -- and modernized. . . itself. And thus became a global economic superpower.]

So too, with Trump and his Lil' Rocket Man stunt: never mind that Fox, Rove, Hannity and Malkin were screaming -- a scant four years ago -- that Mr. Obama was a traitor for even considering any meeting with the same man. Never mind that Trump brought a pot-bitcoin shilling Dennis "The Worm" Rodman with him, on TV at right, as if to viscerally underline the notion that 45's entire life is a singularly sad farce -- and never mind that he has already left, without securing. . . anything, other than a self-scripted tribute to his fat ego. Trump was. . . Kim Jong Un's lil b!tch.

Even an idiot may readily see that Buckley was right about Nixon, just as we are right about. . . Trump. He has debased American ideals -- by praising a monster. Let's slip back, to 1972, then:

. . . .“That should dispel the last suspicion that there is a trace of ideological conviction left in Richard Nixon.” He wasn’t suggesting that Nixon is not committed, within the United States, to the usual ideals — self-government, a private sector, a bill of rights. Merely that he is utterly indifferent to whether these ideals are practiced elsewhere in the world: indeed, that he apparently cares not at all if these ideals are persecuted in other parts of the world. . . .

As long as human beings are free to use the language, they will find elegant excuses for depriving other human beings of their freedom. And [by implication, Nixon], as I have said, makes no bones about freedom’s end. “Turning back towards the hotel, I pass a Protestant church -- its closed gates bearing the banner, ‘Carry through the Cultural Revolution to the end. . . .'”

It is in a season that receives cordially the theoretical works of B. F. Skinner and the journalism of Ross Terrill, that Richard Nixon is operating, toasting Chairman Mao, who by material standards has yet to do for his country as much as Adolf Hitler did for his. Somehow the generic incantation, which used instantly to collapse such analyses -- Mussolini made the trains run on time -- doesn’t have its ancient power to restore instantly the focus. . . .

The reason is that the West, so far gone these days in a rare combination of satiety and self-abuse, is indifferent in part to freedom, in whole to the cause of freedom. By contrast the Chinese Communists are not indifferent. They are proof against Western derision because they know what they want, are utterly outspoken in their consecration to human debasement as a means of achieving Communism, lucid and unswerving in their designs, insouciant to the resentment we used to feel, at the corruption of the terms that used to designate our ideals: justice, liberty, individual rights, government as the servant of the people. Richard Nixon -- his glass raised high to Mao Tse-tung, toasting to a long march together, he and we, likening our two revolutions to each other, landing at Andrews to impart the information that the Chinese people greatly esteem their government -- may yet emerge as the most flexible man of the century, perhaps even as the most deracinated American who ever lived and exercised great power. . . .

I think overnight Trump has eclipsed him. And that is. . . horrifying. Trump has become a comical dancing bear -- for the most brutal still-living dictator of this century. All without any net gain -- for anyone. Save of course, Trump himself, and his (imagined potential, but not likely) Nobel. Disgusting.

And all of this may overshadow the fact that Jared and Ivanka made about $82 million in their first full year in the West Wing, by trading favors and emoluments that their odious brand of lawless White House operations afford -- to their outside business contacts. Was North Korea all a distraction -- to create cover for this? I dunno. But perhaps that credits this crew of crooks with too much savvy -- too much foresight -- by half.

Onward, just the same, on a warm, wet, cloudy Tuesday.

नमस्ते