Saturday Opinions

 

• Trump's pardon of Michael Flynn weeks after he lost the election is, in my mind, prima facie proof that everyone in Trump's orbit believes that Flynn is guilty.

• The story about McKinsey & Company's contribution to the opioid crisis along with Purdue is not pretty. My experience with these kinds of consulting companies is that their work never benefits ordinary folks, only the corporate elite. But they have built an infrastructure in today's capitalism in which the very same corporate elite relies on McKinsey and others to justify its existence, like a feedback loop. It is not lost on me that there is some of this dynamic in the Democratic Party establishment, where the Party exists for the benefit of the consulting class and vice versa. And that consulting class is interested primarily in perpetuating its own existence rather than the interests of the Party's rank and file.

• I can be as cynical and negative as anyone, but there is this: defeating an incumbent president is a big deal. And especially one who probably could have guaranteed his reelection if he had been only half insane throughout 2020 instead of full-bore insane.

• Call me naive, but I doubt that assassination is a viable and sustainable strategy in dealing with Iran.

• I must admit that I am more than a little concerned that some of the folks in Biden's potential national defense team are too comfortable with the idea of military intervention as a foreign policy tool.