The Psychology of the Bootlicker, Part Two (Bolton for the win!)
I will not bother reiterating all the reasons I have previously offered in support of my minority opinion that John Bolton is none of the things his “conservative” admirers claim he is, and is in fact almost the exact opposite of all those things. Nor will I bother reminding you that I called him out as a cowardly sycophantic lifelong bureaucrat who would do or say anything for career advancement, the day he accepted the position as Donald Trump’s national security appeaser — that is, the day he finally got the prize he had begged for with incessant smarmy bootlicking on Fox News since the day Trump was elected.
I will merely direct you to this article from Patterico, who in turn got the main information from Allahpundit. Here is the nub of it:
HUH? John Bolton: “When he says ‘I’m going to take [Kim] at his word,’ it doesn’t mean he accepts it as reality. It means he accepts that’s what Kim Jong Un said”
In other words, When Trump says he believes Kim it doesn’t mean that he believes him.pic.twitter.com/M1Dpryhp3g
— News Corpse (@NewsCorpse) March 3, 2019
That would be ridiculous, even if Trump had not gone on, in that very same press conference, to explain in detail why he believes Kim’s word, and how Kim would not lie about something like this. But since we know that Trump did offer such a complete defense of his beloved young superior, we also know what Bolton’s attempt to squirm out of it really means. In short, John Bolton is just another lying court flatterer, except that he, like the other court flatterers this time around, is kissing the ring of a court jester.
And who are the other court flatterers? I have written about Mike Pompeo before, plumping his feathers with pride and self-importance in his role as America’s point man on global appeasement, even as his new boss ruthlessly smeared his predecessor at the State Department. Now Bolton, who was the Republican Party’s designated Fake Tough Guy before Trump was handed that mantle, is out there trying to top Pompeo in shamelessness.
In truth, though, the White House competition for Sycophant of the Month must be one vicious backbiting-fest. (You know none of these people could criticize an opponent to his face.) For it is now inconceivable to me that anyone could accept a job in Trump’s administration who was not essentially, in his deepest core, a worm. Lying for Trump — lying so meekly, ridiculously, and foppishly, that you know everyone knows you are lying, but you have to do it anyway — is the first item in the job description for any member of Trump’s administration. Therefore, it is impossible for me to believe that there is a single member of the administration, certainly in any high-ranking position, who does not share the spineless, careerist, self-seeking instincts of Bolton and Pompeo. Don’t waste my time trying to name exceptions: John Kelly, Nikki Haley, blah, blah, blah. I don’t have time to waste on such niggling. If they accepted a job working for Trump, and they kept that job more than a month (okay, forget the conditions — if they accepted a job with Trump, period), then they were the willing fuel for a dumpster fire that is burning up whatever remained of The United States of America as a constitutional republic, and they accepted that ignominious role in history for nothing but personal advancement. Shame on all of them, and to hell with the lot of them.
Meanwhile, Trump is now going around claiming that the reason his latest “deal” with Kim Jong-un fell through is that the Democrats harmed Trump’s reputation with their awkwardly-timed Michael Cohen testimony. Right; it was bad timing to choose the day Trump was planning to sign away the security interests of the U.S. and her allies to remind everyone that Trump only hires two-faced sycophants who earn their money and advancement within his organization by lying for him and publicly praising him.
In other words, Kim was apparently going to be turned off by learning that Trump’s administration operates exactly like his own. Perhaps Trump’s concern was reasonable. After all, if you are a lying sociopath who will do anything to achieve your vanity goals, and who surround yourself only with people prepared to tell you what you want to hear, truth and humanity be damned, then the last thing you want to learn is that the person you are trying to take advantage of today is just as dishonorable and shameless as you are, and surrounds himself with empty shells and yes-men as dishonest and spineless as your own.
Perhaps this is an instantiation of Kant’s best example in support of the categorical imperative: You should always tell the truth, because in a world in which everyone lied, no one would trust anyone anymore, since everyone would know that everyone else was a liar; hence, lying would no longer bring any advantages.
