January 14, 2019
By James Hitchcock
“When examined collectively, these data points establish a strong narrative — many powerful, Republican leaders in Congress are behaving in an incongruous fashion, in relationship to Trump and Russia, inconsistent with a purely partisan policy agenda.”
Hidden Motives behind Key GOP Leaders’ Cooperation with Trump & Russia: An Evidence-based Examination of Irrational Behaviors & the Republican Congress Members Who Exhibit Them
~ Richard Painter & Leanne Watt
The medium.com article quoted above is from November; the lines it draws to connect the dots have become even more clear since.
To understand this, one need only watch 1950s-60s Westerns on the Grit TV network. Every example plays out there in the familiar theme of the rich stranger coming to town and charismatically enthralling the locals. But then, as his power grows, they begin to see dangerous undercurrents to his motives and goals.
Devin Nunes is the lickspittle who, early on, is told “in for a penny; in for a pound.” He realizes he has hitched his horse to this wagon, and now his survival depends on its survival.
Lindsay Graham is the guy who tried to warn everyone about the stranger until the stranger sidles up to him at the bar, and buys him a drink to discuss their differences. The stranger leans close, and whispers a bourbon-soaked secret into Lindsay’s ear, and the look on Lindsay’s face, reflected in the mirror hung over the line of liquor bottles behind the bar, tells us everything we need to know: the stranger knows why Lindsay left the civilized world to start a new life in the west.
Mayor McConnell and Sheriff Ryan are the amoral power-grubbing duo that run the town to their own advantage who at first look askance at the stranger. But they quickly join forces with him as the money that mysteriously flows from the long-played-out gold mine the stranger purchased enriches the town, and thereby flows into their own pockets.
Somewhere in Act II of our drama the sheriff accidentally discovers the mine is nothing more than a front: the hideout of the stranger’s gang of stagecoach robbers responsible for the rash of hold-ups that started coincidentally at the time the stranger arrived in town. He tells the mayor, who warns him to silence, as both of them rely heavily on the cash the stranger throws around town. And, as the mayor tells the sheriff, “It’s not like anybody has been killed in the robberies.”
We are now entering Act III of our Western drama, beyond the time this essay was written.
Suddenly, a stagecoach robbery goes awry, and the stagecoach driver is killed. The town is in shock that the robberies they had accepted as a danger of life in the untamed west have now become serious. The townspeople are torn into two factions: those firmly behind the sheriff and mayor, and those who are beginning to support the new federal marshal who has pledged to stop the robberies.
The sheriff and mayor confront the stranger. They warn him the robberies must stop, or they will have to come after him. The new federal marshal in town has been poking around, and they’re worried he might tie them to the robberies by following the money.
The stranger, facing his first real challenge, threatens to expose the pair’s complicity himself. He grows bellicose and demands their sworn loyalty as he closes his iron grip on the town.
Knowing that if they act the stranger will drag them down with them, the sheriff and mayor refuse to act to stop the paralysis gripping the town.
I’m not sure how reality will end. But in the movie, the sheriff and mayor secretly think that by appearing to cave to the demands of the stranger, they are leaving him in sole blame for the town’s paralysis. And when the federal marshal finally discovers the secret behind the stranger’s gold mine, they will be washed clean of blame.
But in the final showdown, the stranger manages to provoke a gunfight in their midst, and all three are shot dead by the marshal at the mine entrance, strong boxes of stolen gold spilled at their feet.