At your recommendation, I just read the Brooks column. I am in a different place. The way I see things is that US and British intelligence agencies, along with private consultants (some paid by the Hillary campaign), cooked up the Russian collusion theory without basis, and used that to investigate the Trump administration for 2 years, but couldn't find any substantiating evidence. What they did find is that Trump was very upset about the charges which he considered unfounded. Also, Trump is a pathological liar and loves to call people names without much thought.
Unlike Brooks and most everybody, I'm quite skeptical about the extent of Russian involvement in the 2016 election. I don't have a high regard for our "17 intelligence agencies". They got the Iraq War WMD in 2003 wrong, for example, while Putin and Russia were right on that. Incidentally, Mueller was also wrong about the rationale for Iraq invasion:
On February 11, 2003, FBI Director Robert Mueller testified to Congress that "Iraq has moved to the top of my list. As we previously briefed this Committee, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program poses a clear threat to our national security, a threat that will certainly increase in the event of future military action against Iraq. Baghdad has the capability and, we presume, the will to use biological, chemical, or radiological weapons against US domestic targets in the event of a US invasion."
The Guardian reported on October 12, 2002 that, “Vladimir Putin yesterday rejected Anglo-American claims that Saddam Hussein already possesses weapons of mass destruction".
Of course, you would have been ridiculed by David Brooks and others, and many were in 2002-2003, for siding with Putin instead of Mueller.
At any rate, the U.S. spends more than 10 times as much on intelligence than does Russia. In fact our intelligence budget of approximately $70 billion is greater than their entire military budget.
I compiled a humongous list of my concerns with other intelligence agencies -- The Intelligence Community Tells Us What's Happening (a post which needs some editing, which I hope to do next time I have a couple of spare hours).
Brooks makes a good point about "the referees":
And today, across society, two things are happening: Referees are being undermined, and many are abandoning their own impartiality.
The intelligence agencies are, to a large extent, our referees. The Democrats may regret relying on Mueller and the FBI in their attacks on Trump. From yesterday's New York Times:
President Trump took extraordinary steps on Thursday to give Attorney General William P. Barr sweeping new authorities to conduct a review into how the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia were investigated, significantly escalating the administration’s efforts to place those who investigated the campaign under scrutiny.
In a directive, Mr. Trump ordered the C.I.A. and the country’s 15 other intelligence agencies to cooperate with the review and granted Mr. Barr the authority to unilaterally declassify their documents. The move — which occurred just hours after the president again declared that those who led the investigation committed treason — gave Mr. Barr immense leverage over the intelligence community and enormous power over what the public learns about the roots of the Russia investigation.
The order is a change for Mr. Trump, who last year dropped a plan to release documents related to the Russia investigation amid concerns from Justice Department officials who said making them public could damage national security. At the time, the president was being encouraged by a group of Republican Congress members to declassify the information...
The directive is likely to irk the intelligence community, which has long prized its ability to determine what information about its operations can be released to the public.
Also related to "the referees", I bring you the words of Rahm Emanuel (formerly Obama's Chief of Staff) published a couple of days ago in the Atlantic:
It’s Time to Hold American Elites Accountable for Their Abuses
If Democrats want to address simmering middle-class anger, they need to deliver justice.
For all the focus on inequality and social justice, this middle-class revolt is the most important barrier standing between Democrats and the White House. They can’t afford to ignore it.
Think of what’s happened over the past decade and a half. America endured a war sold on false premises, a bailout of bankers issuing entirely toxic debt... During the Great Recession the nation’s banking elite had lent billions to home buyers without any realistic hope of making good on their debts. Their irresponsible lending not only precipitated a global financial meltdown, but also necessitated a bailout from the nation’s financially stressed middle-class taxpayers. Yet even after being bailed out, the nation’s banking executives never faced any real consequences. No one went to jail. They never had to repay the personal fortunes they’d made by passing out those bad loans. Once again, the middle class was called to bail out the elites who were responsible for the mess while the elites got off scot-free.
That's a pretty good summary of why Bernie and Elizabeth are our best bets to restore trust in our nation's institutions that David Brooks correctly says is needed.
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