Quiet Heroes

You can take Trump's whole pack of jackals and hyenas and put them into an integrity grinder and you wouldn't find what is in the little fingers of the three witnesses who testified last week at the impeachment hearings.

These were truly our best and brightest, to properly use that sometimes maligned phrase, quiet heroes who disobeyed what they perceived as a sketchy White House edict muzzling them, and took their concerns about what they see as the contravention of the rule of law by this same White House and its supreme occupant to the American people.

First, let's talk about their boss, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a West Point coward who has remained silent and in fact been complicit with Donald Trump in maligning and sabotaging the very people he is supposed to lead. Their treatment of Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch was beneath shameful, and when she asked for Pompeo's backing she got silence.

But the people of the United States did not get acquiescent silence from Masha on Friday. So unassailable was her testimony, so compelling her presence compared to the lickspittle Trumpsters she faced, that Trump himself, somehow telepathically looking at the hearings he doesn't watch, was moved to basically threaten her on Twitter in real time, a clear case of witness intimidation, which only served to make her more sympathetic to any fair-minded person.

Even Trump's committee lapdogs were so taken aback by this attack, low rent even for a scumbag like Trump, that they handled Masha with kid gloves during the afternoon. Another reason for their almost civil treatment was that they sensed that if this was to a battle of wits, they were clearly unarmed. 

Compare the composure, confidence, and measured candor of Bill Taylor, George Kent, and Masha, to the yaps and yelps coming out of the drooling mouths of Trump hound dogs like Jim Jordan and his partner in obnoxiousness,Elise Stefanik. She is supposed to be a Repub comer and if that is the case, there is hope across America for every other C-lister. 

Let's talk about style, too, vs a vis what we saw at the hearings. I'm sure Jim Jordan thinks that parading around in his shirtsleeves gives all the rubes back in O-hi-o the idea that he has just shucked that confining suit jacket to give himself some elbow room in getting after the sins of those nasty-ass Democrats. Or maybe it reminds him of his days as a wrestling coach at O-hi-o when he never noticed a pervy team doc who made kids drop trou for a sprained finger. I guess the common knowledge never reached Jimmy Whiteshirt. 

Compare Jordan's shirtsleeves with witness George Kent's really cool bow tie and quietly elegant three-piece windowpane check suit. He looked like you'd want a state department guy to look, and his deportment, too, was quietly elegant in a very plainspoken American way. Compare that with Jordan's wilted wordsalads.

Bill Taylor I would want in the foxhole with me. There is nobody in Trump's whole outfit that has ever been in a foxhole, excluding Pompeo, who wouldn't even fit in a foxhole now. 

Bill Taylor, George Kent, and Masha Yovanovitch showed America what it is to act heroically in the face of opposition that can be truly venomous and incessant. They held up and they shone.

And there will be more quiet heroes to come. Bet on it, Trump.