Robert Mueller was never going to be our Messiah.
His report regarding the investigation of this President (which we have not seen, and likely will not see without substantial redaction by this Administration, thereby rendering it meaningless) was never going to save us.
For months, as I gathered with people in progressive churches and political rallies and humanist conferences, I could feel them myopically pinning their hopes to this man and to this investigation—as if somehow he and it would swiftly and decidedly deliver us from this historic corruption. I could sense they weren’t thinking clearly.
While they anxiously awaited Friday indictment announcements, I tried to temper their expectations, not because there wasn’t likely unprecedented malfeasance surrounding this President—but because career criminals are career criminals for a reason. They make their bones rigging the game, compromising the integrity of the system, stacking the odds to ensure their protection. This began well before the day the locks were changed at the White House—the con was being worked hard by people who’ve made lawlessness their life’s work.
If you were paying attention, you could see this coming.
We’ve witnessed Mitch McConnell literally steal a Supreme Court seat.
We’ve watched the President terminate any Cabinet members who didn’t express undying loyalty.
We’ve watched Republican politicians made persona non grata by their party, with a single deviating vote.
We’ve seen Trump’s inner circle taking all manner of legal hits in order to shield him.
We’ve witnessed him force out Jeff Session in advance of the report, installing loyalist William Barr.
We saw the timeline of the investigation expedited, despite the Special Counsel’s requests for more time.
We’ve seen this President and his surrogates disregard the Rule of Law as a matter of course, in order to assail healthcare and Muslims and migrants and environmental protections.
This was never going to stick.
Regardless of the findings of Mueller’s investigation, there would never be the full accountability that the good and decent people of this country were hoping for and deserve—because Republicans would and will never allow it.
McConnell and Lindsey Graham and Betsy DeVos and Sarah Sanders (and Paul Ryan, Steve Bannon, and Sebastian Gorka before them) have no desire for anything resembling justice. That ship sailed in November of 2016. Despite our forebears noble intentions, the current configuration of leadership will not defend the people. They are predatory toward the people. When you legislatively attack the environment and the sick and the vulnerable, when you harass migrants and Muslims and transgender teenagers and disabled athletes—you cannot be relied on to protect anyone but yourself.
Robert Mueller was never going to save us.
A GOP-controlled Senate isn’t going to save us.
A polluted Evangelical church isn’t.
This Administration of billionaires and career criminals sure as heck isn’t.
Ultimately, the Democrats won’t save us either.
We need to save ourselves.
This means organizing.
It means reaching across barriers of theology and political affiliation and social status, to pool our influence.
It means registering to vote and registering others, and voting in every race we’re able to.
It means running for office or campaigning for candidates or financially supporting ones we believe in.
It means getting pissed off enough to get off social media and physically place ourselves in front of capitol buildings and on courthouse steps, until we are heard.
It means leveraging the power of our numbers in the streets and at the polls.
It will require pastors to be brave enough to speak out against the Franklin Grahams and Jerry Falwells of the world, who have rented out their pulpits to an amoral President.
It will require politicians willing to break ranks with their party in the name of equality and diversity and justice.
It will necessitate people risking rejection and marginalization in their families and workplaces and churches and neighborhood—in order to speak their convictions.
Most importantly, perhaps, it will mean never placing our hopes in a singular human being or even a political party.
No one is going to save us. Not Beto or Bernie or Kamala or Pete.
We have to save ourselves: We the People, speaking and working and protesting and sacrificing and voting in concert, in order to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice in the days in which we find ourselves, where others wish to bend it back.
That’s always the way this has worked.
It will work that way now.
We just need to stop waiting for saviors and superheroes—and move.
