There is no perfection in the human experience. Nobody is perfect. No-one is perfectly evil. Everyone is some complex combination of both good and bad, virtue and vice.
Most folks have at least an implicit belief in justice. We expect the good side to be rewarded, and what is evil to cost in some way. At very least, we believe both should be acknowledged. The colloquialism goes back to the middle ages: Murder will out.
The hope never dies. Justice will win in the end. Misdeeds will be uncovered and condemned. Most of us were taught the myth as children.
A photo makes the rounds: 
Sometimes condemnation doesn’t seem like enough, but it’s all we’ve got.
This administration seems to turn that hope on its head.
Misbehavior gets rewarded. Virtue gets you hanged.
Donald Trump asked Sally Yates to take over the Justice Department until his nominee, Jeff Sessions, was confirmed. She became famous when she declined to defend an unconstitutional order: a travel ban on Muslims.
But there was more to the story. She discovered a security breech. National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was for sale. He was in the pocket of the Russian government and he was accepting bribes from Turkey. She quietly demanded a face-to-face meeting with White House Counsel Don McGahn and privately delivered the bad news. Michael Flynn was a clear and present danger to the security of the United States.
Sally Yates was fired. She had lasted less than 2 weeks. Flynn stayed where he was until mainstream media found out he was dirty. Fake news, you know.
Sally Yates got hung for doing the right thing.
Jeff Sessions has earned his reputation. He has a history of denigrating black people and excusing racists. He opposed having civil rights forced on white folks. So he was nominated for Attorney General.
Doing the wrong thing gets rewarded.
As Attorney General, he resisted Presidential pressure to find ways to prosecute Trump’s opponents. He would not interfere with investigations into the Trump campaign. So President Trump repeatedly humiliates him.
If he is eventually fired, it will not be for his racist views. He will be hung for doing the right thing.
FBI Director James Comey is the most noted example of Trump standards.
When Hillary Clinton was cleared of wrongdoing in her treatment of memos, memos that were much later designated as secret, Mr. Comey broke a long-standing ethic in the criminal justice system. The Department of Justice had long refused to issue statements when the decision was to not issue charges. In cases involving political figures, even the decision to issue criminal charges had been timed so as to not interfere with elections.
Mr. Comey ignored all that and subjected Mrs. Clinton to a rhetorical public beating.
Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
– James Comey, July 5, 2016
He pretty much threw the election to Donald Trump. President Trump gave him a public hug. Comey later denied that what appeared to be a kiss was anything other than a whispered verbal congratulation.
Oh, and there’s James! He’s become more famous than me.
– Donald Trump, January 22, 2017
Then, James Comey refused to end an ongoing investigation into Donald Trump’s campaign.
But regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey knowing there was no good time to do it.
And in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself — I said, you know, this Russia thing, with Trump and Russia, is a made-up story.
– Donald Trump, May 11, 2017
Malfeasance gets a public hug.
James Comey got hung for doing the right thing.
What will not get you hung is ordinary corruption.
At Washington University here in St. Louis, Law Professor Kathleen Clark is a leading expert on legal ethics. She is on the DC Bar Rules of Professional Conduct Review Committee:
Compare this administration, and these investigations, to previous administrations. How do they compare?
This is not normal. It’s not in any way normal to have four or five cabinet secretaries under investigation for their travel habits. It’s also not normal for cabinet secretaries to disregard the public fisc in the way that they have. And so, I think it’s part of a larger pattern in this administration.
There are exceptions, of course.
Michael Flynn was let go after news accounts appeared in the Washington Post. Fake News.
Trump staff secretary Rob Porter left after news accounts of domestic violence. Fake News.
National Security Council official Rich Higgins wrote a memo warning that pretty much everyone who ever criticized the administration had joined in a great Moa-ist conspiracy of globalists, bankers, the deep state, Islamists. He was let go after news accounts of the memo. Fake News.
When fake news gets loud enough, the intervention makes life hard.
That is one reason a free press is so terribly inconvenient for even the most honest of administrations.
Scott Pruit, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency comes to mind.
Pruitt is under at least 10 investigations:
one questioning large raises for two staffers,
several on spending for personal security luxury travel and thousands on office upgrades,
another about his $50 a night lease of a condo from the wife of an energy lobbyist,
and retribution questions.
Some EPA employees who criticized the spending have reportedly been demoted or forced to change jobs.
– Lisa Desjardins, reporting for PBS, April 26, 2018
Mr Pruitt does have answers. He recently appeared before a house committee. Peter Welch (D-Vermont) asked him about one travel charge.
Did the taxpayers spend thirty thousand dollars for a security detail to accompany you on the trip to Disneyland?
Uh, I, I’m unsure about that.
Disneyland? Seriously?
But that is not Mr. Pruitt’s only response.
Those who have attacked the EPA and attacked me are doing so because they want to attack and derail the President’s agenda and undermine this administration’s priorities.
– Scott Pruitt, April 26, 2018
Actually, what is not being investigated is what Mr. Pruitt is doing to the environment.
Two regulations that are being quietly deconstructed have gotten lots of publicity in years past.
Humans have known for thousands of years that something was wrong with lead. Ancient Romans wrote about the need to replace lead pipes with other materials. It wasn’t until more modern times that we discovered how seriously the brain is affected when lead sneaks in and replaces calcium. We now know that children are especially vulnerable.
And we know something about mercury. From the March of Dimes:
Babies exposed to mercury in the womb can have brain damage and hearing and vision problems.
These are only two of the many protections that Mr. Pruitt is rolling back.
Fake News has already made Scott Pruitt hard for the administration to defend: the expenditures, the travel expenses, the duplicate high security communications set ups. Hardest to defend are the demotions and forced transfers of employees who tried to warn Mr. Pruitt that the waste and abuses were against the rules. Doing the right thing got them hung.
What keeps him in office is his version of the Trump principle: eliminating rules that protect children from lead and mercury poisoning will be rewarded.
Outside pressure, the threat of Fake News, might still prevail. He could be replaced by someone who can destroy the environment more ethically.
If Mr. Pruitt is fired for doing the right thing, the administration will be hanging an innocent man.
to get episodes automatically downloaded.