Global Anxiety

Last Tuesday, a Saudi journalist named Jamal Khashoggi went to his embassy in Istanbul to get a certificate stating that he was divorced so that he could get engaged to a Turkish woman.  She says that she waited “right outside” of the consulate for eleven hours, but he never reappeared.  Surveillance videos show him going in but not coming out.  The Saudi government has denied all knowledge and states that he left the embassy a few minutes to an hour after he arrived.  The Turkish government has made an official request to search the Saudi embassy, and they have given permission.  So far, Jamal Khashoggi has not reappeared.

It should be noted that Mr. Khashoggi has/had gone from being a staunch royalist advocate of / adviser to the Saudi government to recently becoming more critical of the way royal power was being used by the new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.  He had obtained legal residency in the United States and avoided returning to Saudi Arabia.  Finally, the Turkish autocrat privately stated his opinion that Jamal Khashoggi had been murdered and his body dismembered and spirited out of the Saudi embassy.

Last Saturday, Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America by a two-vote margin.  If you are keeping count, this is the second Justice who has been confirmed– and is still sitting– following credible allegations of sexual harassment, addiction to pornography, sexual assault, alcoholism, or just plain exposing himself while under the influence of alcohol– allegations which were perfunctorily investigated by the FBI in both cases and swept under the rug.

This past week, the IPCC released a regularly scheduled report which stated, in sum, “It’s Later Than You Think,” concluding that the global economy has about twenty years to switch to a completely net carbon-free state or face disastrous climate change– a switch which the leaders of the United States of America, for one country, do not think is necessary nor advisable, having characterized global climate change as a “Chinese hoax.”

The current president of the United States has been acknowledged to be an unindicted co-conspirator by the Federal Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in accepting the guilty pleas of Michael Cohen.

Associates of Roger Stone who have been subpoenaed by special prosecutor Mueller are refusing to appear, retorting instead with the claim that Mueller does not have proper authority to be a special prosecutor in the first place– a court case which will almost inevitably be adjudicated at the Supreme Court level, should they choose to take the case.  This case alone makes the presence of Mr. Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court particularly problematic.  An adverse ruling by the Court could bring the investigation to a halt.

There have already been strong hints that Donald Trump is planning a purge for the Justice Department and especially the FBI after the mid-term elections on November 6, 2018.  The House of Representatives, which will probably turn majority Democratic in the elections less than a month away; some Democrats are vowing to use their majority powers to initiate investigations into Brett Kavanaugh’s truthfulness during his confirmation hearings and Donald Trump’s violations of the the Emoluments Clause.

Is it any wonder that there has been an increase in global anxiety lately?