July 6 Open Thread: OK, Black Bart, Now You Get Yours

I’m not denying that Scott Pruitt’s downfall is satisfying. We all want to see these bastards get theirs, and as Amanda Marcotte says, liberals needed something to celebrate after the most destructive week yet of the Trump Interregnum. But this victory is hollow, because Pruitt’s cartoonish corruption wasn’t the actual problem. As she wrote before Andrew Wheeler was announced as Pruitt’s replacement,

Whether it’s Wheeler or some other industry apologist, whoever replaces Pruitt will be far worse for the country and the world than Pruitt was. This person will almost certainly be able to enact Pruitt’s pro-pollution agenda while staying out of the headlines. As long as this person keeps a lid on how far he’ll go to get fancy lotions and expensive meals at taxpayer expense, he’ll be able to clear the path for oil and coal companies to bake our planet like a casserole without much pushback from the media or the public.

Trump, ever the coward, couldn’t face Pruitt himself and had John Kelly do the dirty work. This might be the most underreported facet of the Trump character: He’s famous for the “You’re fired” meme, but he’s afraid to do that in real life.

It’s the flimsy reality behind the blustery image that allows much of the government to carry on as if Trump isn’t there. People running core departments act as if they don’t take him seriously.

The problem with that solution is dawning on Wall Street and big business, who didn’t seem to realize that he means a lot of the crazy, and having a loony tunes president who’ll let you enact your agenda isn’t all sunshine and balloons. Lots of clowns, though.

One reason I hesitate to publicly chastise conservative snowflakes is that they melt at such a low temperature that it amounts to overkill. Consider the case of Alan Dershowitz, who turned a quick buck by whining out an op-ed about how his liberal friends on Martha’s Vineyardwon’t invite him to dinner because he defends Trump. This seems to upset him much more than a public fracas would.

Finally, many liberals might be surprised at the tepid public support for even legal immigration. You won’t be surprised to learn that those views are based on widespread ignorance of who and how many there are and how they live. For example, 5.5% of immigrants are unemployed; native-born Americans estimated 26%. Only 13.6 percent live in poverty, not 35%. About 10 percent of immigrants are Muslim; Americans guessed over 22 percent. So much for ignorance being bliss.