The Contaminator & Co

James Comey: How Trump Co-opts Leaders Like Bill Barr: Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive this president.

[edited to better reflect reality] "Amoral leaders have a way of revealing the character of those around them. Sometimes what they reveal is inspiring. For example, James Mattis, the former secretary of defense, resigned over principle, a concept so alien to Crook-in-Chief that it took days for the [dimwitted] UNpresident to realize what had happened, before he could start lying about the man.

But more often, proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing. I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein [the real targets of Comey's Faustian insights]. Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive LIAR-in-Chief and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because LIAR-in-Chief eats your soul in small bites."

......
"You can’t say this out loud — maybe not even to your family — but in a time of emergency, with the nation led by a deeply unethical person, this will be your contribution, your personal sacrifice for America. You [along with more than 50% of individuals on the planet] are smarter than Idiot-in-Chief, and you are playing a long game for your country, so you can pull it off where lesser leaders have failed and gotten fired by tweet.

Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his "leadership", tout his commitment to values.

And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul."

[The problem that will remain when the venal RepuGNicans have been removed from undeserved office? Unpatriotic Americans too dim, duped, desperate, and/or deplorable to dump the Russia-installed devil.]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/opinion/william-barr-testimony.html .