Matt’s Marvelous Mailbag seeks to provide marginally adequate answers to much better questions about politics, economics, social life, theology, or any potpourri you see fit to have answered. Send questions to mailbag.bereans@gmail.com.  

I have to start out this week by recommending a piece of classical music: Samson and Delilah Act 2 by Saint-Saens. Even if opera isn’t your thing, this piece is still a beautiful flight brought to us by the female voice. I had the good pleasure of having this piece sneak up on me while working through a classical music playlist, and it stopped me in my tracks in demand of my attention. If you’ve never had this experience, get thee to a Spotify or a Pandora or an Amazon Music.

Q: Nathan asks: “Do you think the Mueller investigation should be ended or continued, and if continued, for how much longer?”

A: I think it should be concluded properly and in short order. We are approaching the two year mark on this investigation, and we still don’t have a major smoking gun that seriously implicates Trump. Manafort was put away for his own shady dealings, and I am very suspicious of the way the FBI treated Mike Flynn; they seem to have baited him into making some careless statements and flat out deceived him into thinking he was just having a casual conversation when he really should have had a lawyer present with him. The Strzok/Page messages make it apparent that high-ranking members of law enforcement had an “insurance policy” against letting Donald Trump become President, and need we dwell too long on the fact that this whole investigation was kicked off on an unverified, salacious, and secretive FISA court order? Oh, and this debacle with BuzzFeed (a most appropriate example of collective mendaciousness and general nitwittery) over the weekend has really been agitating me. It was so bad that the Mueller team themselves had to come out and cast the BuzzFeed allegations as “not accurate.” At this point, I find it hard to stomach the notion that this investigation was not at least in part pre-planned, and I think Trump’s firing of Comey merely provided the cover they needed to kick off the special counsel.

The wild card at this point is Michael Cohen. He is probably the most dangerous player to Trump right now, and I suppose it’s possible that he comes out with something that truly sinks the Donald, but there are a couple of issues I think we should note with him:

1. Regardless of what Cohen says, he definitely suffers from a credibility problem, so anything he says is going to come under suspicion. The flip of this is that President Trump also suffers from a credibility problem in this area as well, which suggests to me that without some really concrete evidence we just have two New Yorkers try to out-loudmouth each other. Simply having Cohen or Trump spout off their version of the story is not going to bring answers.
2. The original mandate, as I recall, for this special counsel was to investigate possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, but they have clearly gone beyond this mandate into finding out if Trump lied about ‘knowing’ (wink, wink) Stormy Daniels. By all accounts, Mueller is just looking for something, anything with which to convict Trump. And we shouldn’t really be surprised about this either. Special counsels laden with prosecutors and a bottomless pool of resources are going to prosecute with fury. That’s why Justice Scalia wrote so fervently against them. At the whim of the Attorney General, the nation’s resources (read: taxpayers’ money) and the full force of the law can be summoned for the singular purpose of convicting a man by any means necessary. I, for one, am not a particular fan of my tax money being used to fund an endless operation designed to crucify someone, mandate be accursed.

So, to sum up, it is time for this investigation to conclude. Mueller had a mandate, and I think he’s just about hit the point of abusing it. Do I want justice? Of course, I do, and if Mueller has something he needs to let it drop. But, I also want to live in a society where political opponents don’t haul each other through the legal wringer just because they lost an election.

Q: Nathan also asks: “Do you believe that the mainstream media has a clear bias in favor of Democrats and are not the different reactions to Pelosi’s and Trump’s actions (postponing/cancelling SOTU vs. cancelling plane trip overseeings) a classic example of this double standard?”

A: Yes and yes, but, then again, Fox tends to be overly generous to Trump in some instances, so don’t forget that it cuts both ways. This is why I encourage people to use sources other than just mainstream cable news. Read the Wall Street Journal, BBC, Reuters, New York Times, etc. Get a holistic picture of the scenario you are dealing with.

The main thing I do have against the liberal biases in mainstream media is that I just despise the pretense of impartiality when their reporting is so blatantly skewed. I’m not talking about having a generally left or right leaning tint to reporting; I’m talking about members of the media chanting “Obama, Obama, Obama!” when a reporter from the Daily Caller interrupted him and then fawning over Jim Acosta when he did the same thing to Trump. I’m talking about the press skewering Melania Trump for wearing combat boots in Iraq (why was this even a story?), while they let the Fast and Furious scandal slip under the radar. I’m talking about them calling out Donald Trump for not immediately condemning the white nationalists in Charlottesville and lumping all Republicans in with Steve King while literally withholding a picture of Barack Obama chumming it up with Louis Farrakhan during the 2008 election. I’m talking about them using photos of immigrant children in cages taken during the Obama years and passing them off as Trump’s fault. And, perhaps most notably, I’m talking about them referring to Obama’s two terms as scandal-free, thus glossing over Solyndra, Fast and Furious, the IRS targeting of conservative groups, Benghazi, the backdoor payments to Iran, the stonewalling of agents trying to take down Hezbollah, the deaths at Veteran’s Affairs in Phoenix, and Office of Personnel Management data breach.

The point of this is not to call for less media intensity. On the contrary, I’m quite pleased to have a vigorous press investigating every nook and cranny of the government to expose inefficiency and corruption; it probably keeps the government more honest. But, if we’re going to cook with gasoline during the Trump administration, I expect the same level of heat and intensity during the O’Rourke/Harris administration (just a theoretical, I really have no clue).

Q: Sam asks: “How does Trump’s use of executive orders compare with past presidencies?”

A: At present, he is right on track to be a normal user of executive orders by recent standards. The closest approximators of his current usage, by rate alone, are Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, so make of that what you will. On a broader note, the last couple of years’ worth of executive order usage has been smack in the middle in terms of quantity. Prior to Teddy Roosevelt, executive orders were used more sparsely, averaging in the high teens to low twenties per year. Then came Roosevelt, and the lid was just blown off the top for a couple of years, most notably with the other Roosevelt (FDR) who enacted a whopping 3,728 executive orders (~307 per year). After that, we basically had two major per-year rate drops that defined the next few years of usage, first with Eisenhower who brought the usage down to the 60s or so, and second with Reagan who brought it down to the 40s and below.

Of course, I suppose by founding standards, our first politicians would have blushed, blanched, or blacked out upon seeing the current usage of executive orders, but I suspect there are one or two or a hundred other modern realities which would afford a more substantive pretext for fainting or facial recoloring.

Q: Shelly asks: “What do you think of the UK Parliament’s rejection of the latest Brexit deal?”

A: The UK is just having a jolly, weird run of life right now. On the one hand, Theresa May is solidly in the running for ‘worst job in the world’ as she can’t seem to make anyone happy with any Brexit deal, big or small or none at all; you would think that after all her defeats she would be politically finished — ah, but you’d be wrong, young padawan. The ironic twist is that no one else wants to be in her position, and there are enough people opposed to Cuckoo Corbyn and his band of socialist misfits that she doesn’t seem to be going anywhere yet, hence the reason her newest Brexit deal can get smashed by roughly a 2-1 margin, and she can turn around to comfortably survive a no-confidence vote.

As to what I think the UK should do, I believe they need to follow through on the wishes of the British people and complete Brexit, deal or no deal. What I do not want is a second election, simply because I think that would have a tremendously corrosive effect on the democratic process and set a really bad precedent. “Oh, you don’t like the results of this election? Just have another one to see if you can overturn the results of the first one.” They had their fair and square election, and it’s time to follow through come what may (no pun intended).

Q: Anonymous asks: “With the Midwest being snowed in again, what is your favorite type of soup to have during a snowstorm?”

A: My dear mother makes a white bean chili that is wonderfully savory and satisfying, and it’s a perfect fit for snowy, winter days. Then again, it’s perfect for just about any occasion, but, yeah, I’d go with the white chili.

Q: Charles, Viscount Howick, 2nd Earl Grey asks: “As it’s recently been a New Year, what’s one book you would recommend? One gym habit?”

A: Lovely intrigues that you have there, Charles. For the book, I think I would recommend Business Adventures by John Brooks. Aha, you thought I was going to recommend some political treatise or great work of theology, didn’t you?….You didn’t?….You saw this coming? Oh, ok…well, I stand by my recommendation, regardless. I received this book as a Christmas gift two or three Christmases ago after hearing Bill Gates give it a rousing endorsement, though I hadn’t cracked it until recently. My loss as it turns out. I think it’s only proper to echo Mr. Gates’s quick summary here: “Business Adventures is the best business book I’ve ever read.” John Brooks is a masterful story-teller, and I found myself steeped in riveting action at some points and chortling myself into different shades of pink at others. It’s neatly divided into twelve stories, so just read one a night or a week, and you’ll be so much the better for it.

As to the gym habit, I have several that I could recommend, but I am going to go with resistance training, either calisthenics or free weights. From the research I’ve gone over and the stories I’ve collected, resistance training is one of the best things you can do for your body. For some inexplicable reason, much of our culture is infected with the myth that you need to do cardio ’til you puke lactic acid. I say ‘phooey’ on them. Resistance training is far superior on almost every single front, and, for those of you still bitterly clinging to youth, it is a wonderful anti-aging agent for your bones and muscles. Also, if you end up doing free weights, lift heavy, not every day, but often enough for it to mean something. Your body will thank you in the long run.

Annnnd, that’s a wrap. Tune in next week when we tackle the many faces of church denominations and the intellectual development of individuals. Should be a blast! As always, send those questions in to mailbag.bereans@gmail.com.