Corey Lewandowski. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
There comes a point in George R. R. Martin’s sprawling Game of Thrones epic where it is revealed (spoiler alert!) that Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish has been behind a bunch of the narrative’s heretofore mysterious plots and machinations. He was the one that poisoned Joffrey and tried to have Bran killed and set a bunch of other random misdeeds in motion. When Sansa asks him, you know, why he did all this he doesn’t have a coherent answer, basically saying that is only goal is to sow chaos and watch the world burn.
I remember reading that and thinking to myself “This is so unrealistic What kind of maniac would just create random carnage with no higher purpose, but just for the sake of the thing?” Well, it turns out George R. R. Martin was a bit shrewder than I gave him credit for. There are currently quite a few real-life Littlefingers running around Washington inflaming random nonsense and stirring the pot for no particular reason other than Trump is an agent of chaos and he cannot help but bring it with him wherever he goes.
Lewandowski’s performance before Congress this morning is a perfect example. He was combative and inflammatory, taking shots at the press, Democrats and Hillary Clinton with no higher purpose in mind other than to sow discord and chaos in the American political system and in our society at large. He invoked executive privilege to avoid answering any question he didn’t want to, even though he never worked for the White House. And the Democrats, it turns out, are somewhat powerless to do anything because no one really envisioned political actors actively trying to undermine the system this directly before. Our system, in its current form, is rather uniquely unprepared to deal with witnesses and actors who simply refuse to play by the established rules.
Their only goal is to great chaos and watch the world burn. In the wake of the destruction they are creating, they believe opportunities for their own self-aggrandizement and benefit will appear, and this is the logic that underpins their drive to destroy. No higher purpose. No rhyme or reason. Like Littlefinger, they merely want to tear everything down knowing that the turbulence they leave in their wake will create opportunities for them to exploit later. It is a shameful thing. And many in our society, not fully comprehending what is happening around us at this moment in time, are content to sit on the sidelines and watch the world burn with them, cheering on the spectacle as if it were just another episode of reality TV.
The only slight ray of hope in this morass is that, when it was all said and done, Littlefinger lay on the stones at Winterfell with his throat cut, while the world of Westeros smoked in ruins behind him, a hulking steaming mess. We may be approaching that eventuality sooner than many think, and that embarrassing performance before Congress today by one of Trump’s hand-picked agents of chaos couldn’t make this any clearer.