Swamp Rabbit and I went on the road yesterday to work a hick-town event and were stuck in traffic for a long while before we got back to my shack to watch the highlights of the Mueller hearings.

“You were wrong, rabbit,” I said as the cable news recaps were playing. “Mueller clammed up, just like he said he would, but the fact that he’s a Republican had little to do with it.”

“OK, it ain’t politics that stopped him from answering all them questions,” the rabbit conceded. “It’s got more to do with him being old and worn out.”

I had to agree that the special counsel had seemed frail and befuddled; that Mueller the relentless, all-knowing investigator had turned out to be a mythic hero created by the media and embraced by those of us hoping for someone who would single-handedly bring down the most divisive and dangerously corrupt president in U.S. history.

But it was also clear that the hearings hadn’t been a waste of time; that House Democrats strengthened their case just by holding Mueller’s hand and coaxing him to repeat his team’s findings. He declined to answer about two hundred questions, but he did confirm that the Russians had interfered with the 2016 election; that their interference had helped Trump; that Trump had encouraged them to interfere; and that Trump’s cronies, some of whom are already in jail, had schemed with Russian officials on his behalf.

Just as important, Mueller’s testimony reminded viewers that his report had documented multiple instances of obstruction of justice on Trump’s part, including the fact that he’d ordered former White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller and then, after McGahn refused, ordered him to deny he’d ordered the firing.

“And how about them scumbags on the other side,” Swamp Rabbit said, referring to Attorney General William Barr and the Republican members of the Judiciary and Intelligence panels who attacked Mueller. “They all know Trump is a lying pig, but there ain’t a one of them didn’t get down in the mud with him.”

“History will remember them,” I replied. “Just like it remembers the Know Nothing movement and the German American Bund.”

“I don’t know nothing about no Bund,” the rabbit said, reaching under the couch for the bottle of bourbon he’d stashed there.

Swamp Rabbit was listening to me enumerate the lies Donald Trump told in Britain this week. My favorite was Trump saying, “I didn’t see any protest” when asked about the anti-Trump protest in London. Then he said the protesters were “a very, very small group.” Then he said the people on the streets were pro-Trump demonstrators, not protesters.

“I guess he didn’t notice that giant ‘Baby Trump’ balloon or that Trump-on-the-toilet float,” Swamp Rabbit said.

Note the irony: This week marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Who would have thought a few years ago that a would-be dictator like Trump would be feted by British royals then go to Normandy for a ceremony honoring soldiers who fought to overthrow a dictator?

“You can’t call Trump a dictator,” the rabbit said. “America elected him.”

The Nazis were elected, too, I told him. Enough Nazis to get Hitler appointed chancellor. Does he really think Trump won’t seize power the same way Hitler did if Congress and the courts continue ignoring his crimes?

Swamp Rabbit threw up his hands. “There you go with Hitler again.”

Another irony: This week is also the 30th anniversary of the massacre of protesters in Tiananmen Square, a history-changing event that Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and his gang have more-or-less erased from Chinese media outlets and history books.

I said, “When Xi’s gang is asked about the protest at Tiananmen Square, they say ‘I didn’t see any protest.’ Or they say ‘The protest was very, very small.'”

“Trump ain’t on the same page with that China boss,” the rabbit argued. “He started a trade war with China.”

I shook my head. “Trump wants to cut the trade deficit, but he admires Xi. He called him a ‘a terrific guy‘ and ‘a great leader.'”

“That don’t mean nothing,” the rabbit said. “I doubt Trump knows what he’s saying one minute to the next.”

Back to D-Day for one more irony: In a speech at the ceremonies, French President Emmanuel Macron, with Trump nearby, said the Allies who made D-Day a success “are the same ones that were able to build the existing multilateral structures after World War Two.”

This was an implicit jab at Trump, who has worked hard to undermine the European Union and other “multilateral structures” that were established in part to help prevent the sort of bad relations between countries that resulted in two world wars in the 20th century.

“Do you think Trump got it?” Swamp Rabbit asked. “Did he know Macron was criticizing him?”

“Maybe,” I said. “If anyone asks, he’ll say ‘I didn’t hear any criticism.’ Or ‘The criticism was very, very small.'”

Swamp Rabbit told me he was going home, he was tired of my grumbling about Donald Trump, I should finish writing my new “fiction book” instead of following politics.

“Or read books by other peeps,” he said.

I told him there’s no avoiding Trump, he’s even crept into contemporary fiction. I’d read Gary Shteyngart’s Lake Success a few months ago and encountered about a dozen mentions of the grabber-in-chief. Trump is like an expanding cloud of smog, polluting everything.

The rabbit asked, so I explained that Shteyngart is an A-list novelist and that Lake Success is about a guy named Barry Cohen whose life is falling apart even though he’s an enormously wealthy hedge-fund manager with a beautiful wife and a zillion-dollar condo in Manhattan.

Self-absorbed Barry feels unloved by his wife and their autistic son, and is also in trouble for insider trading. He leaves town to search for an old girlfriend, but he ends up searching for the real America or the meaning of life or something. He’s like Sal Paradise in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road crossed with Sherman McCoy in Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, except that Barry is a bit older than Sal and a thousand times more prosperous and jaded.

“Wait a minute, who’s this Sal guy?” Swamp Rabbit said. “And where’s this bonfire you’re talking about?”

I told him never mind, I should know better than to make literary allusions to someone who gets his information from talking heads on TV and gossipy Internet news sites.

“That ain’t fair,” Swamp Rabbit said. “You get your news from the same crappy sources as me.”

He was right. I spend more spare time scrolling Internet news sites than reading books, fiction or nonfiction. I realize that news venues impart only superficial knowledge of what’s happening in the world, but I excuse myself by saying “Who has time to read books these days?”

“And who has the energy?” I added, challenging the rabbit. “I’m worn out from working my traveling salesman job. It’s easier to watch cable news or Game of Thrones.”

“Quit whining,” he said. “Tell me about Lake Success.”

So I told him Barry’s reunion with the girlfriend doesn’t work out (of course not) as he travels west by bus and meets minorities and suffers through a bunch of indignities and wises up to the fact that daily life in America is much worse for the poor than it is for the rich.

And there’s a counter-narrative from the POV of Barry’s frustrated wife Seema who, after their first meeting, had

…Googled Barry’s net worth and found it comforting. A man that rich couldn’t be stupid. Or, Seema thought now, was that the grand fallacy of twenty-first-century America?

Trump is in the story even when he isn’t directly mentioned. He’s the grotesque symbol of the emptiness at the heart of the American Dream — the emptiness that helps explain Barry’s and Seema’s inability to feel any contentment despite their opulent lifestyles. But Shteyngart is a naturally funny writer, so you don’t get hit over the head with that message.

“Blah blah, ” Swamp Rabbit said. “Cut to the chase, what happens in the end?”

I told him to read the book if he wants to know. He looked at me like I was loony and said, “Who has time to read books these days?”

The cable news header for the next presidential election should be “Apocalypse 2020.” So says Swamp Rabbit’s parole officer Victor C, who dropped by my shack today to make sure the rabbit was abstaining from the hard stuff.

“The army of the dead is coming,” said Victor, a Game of Thrones fan. “You can’t beat death.”

I told him to stop being such a pessimist, the Democrats sound like they’re ready to fight. Yesterday morning, Nancy Pelosi told the media that Attorney General William Barr committed a crime when he lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Elizabeth Warren and others have called for Donald Trump’s impeachment. Jerry Nadler threatened to hold Barr in contempt for punking out on his House Judiciary Committee appearance.

“The dead are only 30 percent of the electorate, 35 at the most, and they don’t have a Night King to lead them,” I said. “All they have is an orange warthog.”

“Yes, but the living aren’t very lively,” Victor countered. “Democrats always talk a good game, but they get wimpy when push comes to shove.”

Swamp Rat weighed in on Victor’s side. “Every time the Democrats draw a line in the sand, the Republicans step over it. Them Dems are up against the scum of the earth, but they still don’t get it.”

They get it, I told him. Trump, in order to downplay evidence that he obstructed justice during the Mueller investigation, is trying to undermine congressional oversight of the executive to the point where Congress is no longer a co-equal branch of government. He and Barr, his attorney general and mouthpiece, have the support of almost all congressional Republicans, who would rather see Trump become a de facto dictator than risk the possible election of a Democratic president.

I referred the rabbit to an op-ed by former FBI director James Comey, whose theory is that Trump’s lackeys start out as good people who gradually learn he is a fraud and much worse but stay with him because they think they can serve their country despite him. Comey wrote:

Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on [Trump’s] 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.

“That’s real poetic,” Swamp Rabbit said, “but most of them peeps ain’t got no soul to begin with. They’d rather join the army of the dead than miss out on a chance for a little money and power.”

“You’ve got no room to talk,” I said. “You’d sell your soul for a shot of Jack Daniels.”

We argued for another hour. The only thing we could agree on was that Victor is right, Apocalypse 2020 is coming to a voting booth near you.

Swamp Rabbit was trying to read the news to me but I was on the porch feeding the swamp cats and blasting Eric Dolphy’s Out To Lunch through my JBL speaker.

“I can’t hear you,” I shouted through the window. “Who is it that won’t testify?”

“That guy who looks like Fred Flintstone at Wilma’s funeral,” Swamp Rabbit said. “The attorney general.”

I went inside and read the story on my laptop screen:

[Attorney General William] Barr is expected to appear before the Senate and House Judiciary committees Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, to address questions about special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. But according to senior aides for the panel’s chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Justice Department officials have objected to Democrats’ plans to permit extended questioning, including by the committee’s lawyers, and threatened that Barr may withdraw.

Bottom line, the AG did what Trump hired him to do: sugarcoat the Mueller report’s findings to protect Trump. Barr is reluctant to answer questions about this because he, like his boss, believes in an imperial presidency.

“They should quit wasting time and subpoena the guy,” I said. “He’s just another Trump lackey.”

“But he’s the AG,” Swamp Rabbit replied. “This is some serious shit, Odd Man. It could turn into Watergate all over again.”

I said yes, the current crisis is another test of whether a president can get away with ignoring the popular notion that the Constitution calls for three distinct and co-equal branches of government.

“But this is bigger than Watergate,” I added. “Trump is hiding a hundred times as many crimes as Nixon hid. Anybody else would be impeached by now. In jail, maybe.”

Swamp Rabbit, beside himself with angst, wondered aloud if the rule of law can survive a profoundly corrupt and ignorant president who dismisses the concept of congressional oversight. A would-be dictator, in other words.

“Trump says he’s gonna tell all his lackeys to ignore subpoenas,” he said. “What can them Congress critters do if that happens?”

“They can hold the lackeys in contempt and have them locked up,” I replied. “They can start with Flintstone.”

But then there’s the question of what happens if the courts get involved. I’m glad the rabbit didn’t ask me that.

Footnote: Check out this piece, which cites Garry Wills’s A Necessary Evil in arguing that the so-called Founders meant for Congress to have more power than the executive or judicial branches.

Another: David Cay Johnston, who’s been tracking the Trump monster’s ups and downs for decades, is convinced the courts won’t save him.