Trust and Aggression

So, trump has been reaming the US intelligence community non-stop as being full of utterly incompetent, “deep state” actors who are:

1. Out to get him
2. Willing to lie, fabricate evidence, and circumvent legal processes to spy on him because (1)
3. So stupid that they couldn’t tell the OBVIOUSLY FAKE RUSSIA STUFF was obviously fake

And now, he, and I’m currently estimating that this is the correct word, assassinates Iran’s top military official (along with some Iraqi officials) while he’s at an Iraqi airport.  That seems pretty wild to me because:

1. Killing another country’s public official while not being at war with that country seems wrong
2. Executing a strike within another country’s territory, without its permission or any real position having been established that we must do so because that country is unwilling or unable to handle these targets on its own seems wrong
   1. Maybe we did this?

But I mean.. the entire justification for killing this guy is based on intelligence from the same community that trump considers to be of the quality given in the first set of points above.. so now, I guess, he thinks they’re totally right on this one?

I don’t know, this is such a mess.  This is part of why I have stated that the worst part of trump’s presidency appears to me to be the constant attacks on our own government and the obvious lack of trustworthiness he embodies.  His policies, thus far, don’t seem to be very bad, but frankly, I suspect that’s because he doesn’t really have any policies or any ideas of what to do other than what strikes him in a given situation at a given moment.  His staff and other members of the government seem to be cobbling together some sort of policy-like structure to connect his action dots, so to speak, but it seems like, wildly placed though his dots may be, they’re kinda sticking to a median line that’s sorta not diverging too greatly from the norm?

But we’re in a place now where:

1. The media is more or less divided entirely into partisan hackery, with both sides being pretty consistently and predictably unworthy of credibility
2. Our political parties have more or less descended into consistent partisan hackery, with the republican sheep following the president no matter what and the democratic sheep opposing the president no matter what
3. The president is an obvious, flagrant, frequent liar of perhaps unprecedented proportions
4. By our own president’s account, and that of most of his right wing sheep, our governmental institutions responsible for our defense and stability are chock-full of incompetent, conniving liars who are out to get him and willing to lie, fabricate evidence, and ignore counter-evidence to do so

So, are we at the point where the few (so it seems) sane people left just try to hunker down and ride this out?  As I’ve said before, I used to think it was an intellectually lazy cop-out to suggest that both sides are equally bad, but that was before it seemed to me that there is such a density of lies and deceit on both sides, with even our own President accusing his own employees of it (but strangely seeming to do nothing about it), and even some evidence in his favor..

I mean.. what was the deal with the Russia thing?  I still think there are major unanswered questions, such as: why the hell would he try to have private meetings with Putin and even go so far as to take his translator’s notes?  But now, I wonder: was that a lie?  Did that ever happen?  What does Michael Steele think of his dossier?  Did he think there was a good chance it was super, 100% wrong, and he didn’t expect it to be taken so seriously without corroborating evidence (of which..there wasn’t any?  Really?)??

I’m afraid I may simply not have enough time to try to wade through all of this and write up a satisfying argument diagram with even the most plausible counter-arguments chased down to any respectable degree.  It doesn’t seem that anyone else is willing or able to do that, either, so…

I dunno.  I’m looking for any leads or ideas that anyone may have regarding a good resource for trying to figure this junk out.  Something like an argument diagram with sufficient reference points to establish some sort of reasonable guess at what looks to be correct (like.. beyond a 75% chance of being right, or something).