The Trump Era has marked the death of shame. Twenty-six years ago, conservatives claimed that Bill Clinton, by surviving his White House sex scandal, murdered the notion of public shaming. And George W. Bush never paid a price when the public discovered he had used lies and false assertions to launch a catastrophic war that caused the deaths of thousands of American service members and 200,000 or more Iraqi civilians. Yet Trump has shown his predecessors to be pikers in the shamelessness department. Though for decades he had demonstrated his imperviousness to shame, the Access Hollywood episode was a breakthrough moment for him and the nation. His ability to survive the emergence of the grab-’em-by-the-pussy video—and the GOP’s collective decision to stand by their misogynistic man—marked a new low for shamelessness. Ever since then, there’s been a race to a bottom that seems bottomless.

The continuing loss of shame during the Trump years has been steady—and we may have become inured to it. The day-by-day decline might be hard to discern. But I’d like to propose a metric to capture the fullness of this fall: Paul Manafort.

Manafort, the Washington insider who served as Trump’s campaign chairman for a stretch in 2016, was much on my mind last week. On Friday, I broke a story about his recent involvement in a venture that was seeking to set up a streaming service in China that, according to a confidential memo Manafort wrote, was in cahoots with China’s tyrannical regime and partnering with a Chinese telecom company that the US government had declared a national security threat. What a sordid picture: A former Trump adviser who is currently in talks with the current Trump campaign to join its ranks had tried to enrich himself through a deal involving the Chinese government so often demonized by Trump and MAGA-ites. (Manafort declared in this memo the enterprise could rake in close to $3 billion in its first year.)

To be fair, I should say that the Washington Post published an article on this a couple of hours before my piece was posted. So it gets credit for the scoop. (And that truly pissed me off. Apparently WaPo reporters got their mitts on the same set of emails and documents I had.) But, modestly, I believe that my article put a sharper cast on this deal, and I published that Manafort memo in full, which the Post opted not to do. In any event, what’s important is that both our reports showed Manafort, who was sent to prison in 2019 for an assortment of financial crimes related to his work earlier that decade for a pro-Putin political party in Ukraine and who was then pardoned by Trump, was back to his anything-for-a-buck ways.

Manafort is an appropriate symbol for the Trump years. (Not that we need anyone beyond Trump.) Prior to hooking up with Trump in 2016, Manafort, a veteran Republican operative, had a long record of sleaze. In the 1980s, he formed a powerhouse lobbying and consulting firm in Washington, DC, with notorious dirty trickster Roger Stone and others, including Lee Atwater, the underhanded GOP political strategist. It represented corporate and right-wing interests (the NRA, Big Tobacco, the Trump Organization), helped elect far-right candidates (Jesse Helms), and provided a variety of services to dictators and warlords around the world (Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Jonas Savimbi of Angola). Its nickname: the Torturers’ Lobby. Manafort left the firm in the mid-1990s and went on to earn millions working for Russian oligarchs and for Putin-friendly pols in Ukraine. 

Manafort was the Swamp. He wallowed in all the scuzzy ways of Washington. Yet when he knocked on Trump’s door in 2016, looking to become part of the campaign (perhaps to score points with a Russian oligarch who had accused Manafort of misusing millions of dollars the Russian had invested in a gone-bad business deal with Manafort), Trump welcomed him in. This was a sign Trump and his campaign had no standards.

But there were some standards, as low as they might have been. In August 2016, the New York Times reported that Manafort had pocketed $12.7 million in secret and undisclosed cash payments from that pro-Putin party in Ukraine he had been advising a few years earlier. (His lawyer denied he received these payments.) Manafort was soon bounced from the Trump campaign. Several factors contributed to his ouster. Trump had been sliding in the polls, and he blamed Manafort for news reports revealing internal chaos within the campaign. But Trump and his campaign advisers also recognized that Manafort’s curious (to say the least) work with Russian-aligned politicians in Ukraine was not a good look for the campaign, especially when Trump’s bizarre admiration for Vladimir Putin had become a storyline for the election and when the campaign stood accused of being connected to covert Russian intervention in the election. Manafort, the always scheming wheeler-dealer who represented the worst of DC, was excommunicated from Trumpland. He had become too damaged and dirty even for the Trump crew.

In subsequent years, Manafort’s reputation was further tainted. In 2018, as a result of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the Trump-Russia scandal, Manafort was found guilty of and pleaded guilty to assorted financial crimes related to his consulting work in Ukraine, including bank fraud and conspiring to defraud the United States. He was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison and sent off to the hoosegow. (He was released to home confinement during the Covid pandemic.) Moreover, in 2020, a bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee declared Manafort a “grave counterintelligence threat,” revealing that during the 2016 race he had repeatedly passed Trump campaign inside information to a former business associate who was a “Russian intelligence officer” and a “Kremlin agent.” The report noted this Russian agent and Manafort buddy might have been involved in Moscow’s hack-and-leak operation that swiped and released (through WikiLeaks) Democratic documents and emails to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign and boost Trump’s chances. The committee also disclosed that it had found “two pieces of information” that “raise the possibility” that Manafort himself was connected “to the hack-and-leak operations.” (The report’s discussion of that information was redacted.) It seemed Manafort had colluded with a Russian spy.

So when Trump pardoned Manafort a few months later, Manafort was not merely a sleazy DC player. He was a convicted felon who had pleaded guilty to serious crimes. And he had been branded by the Senate Intelligence Committee as a counterintelligence threat because of his secret interactions with a Russian intelligence agent. Yet Trump cleaned his slate. In March, news accounts noted Trump was considering bringing Manafort back into the fold.

That was before the news about his attempts to get into bed with the Chinese government. Still, the Washington Post reports that Trump is adamant about Manafort’s return to Team Trump. He wants to reward the guy for not rolling over on him. This is moblike behavior on Trump’s part. To him, Manafort, a criminal who was connected to pro-Putin oligarchs and politicians and who hobnobbed with a Russian operative, is a stand-up guy, and now it’s time to honor his loyalty. It’s unclear whether the revelation about Manafort and the China deal will persuade Trump otherwise.

Back to my point about ever-declining standards. In 2016, the Trump campaign evinced a modicum of probity by kicking Manafort to the curb following the allegations of secret cash payments. Yet now—after Manafort has been shown to be a tax-cheating, money-laundering crook and a “grave counterintelligence threat”—Trump wants him back. Most likely, Trump’s yearning for Manafort will not endanger his campaign. Republicans will not criticize him for this or pull their support. Trump voters won’t care. Any media coverage of Manafort’s hiring will probably get subsumed in the firehose of Trump’s outrages.

Manafort is not only a symbol of Washington corruption; he is a national security threat. As, of course, is Trump. (See how he recently promised oil execs to kill energy regulations they despise and asked them to donate $1 billion to his campaign.) As wrong as it was for Trump to retain Manafort in 2016, it is immensely more so at this point. The fact that Trump would even consider adding Manafort to his 2024 squad—and likely could do so without much of a cost—is a marker of how immune Trump and his campaign have become to shaming. If this comes to pass, it will surely just be one more Trump transgression that gets lost in his dirty wash. 

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.

3 Body Problem. We already know that many people are not able to confront the challenge of climate change, given that its most alarming effects are likely several decades away. Imagine what might happen if the world learned that an existential threat to human civilization was 400 years in the future. That’s the driving idea of Liu Cixin’s 2008 science-fiction novel The Three-Body Problem, which has won acclaim in his homeland of China and around the world. In his book, during the brutal Cultural Revolution, astrophysics student Ye Wenjie witnesses her father being beaten to death for his supposed sins against the revolution, and she is sent to a labor brigade. She eventually ends up working at a secret Chinese satellite facility and learns its real mission is searching for extraterrestrial life. After years of toiling there, she’s able to rig the equipment in a way that allows her to discover a signal from a far-away alien civilization, and she receives a message from one of those aliens: Don’t respond; otherwise, we will come looking for you. Well, guess what she does. Soon the aliens are on their way, and they want our planet, for theirs is in an unstable solar system of three stars and every millennium or so their civilization is destroyed and they have to start all over. Many years later—now it’s the present day—this alien invasion becomes publicly known. So what’s to be done?

The creative team behind Game of Thrones has turned Cixin’s novel, which is part of a trilogy, into an eight-part series on Netflix. The show captures the spirit of the book, though it moves most of the action from China to London and transforms leading characters into Brits and Yanks—de-China-fying the story, a move that has generated anger in China. There’s also been controversy there about the series’ emphasis on the Cultural Revolution, which was part of the book. The opening scene of the Netflix version portrays the beating of Ye’s father, an episode Cixin buried deep in the novel to sidestep the censors. It’s a powerful sequence and a reminder that Western popular culture has not too many depictions of this explosive era in China.

Putting aside the tussles, 3 Body Problem succeeds on its own. Its depiction of society’s response to the big news about the aliens is harrowing. Not everyone gives a damn. After all, 400 years is a long time—extending even beyond the seventh-generation principle. But there are several young scientists who care a lot—a few of them make contact with the aliens through a highly advanced virtual reality mechanism designed by the aliens—and they become the heart of an attempt to save humanity. That effort, though, is being thwarted by the aliens who, though they remain far away, are able to monitor all earthly matters and intervene. (It’s complicated.)

The show is smart with the science. The deadline for disaster is far in the future, but there is plenty of immediate drama, in part because the aliens are working with a pro-alien cult that sees these visitors-to-come as saviors. (The head of the cult is deliciously played by Jonathan Pryce.) The GoT gang keeps the action brisk and the intrigue deep. The climate change metaphor is not played heavy. But it’s inescapable. When the first season ends, there’s no telling whether humans will rise to the challenge. Just like in real life.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse. In “My My, Hey Hey,” a song Neil Young recorded in 1978, he warbled, “Rock and roll can never die.” The tune was his personal declaration against becoming obsolete. Almost half a century later, on Saturday night, at Jiffy Lube Live, an outdoor amphitheater an hour outside Washington, DC, Young proved there had been no need to worry. With his longtime garage band Crazy Horse, he whipped through nearly two hours of grunge-tinged rockers—Young was grunge before grunge—as well as a short set of acoustic greatest hits. The show was a reminder of his longevity, proving he was right about rock ’n’ roll’s staying power.

It was impressive to see Young, 78 years old, playing with fury with his octogenarian bandmates—drummer Ralph Molina and bassist Billy Talbot—as if they were teenage bangers rocking out in a basement. Crazy Horse guitarist Nils Lofgren was otherwise occupied, on tour with Bruce Springsteen as a member of the E Street Band. His substitute was a young ’un: Micah Nelson, the 33-year-old son of Willie Nelson. Young, Talbott, and Nelson practically huddled on the stage as they convincingly jammed on Young’s hook-ladened songs. Sure, at the end, the oldsters shuffled off the stage, as do men their age. But the power chords, bass riffs, lead lines, and pounding drums suggested an eternal spirit Young has been chasing his whole career.

The set list was smart, and Young played three of my favorites: “Cortez the Killer,” “Powderfinger,” and “Like a Hurricane.” But one number was a reminder of a key to his long-term success: the epic-length “I’m the Ocean.” Young originally recorded this song with Pearl Jam in 1995. That collaboration—which grew out of a benefit concert Young and Pearl Jam performed in Washington, DC, for Voters for Choice, a reproductive rights political action committee—was a deliberate effort on Young’s part to remain in tune with the music of the day. It led to a fine album, Mirror Ball, and, no doubt, helped keep his creative juices flowing. As 10,000 Young fans who saw him this past weekend can attest, Young has defied nostalgia and made good on his promise from 46 years ago.

Neil Young and Crazy Horse are touring through September.

May 11, 2024: America is broken, and the media ain’t helping; my fascinating trip to Japan; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Laura Ingraham); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more. 

May 7, 2024: Modern-day lessons from Hiroshima; Ed Zwick’s Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions; the virtues of Tokyo Vice; and more.

May 1, 2024: From the Our Land archive: Donald Trump, stochastic terrorist; and more. 

April 24, 2024: From the Our Land archive: Take a walk; and more.

April 20, 2024: Ari Berman’s new book explains the GOP's grand plan: minority rule; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Sen. Tom Cotton and Kari Lake); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

April 16, 2024: Should there be presidential debates?; Peter Morgan’s Patriots lacks that ol’ Russian drama; the Beckham documentary scores on the fields of sports and celebrity; and more.

April 13, 2024: Sleepwalking toward the 2024 election; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Woody Johnson); the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.

April 9, 2024: A special Our Land report: Everything you wanted to know about Trump’s porn-star-hush-money case; and more.

April 6, 2024: The best political video of 2024 (so far); the tragedy and absurdity of the World Central Kitchen bombing in Gaza; Dumbass Comment of the Week (Dawn Staley): the Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more. 

April 2, 2024: Trump Bibles and other stunts—the absurdity of now; The Freaks Came Out to Write joyously chronicles the Village Voice; Lost Ox’s “Ripsaw Review”; and more.