Blame and deflection: Our new national pastime run amok

Our politics now seems once massive and relentless blame game, our fingers growing tired from all the finger-pointing.

From Kabul to Covid, the script is much the same: Liberals blaming conservatives, Republicans blaming Democrats, Biden World blaming Trump World, and Twitter types sliming everyone they don’t like.

And then there’s the distancing—a high art in itself—by former officials. Scott Gottlieb, who ran the FDA under President Trump, now tells “Face the Nation” (as he promotes his book) that the pandemic “would have been different” if “the White House was exercising different leadership,” that “the lack of consistency was a big mistake” along with failing to use the White House “as an effective bully pulpit.”

VACCINE MANDATES ARE POPULAR, EVEN AS NICKI MINAJ AND OTHERS TAKE SHOTS AT THE SHOTS

Speaking of the coronavirus, we’ve spent months watching the current guy and the former guy blame each other for the response to the pandemic and the handling of vaccines.

Breitbart’s John Nolte has come up with a new argument:

“I am strongly pro-vaccine and now believe that Biden, the media, Hollywood, and the left, in general, are deliberately being as nasty as possible as a way to use reverse psychology against Trump supporters.

“They know that the uglier they get, the more unvaccinated Trump supporters will dig in and refuse to get vaccinated. Well, I think that’s the plan. They’re vaccinated. We’re not. The unvaccinated are almost exclusively the ones dying. Who’s winning that debate? Who’s owning who?”

TRUMP, ALLIES ATTACK MILLEY AS WOODWARD BOOK TRIGGERS NUCLEAR REACTION

I’m not a fan of taunting the unvaccinated—even the anti-vaxxers who die of the disease—in that it does nothing to persuade others to get these life-saving shots. But trying to psych out Trump backers so they’ll die? That, to put it diplomatically, is a stretch.

The new book “Peril” reveals that Gen. Mark Milley held backchannel conversations with China and reviewed the nuclear launch process with top Pentagon officials because he was worried about Donald Trump’s mental stability. Milley, who felt his reputation took a hit under Trump, obviously tried to vindicate himself by cooperating with the book. And Trump has struck back by calling the man he named Joint Chiefs chairman a “dumbass” and “idiot,” while also ripping Bob Woodward.

Woodward and coauthor Robert Costa defended Milley yesterday on “Good Morning America,” with Costa saying the general “was reading people in. While these calls with [China’s] General Li were held on a top-secret backchannel, they were not secret. This was not someone who was working in isolation…He was not going rogue.”

Well, maybe. But what Milley did was secret from the rest of us, and from Trump, which is why some conservatives have been demanding his firing or prosecution for treason.

Just to complete the finger-pointing, Jen Psaki, assuring reporters of President Biden’s confidence in Milley, repeatedly said that…