“Stupidity has a knack for getting its way.”
Albert Camus
History is most often unforgiving of stupidity and ineptitude it fosters, affording such qualities little more than the role of enhancing the deeds of others who came forward to repair the damage they caused. Much of the credit FDR gets for confronting the Great Depression with a wide array of programs and policies flows from the dichotomy between his proactive assault on the crisis and predecessor, Herbert Hoover’s stuporous inertia. Hoover came into office four year’s earlier perhaps the most admired man in America, decades later his term was synonymous with disastrous folly, and admiration was the last thing any retelling of his Presidency conveyed.
Abraham Lincoln’s stature was enhanced through the generations by documentation of the calamitous failures before and after him. James Buchanan is generally considered one of our worst Presidents for his paralysis in the face of secession. Meanwhile, Andrew Johnson is near equally reviled by posterity for his momentous post-war pandering to the same elements Lincoln defeated. Either way, Honest Abe’s legacy never suffers when compared to such wanting contemporaries.
That’s noteworthy now because, next to the current White House occupant, Hoover, Buchanan and Johnson could be etched on Badlands granite as paragons of political courage and discerning wisdom. What we currently observe has no precedent, and it only gets worse. No longer a Presidency, this is a know-nothing siege by a certified sociopath and the party who accepts only his continued survival as its mandate. It’s not executive government, but a conglomerate of metastatic tumors, relentlessly eating away at a couple of centuries worth of performance standards. Anyone next at bat will have to do better because it’s impossible to do worse.
However, any progress they make is going to come in spite of a MAGA class of destructive show horses even a landslide for the ages won’t near wash away. Any talk of “reaching across the aisle” deserves scorn as empty rhetoric because Matt Goetz is currently relevant, which is to say cooperation means nothing less than assuaging the lowest common denominator. It’s not an aisle; there is a chasm between MAGA nihilists, now fully empowered by the House GOP leadership to do nothing other than gum up the works at all times, and everybody else subject to a measurable sense of shame they will abide. MAGA equals always acting like an obnoxious jerk; it’s a political bloc of Karens. Constructive governance occupies no part of the equation. We suffer the invasion of decency snatchers and there is nothing hysterical about observing they are only capable of hurting the public interest.
Pre-Trump would have seen Jim Jordan on the cusp of political ruin as one witness after another swore that, as an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State, he abided and even concealed repeated sexual assault by the team’s doctor. But these days gaslighting truth is a daily exercise for Hannity darlings, and there are simply too many scandals to go around, allowing even egregious wrongdoing to fade into the background as fresh outrages eclipse old news cycles.
Spared ignominy, Jordan has become a designated hitter on the Hill, carrying the President’s water no matter how filthy it becomes. It seems there isn’t a hearing to be had Trumpie sycophants, less willing or able to attack common sense in an effort to revise facts, won’t cede their five minutes to the “gentleman from Ohio.” Calling Jordan a gentleman is like calling Mad Dog 20/20 wine; it dilutes the term toward meaninglessness. He is the essence of what addles us and what will continue to do so regardless of November’s outcome. And while history will be merciless to Jordan, McCarthy, Nunes, et al., that won’t get us a cup of coffee from 7-11 right now.
We grew up taught that only despotism can imprison you, denying responsible government at the whim of an entitled few. Of course, minorities knew this wasn’t true; now many more of us get the picture. Democracy, or whatever it was we experienced in November of 2016, is capable of similar abasements, more than able to take three steps backward faster than you can say “America first!”
Don’t believe me? Go to You Tube and pull-up Jordan’s most recent questioning of Dr. Fauci. Virtually every serious scientist on Earth (a group of the others were gathered by Breitbart last week for a looney toons video even Mark Zuckerburg wouldn’t keep up) now avows the US has “lost control” of its Coronavirus response. More than 150K are dead and the future estimate increases weekly. Yet and still, there was Jordan determined to use his time, along with precious minutes others yielded him, to browbeat Fauci into agreeing Black Lives Matters protesters taking to the streets was the equivalent health threat and civic disgrace as a sardines can Coconuts Bar and Grill crowd, or up to 250,000 motorcyclists heading to Sturgis, South Dakota this weekend for a superspreader celebration of their right to be ultra-covidiots. Only those primed by hours of Fox/AM’s finest expounding on the same inanity could take Mr. Half Nelson seriously; Fauci was not one of them.
We are a nation at the mercy of one-third of us, whose civic sensibilities are shaped by a billionaire’s nefarious news network to serve his one percent sliver. Meanwhile, last quarter’s GDP dove 32.9 percent. That’s twice the worst number of the Great Depression. One can be no more idiotic than to look at that figure and believe it will improve if we simply better ignore the pandemic it was produced by, but here we are. After awarding its donors a $2 trillion windfall at full employment, the GOP now withholds unemployment benefits to millions as the jobless rate soars toward the heavens. In the same breath it ladles tort protections to businesses prepared to force their employees to choose between health and a roof over their heads. Nobody said stupidity couldn’t also be cruel.
The slim hope near four years ago was the faker, who never wanted to win election, and who was hopelessly over his head, would accept whatever expertise was willing to sign on to his shabby enterprise. Perhaps the awesome responsibilities of the office he stumbled into would exceed his megalomania and persuade him to surrender to competence. The fail-safe was the GOP leadership, who would step in if things headed off the rails. Those delusions seem forever removed. Now we pray in 99 days an overwhelming majority can right the ship, or at least put the steering wheel in the hands of a functional adult, supported by those who know what the hell they are doing.
Regardless of the certainty Trump and his MAGA minions will foist chaos by refusing to accept anything they don’t like come November, it’s all we have. Any reckoning Decision/2020 brings about can’t be worse than the mindless meandering we now suffer. Something’s gotta give. Three months never felt so far away. BC