Guilty Party

“There are no consequences in the Republican caucus for violence. No consequences for racism. No consequences for misogyny. No consequences for insurrection. And no consequences means that they condone it. It means that that silence is acceptance,” – AOC

It’s game time again in the nation’s capital. Not a full month out from one of the worst days America will ever remember, it’s clear many in the GOP are finding 1/6 plenty easy to forget. Whatever epiphany may have been experienced by some in the party leadership as a result of insurrection – notably Mitch McConnell, who seemed, at least from certification through inauguration, to understand the difference between corrupt partisanship and murderous treason – most of the GOP, and near the entire Republican House Caucus, are now making clear where their disloyalties lie.

These are not lawmakers, they are oath breakers, rotten to the core and proud of it. How else do you stand and clap for the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene? As with their champion, they care nothing about leaving anything to the imagination. This is what the avant-garde of the wretched core looks and sounds like. With the exception of near half a million Covid dead, they are Trump’s ugliest legacy, a radicalized nihilist political class dedicated only to gnawing away at our political, economic and societal foundations, a daily erosion of anything constructive. There is nothing of worth they won’t congeal to devalue, no national interest they won’t compromise if it plays well with Jesse Waters.

Radicalization occurs either as a result of circumstances that impel people to believe systemic change is the only means to their survival, or through subordination of rationality to calculated and sustained propaganda. The first reflects reality, the second facilitates its contrived distortions. There is little doubt which scenario now pervades the base this Republican Party is devoted to serve, or where the blame lies. We may have gotten rid of Fox/AM’s President, but its customer base, the central rot of our politics, is going nowhere. The only open question remains whether American democracy will live to tell the tale of the lessons it learned enduring its harrowing encounter with totalitarianIsm.

Regardless, not 30 days after the Capitol fell to the walking dead, we are back in game mode. House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy isn’t sanctioning sedition or bending the knee to its ringleader, let alone handing out plum committee assignments to bat-shit crazy QAnon freaks, who make Alex Jones seem thoughtful; instead he’s “moving to unite the party,” at least that’s how Washington Post coverage terms it. In this GOP, one hand soils the other. That is, if Liz Cheney is to survive her obstinacy in voting to impeach Trump, then the nihilists need to feel heard. How do you call play-by-play when you’re witnessing a national tragedy? That this caucus “has a 2022 majority well within its grasp” is no less a specter than a second Trump term in the White House.

Understand that most of them still won’t publicly declare Biden won the election. The majority would have high-fived had Mike Pence pulled out alternative state certifications and declared Trump the winner! And now they’ve added fresh fascist faces, like Greene and Glock-packing Lauren Boebert, who has just enough respect for the Capitol Police that she curses them out for being uppity and seeking to check her bag when she sets off the metal detector her admirers made necessary. News flash, Amy Walters…this is no game, it’s part of the same crisis that gave us 1/6!

Like many others, the DR fervently hoped getting Joe Biden’s hand on the Bible would close out a horrific chapter encompassing the consequences total civic collapse produced. Indeed, the Biden Presidency has already ushered in welcome rejuvenation of viable governance and restoration of critical institutions that survived four years of MAGA’s sustained assaults. One could listen to Press Secretary Jen Psaki all day long and not tire of her dogged determination to answer each question with thoughtful commitment to accuracy and substance, free of inane recrimination. It is the soothing balm of good faith completely absent since Sean Spicer’s first sentence, and first lie, four years ago. Moreover, it’s clear the Administration isn’t having any of Trump’s odious attempts to burrow loyalists within departments they only seek to harm; purges are in full swing across the board.

Yet and still, it’s clear any optimism post-eviction Trump would fade into irrelevance was misplaced. To be certain, it wasn’t simply wishful thinking, but a sober assessment that, Trump being Trump, at heart lazy and inert within the cocoon of routines private citizenship render functionally benign, would simply wither on the vine, inundated by the onslaught of inevitable financial and legal ruin. The Donald never has been able to fail and chew gum at the same time, so the smart money play was he’d lack the initiative or focus to do much more than his least. Silly me!

Who knew, still awash in the disgrace of a maniacal campaign to overthrow American democracy, a deposed national embarrassment with an approval rating charitably pegged in the low 30s would be canonized by the party he just single-handedly led into the wilderness. Forget that he is without a social media platform, and impeached for a second time, this guy’s got that certain something you just can’t put your finger on. Ask McCarthy, who made a special trip down to the tacky, gold-plated confines of Mar-A-Lago to peck that little hand and swear allegiance for the most worthless thing this planet harbors… a Donald Trump promise. And on the Senate side, the likes of Rand Paul and the ever despicable Lindsey Graham aren’t just carrying Trump’s impeachment water, they’re cleansing his legacy and making clear to the wretched core, which they want more than anything to inherit, that a floor is only as low as you allow it to be; they are prepared to do bottomless.

The Biden Administration is fulfilling its mandate: clean up Trump’s mess. In the meantime, a recent video of a grocery store in Naples, Florida speaks volumes as to how gross a historically terrible President can leave things. The video appears to be from a pre-pandemic archive, with people cheerily within each other’s space and not a mask to be seen. Except it was from this week! And this is Naples, Florida – retirement haven USA – average age 113! The store owner is asked what he’s thinking and replies with exactly the lies you know to expect… masks don’t work and 400,000 people certainly haven’t died. No executive order Biden can sign is going to cover that.

Mitt Romney recently declared the GOP tent isn’t “large enough to accommodate both conservatives and kooks.” A reasonable reply to the Mittster would be simply to ask where the hell are the “conservatives” he’s referring to? The fire department may be on the scene, but the house is still on fire. BC