No Rules

“Cheating is not the American way. It is small, while we are large. It is cheap, while we are richly endowed. It is destructive, while we are creative. It is doomed to fail, while our gifts and responsibilities call us to achieve. It sabotages trust and weakens the bonds of spirit and humanity, without which we perish.“

Terrance McNally

It is clear now 1/6 will be no 9/11 within America’s collective consciousness. On the surface of it that shouldn’t surprise. Although many used to the Capitol’s open campus find fencing and barbed wire shocking, it is not stories-high smoldering Trade Tower rubble. Lily white nihilists roaming hallowed halls of democracy, as hideous as it was, could simply not pack the same punch as two of the world’s largest buildings being razed on the fly by Arab fanatics, killing thousands in the process. For enduring shock value that is a very high bar to meet… (setting aside the irony that the mayor who galvanized the response to 9/11 would devolve 20 years later into the lying huckster who helped incite 1/6!)

Yet and still, while 9/11 laid bare vulnerability to foreign zealots favorable geography could no longer protect us from, 1/6 provided a front row seat to how vulnerable the very basis of our democratic governance now finds itself at the hands of unhinged domestic cultists. To be clear, on that particular day, while whipped into a frenzy by a rancid demagogue, whose rabid conspiracy pronouncements they equate with the survival of their personal liberty, a mob of Americans had no trouble feverishly pursuing Al Qaudian benchmarks for rage and destruction of a go-to symbol for our way of life.

The difference in the ingestion of 9/11 and 1/6 clearly lies less in the acts themselves than in the variance of how large swaths of the citizenry believe what was allowed to happen affects them and theirs. We had near complete consensus on that question 20 years ago, enough to unleash two wars that we have yet to end; today we are fully divided. Of course that doesn’t make the assault on the Capitol any less awful; it simply clarifies a majority of Republicans don’t really have a problem with what went down, and certainly are not prepared to take part in a national reckoning if that means holding Trump accountable for the lie he was always prepared to foist if he lost. In other words, the degree to which 1/6 is diminished as a day of historic infamy mirrors MAGA’s consumption of the GOP going forward. That means it’s not if but when we face comparable peril.

Democracy is based on competition, and competition is impossible without rules that participants agree on and apply equally to all. That’s always been a sticking point with Trump. Pressed to use one sentence to describe his conduct throughout adult life, most who have paid attention would assert he lives as if established laws and sanctions don’t apply to him. Of course, his MAGA minions would rephrase it and gush “he makes his own rules.”

Either way, after his 90-minute borefest at CPAC yesterday, there can be no doubt the GOP will continue to embrace the notion a fair playing field is whatever works best for its prospects at any given moment. The cheating and rank hypocrisy are givens, the only open question is what will primarily motivate the party’s craven pursuits: fealty to its survival as a viable governing entity, or wanton servility to Trump as he faces a legal and financial reckoning he will make obstruction to a litmus test for his approval.

The two are mutually exclusive; any even cursory survey of CPAC sensibilities and the roster of “talent” it aims to rabidly promote at the expense of Trump’s long list of “RINO” heretics he wants purged yesterday supports no other conclusion. MAGA is giving McConnell et al a fait accompli, there will be no compromises. McConnell can be an empty figurehead of a MAGA monster or he can go to war… it’s Munich time!

Obviously, moving quickly past 1/6 fits the CPAC agenda to a tee. The degree to which House and Senate Republicans seek to recast events away from a singular national calamity and toward merely a breakdown in security procedures is an accurate barometer for how the party is falling in line as Trump’s personal appendage. Of course, the House leaves little to hope for in that regard, most of the GOP caucus still refusing to allow that Joe Biden is a legitimate POTUS. Now, recent signals from the Senate side also suggest rough waters for any standing against Trump or demanding a full accounting of the day US democracy was forced to the brink.

In committee last week for the purpose of investigating the various security breakdowns that enabled the Trump mob to breach the Capitol on 1/6, GOP Senators were glad to stray off toward whatever details reinforced the riot as more the result of logistic and personnel failures than the singular civic catastrophe it was. Rob Portman from Ohio, who went weeks without so much as mumbling that Joe Biden in fact won the election, was most concerned with why all security personnel were not adequately equipped. Roy Blount from Missouri, who even as he chaired the Inaugural Committee went well into January refusing to declare who would be sworn in, was all about finding out why the lowly DC Police had to step in and save the day.

Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, decertification ringleaders who each seem to have no other strategy for gaining the 2024 Republican nomination than inheriting Trump’s wretched core, were only interested in equating 1/6 with any violence anywhere, but most particularly DC, that followed George Floyd’s murder last summer. The entire line of questioning both pursued gnawed around those edges; 1/6 as just a run-of-the-mill riot – seen one, you’ve seen them all. Hawley and Cruz pandered accordingly at CPAC over the weekend, the former receiving an extended ovation after boasting of his decertification valor.

However, Trump-eunuch Ron Johnson from Wisconsin was most egregious, declaring it an open question as to what sensibilities motivated the mayhem. Johnson cited one “eyewitness account” to explain things. “Agent-provocateurs” of mysterious political inclination and at odds with the “festive” MAGA faithful present on the scene, were the primary villains. Incredibly, Johnson’s preferred depiction blamed Capitol cops themselves for inciting the crowd with tear gas, thus playing into the violent outliers’ hands. Johnson implied most on the grounds were victims rather than insurrectionists, their good clean fun hijacked by a cabal of instigators his “witness” doubted were MAGA-affiliated.

As the Biden Administration deals with the public health disaster it inherited, while moving apace to reset policy and operational parameters Trump demolished, the cloud of 1/6 continues to hover, as ominous as ever. As lazy as Trump is, the Fox/AM cesspool has no intention of allowing MAGA to wither on a Doral fairway, it will do whatever is necessary to facilitate his continued relevance. It’s a bit comical to believe Trump would opt for all the effort and uncertainty of spinning off a new party when the GOP platform offers a turn-key grift infrastructure requiring only his continued guff to power.

The CPAC proceedings served notice four years of a Hannity Presidency was more than enough to create a thriving nihilist political class, a band of craven neophytes that more than makes up for what it fully lacks in competence or legislative skill with levels of shamelessness and dishonor necessary to trounce those beholden to any limits propriety may demand. Overt lying and cheating is now the price of admission to the Republican table; it is now a caucus mostly comprised of bottom feeders with little to lose and even less concern for democracy’s well being. The GOP is now a state of nature. The rest of us would do well to understand it no longer just works the refs or cheats as it breathes; it now refuses to recognize the rules apply at all, other than as a vehicle to destroy the opposition… both within the party and without! BC