"I'm Running Out Of Show Tunes"
Does diving into the deep end of the schadenfreude pool make me a bad person?
The idea that this country is a democracy, and in a democracy people vote and those votes matter. Right? Well, espousing that exact belief just got the textbook definition of an arch-Conservative kicked out of the Republican Party in shame. And that shit should terrify us all.
Trae Crowder
On Tuesday night, in the Wyoming Republican primary, Rep. Liz Cheney got her ass handed to her by a crazy-eyed Trumpbot incapable of independent thought. Harriet Hageman is a noun, a verb, and “the 2020 Presidential election was rigged!!” Rep. Cheney didn’t even capture 30% of the vote, which should tell us two things:
The GOP is owned lock, stock, and short hairs by Donald Trump. Yes, the Republican Party is now 100% a personality cult devoted to the worship of Mango Mussolini. For a Republican candidate to have any chance of winning in November, they must sojourn to Bedminster or Mar-a-Lago and pledge unyielding fealty to the Great and Beneficent Orange One.
There’s no place for independent thinking within the GOP. What Trump decrees is what happens. So even if it makes no sense and runs counter to common sense or what’s good for the country, Republicans must march in lock step with Dear Leader. It’s not about what’s good for the country but what creates the most political or financial benefit for Donald Trump.
Ten Republicans who voted to impeach Trump have retired or lost primaries to Trump-approved candidates. Just across the river from Portland in SW Washington, Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler, one of the more “reasonable” Republicans in Congress, was defeated by Joe Kent, an America Firster endorsed by Trump. Few in the district know much about Kent, but they like his willingness to obey Trump’s every whim. Herrera Beutler voted to impeach Trump, and her desire to follow her moral code and do what she felt to be the right thing cost her dearly.
I’m not a fan of Rep. Beutler any more than I’m crazy about Liz Cheney or Rep Adam Kinzinger (R-IL). They voted with Trump far more often than they opposed him (Cheney, for instance, voted for Trump-supported legislation 94% of the time). All of them are far more Conservative than the rest of the country. All you have to do is to remember who Liz Cheney’s father is (Darth Vader) to understand that she’s no one’s Liberal.
I hesitate to call any of these three heroes. You shouldn’t get a medal for doing the right thing, which is what they’ve done. They stood up for the Constitution and their Oath of Office, which is what they promised to do on the day they took office. What they did is what they were supposed to.
They deserve credit for resisting incredible pressure from their peers to join the cult of personality that is today’s GOP. That they refused redounds to their credit, and we should recognize them for that. They’re Republicans, but they understand that they’re Americans first.
I applaud Cheney and Kinzinger for having the courage to serve on the January 6th committee. When their Republican peers were doing their best to whitewash what was an attempted coup (“a normal tourist visit”), at least two Republicans recognized an insurrection for what it was.
Because of the January 6th committee’s public hearings, America has seen that Donald Trump was involved in planning the insurrection. He knew protesters would be armed. He also knew thousands of his supporters would be laying siege to the Capitol. And he hoped the end product would be him remaining in the White House for four more years.
That our democracy survived that day is a tribute to the Capitol police and those Congressmen and women determined not to let a violent mob overthrow the government. They knew the election was legitimate and valid, and they were unwilling to let rioters prevent the certification of that election.
So Joe Biden took the Oath of Office on the Capitol steps on January 20, 2021, and Donald Trump became “the former guy.” However, he still controlled the GOP and wasn’t about to quietly cede the stage to the new President.
He has yet to concede the election and insists that he won “by a landslide.” If “by a landslide” means losing by more than seven million votes, he might be onto something. No matter how much he whines, the results won’t change. Joe Biden won fair and square. No cheating. No fraud. No skullduggery of any kind. People within the government responsible for monitoring such things have said that the 2020 election was the fairest and most honest election in American history. There’s no reason to doubt that assessment.
While he continues whining about the “fraud” and “Stop the Steal,” Trump has been working on getting his people elected to Congress so that if/when he runs in 2024, they can help him steal the election if necessary. Trump is determined to win by any means necessary, honest or otherwise.
The problem isn’t Trump, but the millions of Americans prepared to give him a free pass into the White House. Never mind that Trump has already confirmed his intent to rule like a dictator should he be returned to the White House in 2024.
So it’s all about creating an America that’s friendly to White Conservative Christian heterosexuals- in other words, the sort of folks who love them some Donald Trump and will allow him to do whatever he wants. Why? Because he hates the same people they do.
And that, of course, is the basis of his appeal. It has nothing to do with his policies because he has no foreign or domestic (or any) policy. Instead, it’s about making the lives of those hated by good White Conservative Christian heterosexuals miserable because that makes REAL Americans happy.
Because what projects strength better than employing brute force to quash civil unrest? It’s what he did here in Portland during the summer of 2020. Federal law enforcement troops came to town, poured gasoline on a raging fire, and cracked a few skulls- all so Donald Trump could claim to be a law and order President.
Under Trump, the 1st Amendment will have very definite limits, but not so much for White Conservative Christian heterosexuals- his base. Those people crave order, as long as it’s enforced against those they despise.
And then, as might be expected from the man who told multiple thousands of documented lies during his four years in office, there’s the lying period of his speech. It’s inevitable. The man prevaricates as he breathes.
Besides, honesty is for losers and Liberals.
Of course, there’s the possibility that Donald Trump won’t be running for President in 2024. Instead, he may be wearing an orange prison jumpsuit in a federal lock-up because (we can hope) his penchant for skirting (and breaking) the law may have finally caught up with him.
Ah, I can hear the impotent bleating from the Far-Right now: BUTBUTBUT HER EMAILS!!!!
When you break it all down, Donald Trump is genuinely screwed. He’s facing some grim legal jeopardy, and I, for one, am enjoying this circus immensely.
LOCK HIM UP!! LOCK HIM UP!!
Does wading in the schadenfreude pool make me a bad person?
The sad thing is that Hillary Clinton warned us about all of this, but so many Americans were so caught up in their irrational hatred of her that they refused to listen. My father-in-law hates Hillary Clinton, though he couldn’t articulate why, which put him in the same space as millions of other Americans.
So have decent and rational Republicans been sacrificed on the altar of Trumpism? Indeed they have. The GOP became the Cult of Trump in 2015 and is happy to toss those unwilling to drink the Kool-Aid onto the pyre. “Conservatism” is defined by the Cult of Trump as “obedience to Donald Trump’s whims.”
This new reality should terrify all still willing to employ reason and think rationally. Millions have yoked themselves to the Big Lie and what Donald Trump offers them- a shared hatred of those who aren’t White, Conservative, Christian, and heterosexual.
A country held together by shared hatred cannot long survive, and I fear that four more years of Donald Trump may well see the end of democracy as we’ve known it. Trump has already promised to rule as a dictator, and I suspect his base will eagerly welcome autocracy as salvation from “woke” Liberals. Though if you asked them to define “woke,” you’d probably get a deer-in-the-headlights stare.
Liz Cheney certainly isn’t the answer to what ails America, but Harriet Hageman hardly represents an improvement. She’s a liar and a thuggish Trumpbot who thinks only what Trump has approved. Yet another brain-dead Trumpbot will only give Congress yet another member of the Idiot Caucus- precisely what America doesn’t need.
Vi er så knullet.
In any language, we are so f****d.
