I’m old enough to remember when the first week of January was a relatively slow news week.
Folks would recover from the holiday rush and hustle; most headlines written were about gym memberships and New Year’s resolutions.
Now we are entering a new normal where our election process has become beholden to special interests and chaos agents that are elected to our government for the very purpose of making sure it doesn’t work properly.
They are essentially saboteurs, not public servants. Their own smug ambitions become more important than representing their constituents.
How many times did the perpetually greasy Matt Gaetz proclaim he was getting everything he was asking for and leave out any mention of the people he is supposedly representing?
The ‘Freedom Caucus’ as a whole is just a gang of bandits looking to leverage their fame and rising fortunes into committee assignments that could be used like a cudgel against the Biden administration, and the progressive legislation that has miraculously gotten passed in spite of the drama ginned-up on the right with no other intention than to impede democracy.
That is why the GOP had no concern about the possibility of seating George Santos who was clearly not only not who he had said he was and guilty of outright lies about his education and employment history.
In his short time on the public stage, Santos is already at a Netflix docuseries level of not just mendacity but apparent criminality.
After appearing nervous at his first appearance early Tuesday and then yawning his way through his first afternoon in the most hallowed chamber of the legislative process, Santos seemed to find his groove by being taken under the wing of that haggard crow of Q-Anon chaos, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
MTG is perhaps the leading content creator in the modern GOP; by Thursday evening’s session, Mr. Santos had been taught new tricks.
Throwing up a white supremacist hand gesture while casting his vote for his party’s Speaker (which was now heading into the double digits and would top-out at a whopping fifteen rounds of balloting), while Matt Gaetz played the moment to his advantage, enraging several of his fellow members of the GOP, almost to the point of coming to blows.
Now they can finally get down to the business they were sent to Washington to do - punish anyone who isn’t a wealthy, white conservative or a corporation.
The GOP is the party of wealthy, snarky, frat bros; the mediocrity of the country club has always been something the Republican Party has tried to protect. Little men like Lindsey Graham have made careers protecting the ignorant and enfeebled on behalf of big business because of a heritage of hate and inequality.
There was a time the GOP would pretend not to be racist and make overtures to inclusion, that has now been replaced with head-patting tokenism and extremely stereotypical speeches aimed at exalting their four black members.
“We helped double the number of black Republicans in the Republican conference,” Rep. John James exclaimed in his nominating speech for McCarthy’s seventh losing vote for Speaker of the House.
Rep. James had himself run two earlier times for his seat and now, as a freshman congressman, is already eyeing the Michigan Senate seat of Debbie Stabenow, who announced her retirement at the end of this current term.
It is unusual for a freshman to speak from the floor in such a public moment but the party could not resist using its black members as props in the ploy for power. The fact that James was applauded for his remarks on doubling the number of black Republicans alone is an outrage.
Going from two to four for black Republicans in a conference with well over two hundred members is not exactly equal representation.
Now that a Speaker has been chosen, the GOP will set about the business of making life harder for anyone who isn’t on board with MAGA extremism and pro-NRA insanity.
They will attack public education, healthcare benefits, worker protections, Veteran’s benefits and anything else their dark money masters have on their shopping lists for the 118th Congress.
Most importantly they conduct needless investigations, for no other reason than to provide Fox News talking points and airtime for the gnomes and trolls like Jim Jordan and Chip Roy.
Not to mention they will investigate good men like Dr. Fauci and perhaps Secretary Mayorkas, to generate applause lines for Lauren Boebert to belt out while she stripper-struts herself across the CPAC stage.
Their ever brutal rhetoric will be applauded by the hypocrites and heathens that make up the modern Conservative Political Action Conference attendees.
This is the ‘Christian’ following that applauded a pudgy teenage mass shooter, bringing in pyrotechnics and dry ice for his first introduction on the conservative stage.
The GOP leadership even flew the shooter to Washington and feted him on Capitol Hill after the midterms to show its followers what they viewed as the future of their party.
The little killer himself even teased out his own run for Congress when he comes of age, as I have noted before. He has not yet been to college but already has enough qualifications to join the modern GOP because he murdered the kind of people they don’t like and showed an allegiance to the gun culture that fuels much of their madness.
A six year old shot his teacher this week in Newport News, Virginia.
A child who was just being born at the dawn of Trump’s presidential term is now old enough to pick up a gun, conceal it, bring it to school and shoot his teacher ‘not by accident’.
This happened in a state where the current Governor ran on a platform that fellated the gun lobby at every turn, and attacked public education and the myth of CRT being taught in elementary schools (a falsehood as it is generally post-graduate level study material).
Governor Youngkin did this of course while wearing a J Crew sweater and sounding like a nice suburban dad; it was branding, image over substance, and a craven use of the class politics of racism that many voters in Virginia were only to happy to go along with.
And now they have children shooting their teachers.
The United States is at an inflection point.
Happily, the overwhelming majority of people I meet in my life and travels are not as extreme as many in the GOP and certainly in the ‘Freedom Caucus’ and MAGA wings would pretend exist.
However they lie the loudest and have been given the biggest megaphone by the media and their paranoid, drug-addled leader down in Mar-a-Lago, starring in his own self-directed version of ‘Sunset Boulevard’. (Donald Trump’s favorite film btw and the only thing in life he will sit still for is watching it which he has done almost obsessively over the course of his life.)
It makes it all the more shameful that Kevin McCarthy gave away the keys to the kingdom so to speak in his bid for party leadership.
He allowed the obstructionists, the fools and lets be honest the downright crazy and criminal, to take control of his party and perhaps the legislative agenda of the next two years.
They want it to be a freak show: in many ways it will be just that but we cannot allow the narrative to be entirely controlled by the trolls.
While all the reality show drama played out this week - not so say it wasn’t entertaining at times, it had and MTV ‘Real World’ vibe to it (as if Puck was being elected Speaker) - but in turns out McCarthy is more of Game of Thrones ‘Reek’ character.
Every big Republican moment these days involves a moment of public humiliation where some member has to surrender his manhood to the more powerful alpha dog in the pack. (Think Trump skulking out, bent and broken, following Putin onto the world stage at Helsinki).
In this way the GOP seems to function much like a white supremacist prison gang whose first function with new members is to witness their fealty and loyalty in the prison yard.
Their loyalty needs to be on full display.
In his quest for power, McCarthy has in essence given up any claim to it of his own; the legislative process can essentially be scuttled by a single member of his rabid caucus going forward.
In a country facing an epidemic of gun violence and still vulnerable to pandemic-era economic fragilities this could be a very dangerous situation.
It is one we will ultimately overcome. I have full faith in the leadership of Hakeem Jeffries on the Democratic side to make the public aware of what is at stake and to seek out the members of the opposing party who still believe in the concept of a free and fair democracy.
It’s never too late to do the right thing.
All we need is a few good men.
A Few Good Men
Astoundingly informative piece here Noel! The denizens of this country stand at a crossroad between fascism and democracy, I fear for the worst, unless the insurrectionist organizers and head of those responsible, are yeeted from our system of governance!!
I just signed a petition about removing Santos, but then I thought hmmm they elected ( sort of ) Trump with all his criminality in full view, as well as the 147 Republican politicians who were going to dispute Bidens win on Jan6 they still hold office😡Crime in real time with no consequences! No doubt MCcarthy got a message from the phone in president among others on the Maga strategy. Hoping justice comes soon🤷♀️