28 I 2021: Republican Party, a petri dish for demagogues

Speaker Nancy Pelosi rebuked the Republican “leadership” in the House for putting the infamous Marjorie Taylor Greene on the House Education Committee. Here is a quotation from the news report:

 …what could they be thinking?” Pelosi asked Thursday. “Or is thinking too generous a word for what they might be doing? It’s absolutely appalling, and I think the focus has to be on the Republican leadership of this House of Representatives for the disregard they have for the death of those children.”

Well, the Republicans in Congress are, in fact, thinking all the time, but only of themselves and about how anything they say or do might affect their chances of re-election. For them, it is indeed “all about me.” 

Ms Greene is both a nutcase and deeply cynical, with a long record of bizarre and indefensible statements. Her recent election was assured by the attractiveness of her lies to the conspiracy swallowing-proletariat of Republican voters to whom she has been pandering for years by signing on to almost any conspiracy theory that has come along. And Republicans are wary of alienating the bigoted, ignorant, and manic in the Trump base.

Embarrassment should be far too mild a word for Ms Greene’s effect on the Republican Party. Her presence in Congress is a damning judgement on the Party that has winked at and encouraged the delusions of the whole spectrum of the violent right. This kind of thing goes back at least as far as Nixon’s “Southern strategy” whereby he welcomed segregationists into the Republican Party.

Though Ms Greene’s documented statements from recent years should have made her an utter pariah with anyone of sense, the Republican Party has welcomed her into Congress and will now fight as mindlessly for her as they did for the liar Trump.

25 I 2021: From Show-me State to Screw-up State

I grew up in St. Louis MO, lived here until 1966. I left town in pursuit of graduate education, and later of work. After I retired I moved back to St. Louis after forty years away, looking forward to being able to visit the places and streets I loved in Old St. Louis. Well, many of these have been torn down or otherwise effaced, and the rest cannot not be visited, even in the daytime, because of widespread gun-violence. City government is a mess, so there will be no help there, and St. Louis County is still a jigsaw puzzle of different and conflicting jurisdictions. So much for St. Louis.

I had been proud to be from Missouri. I thought of it as a Harry Truman sort of state, a little short on the airs and graces, but polite, honest, smart, and even progressive. Missouri really tried to take care of its people. I did not recognize the Missouri to which I returned. It’s government is dominated by Republican stumble-bums who have been elected by a people that has become reactionary, racist, bigoted, and stingy.

I read in today’s Post-Dispatch that of all the states, Missouri ranks fiftieth in the percentage of people who have been given the COVID vaccine. Why am I not surprised? The Governor, a Trumpian, followed his Master in refusing to acknowledge the gravity and peril of the COVID pandemic. The Republicans in Missouri, likewise infected with Trumpism, were obviously much more concerned about pleasing anti-maskers and businessmen than they were about the health of the community.

So, in addition to the screw-up of vaccine distribution at the national level, a Trump legacy, we learn of a serious failure at the state level, and the two will push the defeat of COVID19 into the remote future.

24 I 2021: Really nuts, or just a good actor

I read that Sen. Rand Paul is still playing the fraudulent election card. He says we should have a debate about whether the election was a fraud so all those Republicans who believe the lies told them could have their say. It is said that everyone has a right to his own opinion, but the gullible and mis-informed should keep their opinions to themselves. This is just another of Rand Paul’s many unusual, often very bad, ideas. I’ve begun to wonder if he, like Lucius Iunius Brutus, is feigning insanity or stupidity.

24 I 2021: Arizona Republicans issue recommendations

I see that the Arizona Republican Party has issued some denunciations that are virtual recommendations in the view of all sane citizens. Meeting at the Dream City Church in Phoenix, they voted to censure Cindy McCain and Jeff Flake because they opposed Trump and “supported globalist interests.” They censured Governor Doug Ducey because of his emergency measures to contain COVID19, because these measures “restrict personal liberties.” They also re-elected as their chair Kelli Ward. In an interview Ms Ward boasted of being a committed Trumper who will “always put America first, who believes in faith, family and freedom.” She is parroting here a slogan that would have warmed the hearts of old-time fascists. By “globalist” I suppose she means anti-chauvanist. So of course she and her fellow Arizona Republicans embrace the crypto-insurrectionists Rep. Paul Gosar and Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona. 

If offered the choice of being praised with Gosar and Biggs or censured with McCain, Flake, and Ducey, any sane and honest citizen would elect to be censured.

23 I 2021: The “Patriot” Party

I’ve read rumors that former president Trump, by way of avenging himself on the United States of America, is investigating the possibility of founding a third party to be called “The Patriot Party.” Of course, “patriot,” as I’ve complained before, doesn’t mean patriot in any ordinary sense of the term. “Patriot” is the 21st-century equivalent of “Good old boy,” sc. Someone “like us,” one who shares our prejudices, and, when all is said and done, will hate the people we hate. So I guess The Patriot Party would be a good title for a party composed of the sort of people that Trump attracts. 

Of course, the Patriot Party, like any other, is bound to have factions within it, and it may take someone with Trump’s charism to keep it all together. The factions would include The Evangelicals, The White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis, the Xenophobes, the Patriarchists, the Gun Nuts, the Downhome Soldiers of Fortune (militias), the Anti-environmentists, Anti-scientists, Conspiracy Addicts, and the Abortion-fixated. And, of course, non-violent criminals, like grifters and embezzlers and filers of fake bankruptcies, will be welcome, as will, no doubt, well-to-do sex-offenders and mobsters who have good tailors.

On consideration, however, I don’t think the diverse interests and enthusiasms will prove divisive. These factions have so much in common that no incidental differences could imperil party unity.

21 I 2021: Soaring/boring ambition

Two of the Trump residue, Stephen Miller, fascist, racist, and cruel, and Sen. Ted Cruz, Ambition’s son, have started what will be a barrage of denunciations of President Biden. Each was inept in his own way, but the details of their criticisms are less important, I think, than the timing.

They want to get an early start in the coming race to become the new Trump. They are both morbidly ambitious. Cruz has shown this again and again by his political shenanigans. Miller does not so much seek the public eye, but, brighter than Cruz, shrouds his Trumpism and implements his neo-Nazi cruelties in secret.

So the race is on and we wait to see which of these and many other power hungry people will be the Trumpers’ new messiah.

19 I 2021: Lindsey needs an exorcist

I see that Lindsey Graham has quickly relapsed into his old degeneracy and is mindlessly boosting Trump once again. He lapsed and distanced himself from Trump for a moment after the invasion of the Capitol, but now he’s back playing this old role.

Again I have to ask: What does Trump have on Lindsey Graham? Charity suggests that maybe Lindsey lost his mind four years ago. Otherwise we have to wonder what would compel him to support Trump and all his works and pomps so slavishly, even to the point of making himself a golfing buddy and looking away from the Trump’s cheating also on the golf course.

So is Trump blackmailing Lindsey? I’m sure Trump would if he could. Or is it something even more compelling? Is Lindsey, like so many Republicans, possessed by a devil? In that case, we need to find a brave exorcist to expel Lindsey’s devil along with all the demons that possess the Republican Party.

18 I 2021: Reactionaries set the Capitol afire

It is now clear that the crowd at the Capitol was not just a spontaneous gathering that happened to include criminals and crazies, but was assembled according to plan by a coalition of Tea Party leftovers, Trump campaign aides and former White House staffers, a rogues gallery of old and new right-wing women’s groups, and members of the House of Representatives.

Now one could say that these conspirators really meant no harm, that they were only bringing together genuinely concerned citizens for a peaceful protest against the imagined theft of the election. But that would be like claiming that the heap of oily rags purposely stuffed into a closed space had nothing to do with the ensuing fire.

17 I 2021: Final human sacrifice to Trump

Yesterday Dustin Higgs was executed at the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute, IN. He was the 13th death row inmate to be killed since July 2020 and the third to be killed in Trump’s final week as President.  

The whole business has a queer, Republican smell about it. No honest pharmaceutical firm would supply the poison, so it was obtained from a secret supplier. Someone decided not to have employees of the federal government act as executioners, so the execution was carried out by “contractors” who were paid in cash. (I thought contract executioners were found only in the underworld.)

A lot of deceit was fired off in defense of these murders. The Justice Department proclaimed “Seeking the death penalty and carrying out capital sentences is not a political issue, nor have political considerations influenced the department’s decisions.” Clearly the Justice Department thinks we are all astonishingly gullible, or else it is simply without shame. Bill Barr himself played the family card, “we owe it to the victims and their families.” I don’t know how much these executions cheered up the victims or what they could do for the families except satisfy a need for revenge.

These executions were brought to us by a coalition of pro-life supporters: contributions from an unimaginably greedy President, an enslaved Department of Justice, a compromised Supreme Court, a manipulative Republican Party, and a host of false Christians made these murders possible.