An indifferent appeaser

I woke up in the middle of the night, and could not fall back asleep because I could not shake the answer Chuck Schumer gave to a great question asked by Mike Barnicle on “Morning Joe.”

I suppose it triggered an epiphany.

The American people are outraged about what is happening in America.

A CNN/SSRS poll released yesterday found that 51 percent of Americans think ICE enforcement actions are making cities less safe rather than safer. They oppose the ICE brutality and propaganda.

MAGA is becoming reviled by the American people, and Trump is growing more detested by the day. His approval numbers will be south of 30 per cent within 60 days.

Yet, Senate Democrats as a block do not share — at least publicly — the sentiments of Americans outraged by the collapse of the American republic.

Most Senate Democrats are indifferent to absurdist criminal investigations launched against Senators Kelly and Slotkin by the most corrupt Justice Department in history.

Chuck Schumer cares about one thing and one thing only.

Power.

The only interest he has is being Senate majority leader.

He does not love his country enough to fight for it.

He does not love the American people enough to take a stand for them.

He does not love the Democratic Party enough to demand that it make this terrible crisis its finest hour.

Schumer is not alone.

He represents his caucus, which is filled with feckless men and women, who are out of touch and lacking fighting spirit. All together, they are a bowl of toxic Jell-o.

Here is the question that Mike Barnicle asked Chuck Schumer and Schumer’s response (thank you, Aaron Rupar, for the clip):

It was the perfect question.

Schumer’s answer was perfect nonsense.

He understood the question perfectly, and answered it deliberately in the gibberish of a man who has held elected office since 1975.

His life’s work has been to climb the greasy pole — not do great things — and in this, he stands as the polar opposite of John Kennedy and the ethos that demanded:

Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.

Chuck Schumer and his fellow travellers do not measure up as men and women of character, integrity, judgement and dedication, which were the character traits referenced in JFK’s four-part test for public service.

The truth is that Democratic senators don’t care enough about what is happening in Minnesota. They don’t want to stop it. They want to benefit from it.

What Schumer has determined is that by doing nothing the winds will bring him a majority, from which he can rule and be a less effective version of Mitch McConnell for a time, doling out favors to his donors as part of a never-ending game that has brought the greatest nation in human history to the edge of ruin.

Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries cannot speak in clear sentences out of choice.

They refuse to take a stand on anything because they became leaders of their party by refusing to stand for anything.

They are all things to all people — and nothing at all at the same time. They are blue chimeras that dance in the distance and disappear up close when danger draws near.

They are pathetic men.

What I realized in the middle of the night is that it’s a fantasy to believe that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries will rally their colleagues and the American people with the power they have to demand the masks come off and the abuses stop.

They have already chosen to do nothing.

Chuck Schumer allowed the ICE army to be funded, and has permitted the most extraordinary abuses of civil liberties in American history because he is indifferent. That is his sin, and it will be his awful legacy, paid for by my children, who will suffer because of the Democratic Party’s guilty men and women who lost two out of three elections to Donald Trump, and then appeased him as he destroyed the rule of law in the United States.

The tragedy is beyond measure.

The direct and honest answer to the Barnicle question would have been: “Only a few senators really care, and no one wants to got to Minneapolis because it’s cold there.”

An honest answer would have said, “We believe the more people who are shot and beaten, the better we will do in November.”

An honest answer would have been, “A lot of senators already have dinner reservations booked in Washington, DC, and don’t want to travel.”

What I realized in the middle of the night was that I finally understood Chuck Schumer.

He’s not just an appeaser. He’s an indifferent appeaser.

Here is what Elie Wiesel said about indifference:

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony. One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it.

Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.

Remember this?

”Winning” doesn’t feel like the right word, does it?

Mike Barnicle asked a great question.

It was like an MRI for Chuck Schumer’s public character. What it showed was a completely hollow man.

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