Citizenship and helplessness don't go well together
PLUS: Why Republicans are terrified of Donald Trump's recent behavior
Cowardice is a despicable and detestable quality that is rooted in absence of love and a selfishness of spirit. It is untrue to say that cowardice doesn’t pay. In fact, the coward’s way has been the only way for many of the nation’s highest-ranking political leaders over the Trump era.
There was a recent exchange on the floor of the US House of Representatives over the use of a highly distasteful, though precisely accurate slur, directed against Kevin McCarthy by Eric Swalwell, the tough-as-nails California Democrat who has stood tall during the Trump era, despite threats, smears and constant MAGA harassment against him and his family. The said word is no doubt banned in the Swalwell household and its use severely reprimanded by Mrs. Swalwell. Without question, it is not a word licensed for public use anymore in America — at all, ever, at least in mixed company, but is used and understood by the broad community of American maledom descriptively to describe pejoratively a set of qualities that have long been regarded as unmanly by men in the company of men. With regard to McCarthy, the only deficiency in Swalwell’s summation was his failure to precede it with a superlative like “super,” instead of saying what he said to the Speaker in Name Only.
For example, if he were to say he was a “ super pussy cat” instead of simply a “pussy cat,” it would have been better because it would have been more true in a historic sense. In the end, the word may fall in and out of favor over the times, but the underlying concept will endure because there will always be “pussy cats” like Kevin McCarthy.
Fearful men and cowards have always been part of the American story. They are the authors of our greatest tragedies and moral failures. They stepped back when they should have stepped up. They quivered and quaked over the voices in their head, and sought the comfort of accommodation over the virtue of hardship that comes from resistance. Steadfastness, toughness and perseverance require commitment, and where there is nothing but vanity and self-interest, there is nothing worth committing yourself towards that is bigger and more existential. The cost of selfishness is the loss of hope and faith in the power of worthy things and causes. A desert of faithlessness is where Trump’s tormented collaborators and quislings find themselves. They are caught in a political and psychological vice, a pincer movement of their own design.
On the one hand with regards to Trump, Republican politicians will try and find a spot on a line that ranges from full sycophantic embrace to absolute denial of his existence. Expediency is highly situational and variable in American politics . The lack of adherence to principle has created the dilemma that MAGA Republicans face in the first place. The abandonment of principle always drives the next accommodation and the one after that.
The collaboration, compromises and cooperation with what almost every single elected Republican once denounced raises the second issue at hand. They are, collectively, largely shamed, neutered and lacking in credibility. The defense of the indefensible has turned MAGA members into stuttering imbeciles and hypocrites on national television who will be judged harshly by history. This era has been made possible by the slew of “pussy cats” like Kevin McCarthy for whom nothing beyond self-interest mattered. When a mean tweet from a scum bag hit, it landed like an earthquake in a vicious and zero-sum power game where the weak get rolled and submit to the strong as a matter of course and survival. The corruption of this era includes the media, which exacerbated the crisis by profiting from it while inflaming it, stoking it and spreading the contagion for billions. What exactly is the contagion?
Fascism. Trump is an American fascist and his party is a vessel for fascism. Judge Michael Luttig is precisely correct about the Republican Party not existing. It doesn’t. There is no fidelity within the party to the US Constitution and the United States, so the party in form and function doesn’t exist beyond as a force for threat and menace. It is not an American political party in the traditional sense of offering a perspective around the preservation of the goals and outcome of the American revolution. The party is the abyss. It is the black hole. It is consuming a type of natural gravity called freedom, and pulling the country down and in towards the abyss of total blackness. This is not the patriot’s dream. This is not the American dream. It must be resisted.
Everywhere around America there is a duality between right and wrong; good and bad are playing out. Our politics has been stripped of dignity, majesty, focus, purpose, respect, integrity, love, patriotism and responsibility. Yet, none of these things have disappeared from America. They are everywhere the media doesn’t cover, which is most everywhere. Instead, the American people see a daily exposition of pettiness, rage and stupidity. They are tuning out and turning off. They simply don’t want to be around to watch another version of an OJ trial. The format is old, stale and tedious after 30 years. The vast exhausted majority of Americans do not want this shit show to continue. They want it to end, but the show runners seem intent that there soap opera of malice and disgrace will endure forever. It will not.
Eventually, holes fill and gaps close. Cowardice will give way to courage, and courage is contagious too. People will start standing up over the next year, and by November of 2024, the likelihood is the MAGA/fascist fever will be shattered in this country. Recording it as anything less than a near-death experience for American democracy will do the moment a disservice. Perhaps another way to look at it is that American democracy surviving this era at the edge of a near-death experience is the very best outcome at which we are going to arrive.
What happened in this era? At a time of relative peace and prosperity, with no great external threat facing the country, Americans were incited by a great demagogue and a man of the lowest character to turn against each other and break faith with their country. He was not opposed by the people who could have stopped him. Instead, those people got in line. Could it happen here? It almost did — and it still might. If you don’t know what the “what” is yet, you might be part of the problem. Citizenship and helplessness don’t go well together.
Here’s my assessment on Donald Trump’s recent behavior, and why it could spell doom for Republicans in 2024.
If you’d prefer to read the transcript, you can do so here.
Thanks Steve.I agree with Judge Lutting, the Rs no longer exist. It is all MAGA, all performance for DJT. To see out 250 th birthday as a democracy they need to be defeated. Playground taunts between Members degrades those halls.
Yesterday there was a meme on Threads and Facebook that said “ watching Trump is like looking at the second plane hitting the Twin Towers”. As if we have no control. Wrong. We have ultimate control We can stop this flight: we can land this plane. We can end the terror holding part of the population. It’s up to us. We did it on Tuesday in Ohio, we can do it again
Excellent piece. It is why I go out of my way to explain to all who will stand still long enough why they must vote out all Republicans at this point in time. We are not in a position where there are some "good republicans" to rely on. The party is defunct. The party is nazi. If there are any in the party who have any moral backbone, they are not using it.
It is up to us as Americans who want to live under the Constitution of the United States to use our voices to replace the nonsense on the news.
Steve is right. The choice is plain. America or bust.