Seuss Time, Loose Rhyme

I do not like you, Cancun Cruz, 

You make me mad, oh yes you do.

I don’t like seeing you on the news.

The things you say are never true.

The “doctor’s” family changed their mind.

But you said Biden canceled Seuss.

They thought some pictures were unkind.

A lie like yours has no excuse.

Some books will stop, but just a few.

I think that is a thing you knew.

Before you talk about the book, 

Maybe you should have a look.

But you are not the very worst.

You didn’t even get there first.

Your party gave up long ago.

Their actions now are all for show.

Joe Biden’s plans they’d like to ditch

Unless they help the really rich.

Their sponsors’ wishes they’ll engage,

But never raise the mini wage.

What’s that? Did I just hear a Who

Complaining loud about the debt?

Or maybe it was only you.

But Cancun Ted did you forget 

The cost, gee whiz, for goodness sakes

Of budget-busting taxes breaks

For those who needed them the least?

While people starve, your owners feast.

And I don’t like you, Fox’s Tucker.

You always make my sphincters pucker.

(The reader may my praises sing:

I did not rhyme that other thing.)

The watchers of your icky show

Just want to hear you bashing Joe.

When you pretended books were banned,

Just as you hoped, the flames were fanned.

Oh Tucker, you’re a nasty guy.

You could be honest if you’d try.

But you prefer your misdirection

And lies about the insurrection.

Why you do this I don’t know,

But I admit it is your show.

Your viewers only want your fibs,

And love it when you “own the libs”.

It is too bad that’s all you’ve got,

Because it’s causing minds to rot.

Were you like this when you were small?

Did you never care at all?

(I know I mixed the rhyming scheme,

And now there’ll be a meter change.

Does it make you want to scream?

Seuss did it, too; don’t think it strange.)

It looks like we’re stuck with both Tucker and Ted,

Who hope we’ll be madder ‘bout books children read

Than the virus that Donald so carelessly spread.

That’s how they all try to get into your head.

And to think that I saw it on Capitol Hill.

The Rs were obstructing, they’re doing it still.

They all voted not to begin the debate

And forced their poor clerks into staying up late.

Then none of them voted for giving out checks

To people in need who are up to their necks.

They’re not very nice, and of that I am sure.

They act like they’re grinches; I guess always were.

They all voted no, every woman and man,

Weren’t even trying to come up with a plan.

And now that it passed they are trying to take credit, Believe it or not a “no” voter just said it.

“Young man,” someone told me, “you’re sort of a fool. You’ll never catch plans in Republicans’ pool.

They drown all ideas there, and more by the hour.

I guess they’ll keep doing it; it’s their superpower.

If I wait long enough, if I’m patient and cool,

Some say Mitch McConnell will restock the pool

Like Republicans did when they offered a hand

To presidents all, who were leading the land.

But that was back then, when it looked like they cared, And tried to improve how America fared.

Yet now, one and all, they are turning their backs

On people with problems that each of them lacks.

Though most of the voters are in Biden’s groove,

The right-wing decided that they’ll never move

Away from obstructing no matter the harm

To the country whose Trumpists they try hard to charm. 

But they’re charming with falsehood, they know that the truth

Brings voters they fear to the next voting booth.

In every red state they are up round the clock

To figure out ways how those votes they can block.

They want to because of the good we are seeing:

Joe’s getting things done and he’s not even mean.

And unlike his former, he keeps a low profe,

Yet no one must settle for just half a loaf.

Joe meant what he said and he said what he meant

And so far he’s faithful one-hundred-per-cent.

Spewing At CPAC

 

If last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference is representative, the formerly respectable Republican Party is done. CPAC was a festival of white grievance, denialism, big lies and bigger, conspiracies, and tortured attacks on liberalism. Pretending that sometimes-stupid but often-appropriate (like when Fox canceled O’Reilly) “cancel culture” is a greater threat to America than Covid-19, climate change, or Trump’s sedition.

What there wasn’t, except for ways to keep Democrats from voting, was policy. Meanwhile, Democracy-protecting House Democrats passed a bill making voting more accessible to all eligible citizens.

Featuring no actual conservatives, CPAC welcomed heroes of the election-canceling insurrection. Cruz, Hawley, Brooks. Paul Gosar, fresh from speaking to a white supremacist rally. Young Madison Cawthorn, who entered politics Trumpically, with lies, phony accusations, and demonizing his opponents. It was a retinue of retrogression. 

Then, the big finish: Trump. Caring less for God’s First Commandment than the founders’ Second, the flock idolized him in a much-selfied, gilded, Bob’s Big Boy simulacrum, amusingly made in China. After ninety minutes of unearned boastfulness, repeating his debunked, judicially-rejected election lies, and decrying “cancel culture,” Trump listed political opponents he wants canceled. Standingly, the audience ovated. We love you, they testified. You won, you won. 

They love the lifelong conman who made the pandemic worse, the contrast to whose uncaring mismanagement of vaccine distribution is stark, compared to President Biden’s effective guidance. Who, with his current wife, received the vaccine in secret, presumably to avoid publically debunking his dishonesty about Covid-19. The man who told them the lies they wanted to hear and fueled their Foxified resentments since before he was “elected.”

Hyping donations to his personal PAC, his control of which is total, he dangled a run in 2024, which will end when he’s grifted enough easy money from the beguiled. In mere days, he’s already garnered millions.

If CPAC is today’s Republican Party, we’re all in big trouble. If it is, our best years, leading the world in nurturing democracy, innovation, overcoming daunting challenges, and fulfilling dreams are behind us. Then, there were two conscientious, opposing but intellectually honest parties. Then, American democratic republicanism depended on and did damn well with it. Now, always delighted to approve budget-busting tax breaks for the wealthy, not a single House Republican voted to provide pandemic relief to those in need. 

Accomplishing nothing but delaying the help, Senator Ron “small” Johnson required the seven-hundred-page bill to be read aloud. Perhaps he can’t read. In any case, helpful Republican participation is no more.

No one looking for good governance could have found it at CPAC. Absent ideas, “cancel culture” was endlessly looped, (“Freeeedummmb,” screeched Crazed Cruz) to keep the masses from noticing the competence emanating, after a four-year absence, from the White House. 

(Noted, with irony: the decision to stop publishing a few Dr. Seuss books, met with choreographed rightwing outrage, was a free-market, unregulated, capitalist business decision, made entirely by the publisher.) 

What are conservatives to do? If CPAC is the Republican Party, they have no place in it. Surely, they can’t countenance Republican leadership of Texas and Mississippi, the two states most severely affected by bad governance during the big freeze, and, despite remaining near the top in Coronavirus deaths, the first fully to reopen.

Could they rationalize aping Mitch McConnell, who unequivocally called out Trump’s culpability for the insurrection and the lies that led to it, then voted to acquit, suggesting America’s criminal justice system is the remedy; and now says he’d support Trump if he were the 2024 Republican nominee? In what way is it conservative to say, sure, the man is a dangerous, mendacious, anti-democracy criminal, but of course I’d support him?

Presumably, Trump’s promise not to start a third party was greeted with relief by McConnell. Or, more likely, resignation. Because while Mitch recognizes the debasement Trump has wrought upon Republicanism, he understands he has nowhere else to go.

So he’ll stay with the party, sixty-two-percent of whose members say they either won’t or have serious reservations about getting vaccinated. The majority of whom believe the outrageous lies he, McConnell, decried, who’ve proudly renounced reality. Nearly all of whom revere the man whose malfeasance he confirmed to the world. 

Unchanged, Republicans will have a steadily diminishing role in the future of our country, except to the extent they may rob us of one. It’s a swamp from which there seems no escape for real conservatives.

Let’s hope they find one anyway. Proposing serviceable solutions to the existential problems we face, rejecting McConnell’s obstructionism, shrinking Trump’s CPAC into a cultish anachronism: that’d be a hopeful start.