We Can't Wish It Away

Entering the new year, so much needs saying that it’s been hard to choose where to begin. Serendipitously, help arrived from a reader, who provided the hook on which to hang this, the first column of 2022. Not that she’ll read it. Here, in part, is what she wrote in response to my year-end “predictions” column: 

“… You just dwelled on the negative and made your article downtrodden. Yes, it’s important to tell the facts, but we the people need more optimism and encouragement. To keep our heads high, fight for the good things in life, support each other, keep our faith and maintain a positive outlook to conquer each day… Thus, I am again bypassing and not taking the time in my day to read your articles.”

I sympathize. Plus, it was an order of magnitude better-written than what I typically receive from critics. So I appreciate it. If what I write were actually impactful, though, written my way or less “downtrodden,” reaching enough minds, in all fifty states, to change even a few about the imminent dangers of Trumpofoxification (it isn’t, of course), what she said would be sad. Because it reflects why we are where we are: people in the middle, like her (presumably), who’d rather not think about it, who’d rather hear sweet affirmations that it’s all okay, to justify doing nothing. 

Well, me too. Approaching the limits of tolerance, I’ve tried to turn it off, to stop caring, “to maintain a positive outlook to conquer each day.” (That desire also explains the attraction of mind-numbing drugs, and why, as existential uncertainty mounts, addiction and overdoses are increasing.) But, as I wrote back to her, my concern for the future of country and grandchildren compels me to keep thinking about and facing actuality, rather than ignoring or Pollyanning it.

It’s like witnessing a violent crime: too old and powerless to jump into the fray, at least I’d shout from across the street and call 911. Which would accomplish more than opining into the wind, but writing is about all I can do. That, and donating to people and institutions offering truth and solutions instead lies and obstruction. How nice if that lady, and people who think similarly, did the same. A few dollars, even. America needs commitment, not blinders.

Blinders, in fact, must explain why 68% of Republicans want to reelect Trump. Of all the dangers facing America, he’s the most immediate. In the long run, climate change is worse, but first things go first. Take it from Liz Cheney, a lifelong, hardcore conservative in all things, including Trump, whom no true conservative should ever have supported.

Confirming that he sat in the Situation Room on January 6, watching the insurrection on TV with delight, serially rejecting pleas to call for a stop to it, she stated the obvious: he must not be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office, ever again. His was unprecedented dereliction of presidential duty; anyone who thinks otherwise is no patriot. Nor a believer in democracy.

Proving the point, Trump just endorsed for “reelection” Viktor Orbán, Europe’s most brutal dictator. Anyone denying he’s a sociopath who wants to be like Vik, or Vlad, is delusional. Or, like my pixel pal, deliberately tuning it out.

Even if Trump were to lose, if he becomes the Republican nominee, which is likely, it would cement the permanent descent of that party into madness. And if he were elected, it wouldn’t herald the end of democracy; rather, it’d be because the end had already happened. It’d be because the Republican assault on free and fair elections, federal and state, had succeeded in destroying them. It’d be the beginning of autocratic rule by people whose views are rejected by the majority of Americans; people who barricaded the avenues by which we might return to majority rule.

Because the thing is, horrifying as the insurrection was, it was always part of a larger plan, an ongoing blueprint for overturning and preventing legitimate elections. And an indicator of why Republican leadership is so confident it can get away with undermining every Constitutional safeguard of democracy, while convincing people they’re doing the opposite. This level of brainwash-powered deception and acceptance of it appears irreversible. And 1930s ominous.

People of both parties say the country is heading in the wrong direction. The difference is that, for Republicans, it’s because of believing Trump’s perseverating and rightwing media-enhanced election lies, mandates necessitated by their own selfishness, baseless warnings of communism, and preposterous conspiracy theories. For Democrats, it’s because we’re seeing, clear-eyed, democracy imperiled and faltering. Surely, it’s the wrong time for silence.

Follow Up

Regarding the Liz Cheney outrage (which none of my "conservative" commenters has remotely rejected, it should be noted), Glenn Greenwald asks a good question.

One of the most inane acts undertaken by the Democratic Congress was its formal and highly bipartisan condemnation of MoveOn.org's "Petraeus/Betrayus" ad. Regardless of one's views of that ad, formally opining on the views of private citizens is not the role of Congress. But since they did that, and apparently believe that repugnant political campaigns merit Congressional disapproval, shouldn't there be some form of formal sanction for the far more pernicious and genuinely McCarthyite attacks on DOJ lawyers from Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's "Keep America Safe"?

Hard to imagine the Democrats doing something like that. Not because of ethics, or even hypocrisy. Because they couldn't sell lemonade in a heat wave. And, of course, because they don't have one-tenth the balls of Republicans.

Listen Up, Trolls

My recent call for outrage was met, entirely predictably, by the usual trollage from some, and silence from others, in the comments. Boilerplate stuff, really. So, for the unconvinced, I offer a couple of clips. If you think you can only force yourself to watch one, I'd say go to the second.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Beyond Outrage, Beyond Hope

This might be too much for me. Most literally, it makes me physically ill. Trying to put into words the depth of my visceral reaction may be impossible. It's simply the most despicable, horrifying, destructive, and fundamentally threatening thing going on in the body politic of the US. It's beyond the lying of Fox "news;" it's beyond the formless and factless rage of the tea bag people. This even overshadows, as a threat to everything we are as a country, the abuse of Senate rules by the Republicans that has all but ground governance to halt. It is worse than (although it's abetted by) the dereliction of duty of most of our news media. This is, unarguably, evidence of the beginning of the end. Unless even those uselessly enraged and idea-disencumbered right wingers wake up and say, enough. Enough. We are a country of laws, that values laws, whose legal system protects us all. Us all. All of us. Laws.

ENOUGH.

I refer to the demon spawn of Dick Cheney. I refer to her horrible group of America haters. I refer to the fact that there are people out there -- marinating in putrefaction, as expected, on Fox "news" but also, evidently, in all walks of life (using the term loosely) -- who don't see the danger. The disease.

This person, this evil thing, this smirking embodiment of blind hatred and the unapologetic disseminator of desperate lies, has declared revenge on lawyers assigned to defend accused terrorists in American courts. This damned individual, who most surely hasn't the foggiest appreciation of the Constitution or the laws that have stemmed from it, who would destroy the foundations of a legal system that has been the model for most of the civilized world, who is regularly given air time when she should, in fact, be deprived of air (at least the kind that wafts outside of damp and moldy basements), would happily -- because it makes her famous, and garners laudatory grime from the scum that love her, and because she's desperately trying to keep her felonious father out of jail -- ruin the lives of people doing the bidding of that very Constitution which she ignores so thoroughly. (I can't find the will directly to link to her ad, but there's a link within the previous one.) What a horrible, fraudulent, venal excuse for a human being.

Well, I guess those were words; but really, I have no words. This is as low as it gets; were she and her bootlickers to get their way, we'd no longer be a country of laws. We'd no longer be a country at all.

It's so obvious. And yet, there she is, a darling of much of the media, mostly -- but not limited to -- Fox "news" and the radio screamers. And there are listeners who give credence to her, and who (you can read it in comments on various sources that have covered it, but I don't recommend it), in the most despicable of language, filled with the sort of glee that only springs from pure evil (and I don't even believe in such a thing), agree with her. It's not just disheartening; it's not just depressing; it's not just dismaying. It's so far beyond any of those that I can't express it. The words stick somewhere near my diaphragm; they close my throat. Because it means we are so far from reason in parts of this country that there remains no basis for hoping we can get beyond where we are. We shall not overcome. It's too potent, it's too attractive to those that prefer hatred to hope, in whom it's simply not part of their makeup to think beyond their own sad fears and selfishness, to whom the idea of democracy in all its ramifications is as foreign as breathing underwater.

Times are tough. Right wingers, evidently, aren't. They talked tough, oh yes. But they got their deferments. And now, in the heat of great need, they have melted. Called upon by the times to rise to new heights, to honor what has served us through wars and depressions, they have sunk to new lows, descended into the mongering of fear and hate and the wholesale peddling of lies. And they're the ones that claim the mantle of patriotism, even as they reject the fundament of what has -- until now -- made us great. As they destroy us from the inside, deliberately, thoroughly.

Patriots.

I'd laugh, if I could.

It's come to this. When tested, we have failed. Cowed by people in caves, and by the premeditated and self-serving terrorizing of our populus by politicians like the Cheneys and virtually all Congressional Republicans, and the RWS™, we are on the verge of complete capitulation to fear, of renunciation of the rule of law and democracy. At a time when we are most in need of reason, we get this. We fall upon ourselves. We grovel in a level of discourse so low that the founding fathers would fail to recognize what they have wrought. One of the most brilliant of whom, as we know, defended British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre.

How pathetic these distorters of reality have become, how craven in the face of danger, how they recoil from the challenge of real problems that need real solutions. How quickly they shrink from the hard work of democracy. How they cheerlead and stoke anger. How far down people such as Liz Cheney have dragged us, septic, into the cesspool in which they live, when we most need to lift ourselves up; how easily such thoughts as hers take hold and, like the slime that they are, spread over us all, suffocating, eating our bones. And, it seems, we barely notice.

See? I have no words. None, at any rate, that convey convincingly and sanely the awfulness of these people. They will destroy us. And, even as we breathe our last, they'll find someone else on whom to blame it.

Is there anyone on the right willing to speak out? Anyone who calls him- or herself a true conservative willing to condemn Liz Cheney and the horseshit she rode in on?

Anyone?

And while you're at it, anyone on the right want to disagree with this soulless succubus that, even as he keeps arresting terrorists at a greater rate than her putrid progenitor, President Obama isn't serious about terrorism?

Anyone?

[Update, 3/5: Well, well, a couple of conservatives (none who troll these waters, of course) have spoken up. One even went so far as to use the word "unfortunate."]