Wormwood:
Reflections on an Shattered Nation
Published five years’ ago (May 21, 2021). The Republican Party’s betrayal of America continues unabated. Let us not forget. They must pay dearly in November.
Today’s Republican Party and its Tangled Web of Lies
“Get thee glass eyes, and like a scurvy politician, seem to see the things thou dost not.”
King Lear’s words never made more sense than in their description of 98% of today’s Republican office holders.
Less than a year after acquitting an impeached Trump on charges of attempting to bribe a foreign ally to acquire compromising information on Joe Biden, the Republican senate acquitted him at a second impeachment trial, ignoring charges of “incitement to insurrection.”
For several months, Republicans supported the former guy’s infantile refusal to accept the results of the presidential election. Fearful of being labeled a “loser,” Trump employed a number of desperate stratagems to reverse the outcome. When all failed, he summoned his rabid supporters to Washington, D.C. in a last ditch effort to keep the election results from being certified “by Congress.
In a rare moment of truth-telling, Trump tweeted that his rally “will be wild!" What started as a giddy costume party soon turned menacing as one speaker after another whipped the crowd into a violent frenzy: “Start kicking ass and taking down names” (Mo Brooks). “Time to hold members of Congress accountable” (Madison Hawthorn). “You can be a hero, or you can be a zero. And the choice is yours, but we are all watching” (Don Jr.). It is time for “trial by combat” (Rudy Guiliani). “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more” (Donald Trump).
[Side bar…all this bellicose rhetoric made it sound like Trump and his group of platform warriors were actually going to lead the mob to the capitol building. Instead, they… uh…disappeared, whisked off by limousines to the White House No doubt they intended to lead the march of the MAGA rebels, but they bolted suddenly, as though stricken by a sudden outbreak of crippling bone spurs that could only be treated at the White House.]
Well, we all know that trial by combat did, in fact, occur. Thousands did fight like hell; they took names (“Hang Mike Pence” and “Kill Nancy Pelosi”), and they did kick a lot of ass, mostly police ass. The result was five people dead, hundreds seriously wounded, and millions of dollars of damages to the Capitol. Well-organized domestic terrorists stormed the halls of Congress as senators and representatives (Democrats and Republicans) ran for their lives, barricading offices and closets, fearing the wrath of the mob.
And yet…and yet…several hours later, 147 Republicans, led by Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, voted to decertify the elections results, echoing Trump’s false claims of election fraud, fracturing even further a bitterly divided country.
And now, several months after the insurrection, after the testimony of victimized cops, after the burial of five dead people, and after the hundreds of indictments of the terrorist perpetrators, America’s “glass-eyed and scurvy” Republican politicians now seem to see the things they do not – no violence, just “peaceful protestors;” no destruction, just “tourists not terrorists.” No need for a commission to investigate. Noting to see here.
The depth of this willful blindness and brazen cowardice is difficult to fathom. This is some new mutant form of lying and cowardice. The English language is insufficient to capture the breathtaking scope of this corruption of words and distortion of reality.
If memory serves, on the evening of the insurrection, McCarthy, McConnell, and Graham blamed Trump for the insurrection. Their brush with the truth was apparently so traumatic that, after taking oxygen and counsel from Coach Trump, they quickly reversed their positions. Their easy tractability, combined with their confidence in the gullibility of their followers, is exceeded only by their confidence in themselves as master illusionists practicing sleight of hand (now you see it, now you don’t) and sleight of mouth (now you hear it, now you don’t).
The magician David Copperfield once created the illusion that the Statue of Liberty had disappeared. Perhaps the Republicans should run him for President. Having taken leave of the real world, preferring to live, instead, in a world of self-created illusions, Republicans might see Copperfield as their best hope. Those of us who know the Statue of Liberty did not disappear will take our chances with men and women who do not practice magical thinking.
America is witnessing political Theater of the Absurd in its most tragic form. The nation’s stability is precarious. Democracy itself is being tested. Governing can only occur when opposition parties inhabited by men and women of good faith seek common ground and seek compromise. But common ground is impossible when one party believes language is for convincing us that we did not hear what we heard, that we did not see what we saw.
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Photo: By ABC Television - eBay itemphoto frontphoto back, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16733820