Author: BC

Memorial Days worldwide are collective recognitions of selfless sacrifice for country. We Americans have always been fortunate enough to indulge the assumption our fallen protected democratic principles that are synonymous and effortlessly interchangeable with the concept of our nation-state. The men and women who died in uniform sacrificed themselves in service, not just to the United States, but also to the democracy that defines it, one doesn’t exist without the other.

And even when we belched hypocrisy back home, denying minority soldiers the equality they risked everything to protect, the US brand was its government’s determination to peacefully transfer power to its duly elected successor, which made improvement – progress – possible. We could always get better because the lessons we learned from our mistakes could become referendums we enforced at the ballot box. We were at least committed to that, with a trusted system we could count on. Nobody doubted this, particularly after a Black man was elected President, not once, but twice. Now they do, and should, because so do we.

Trump’s disastrous transactional approach to both our European and Asian allies was particularly disgusting for what he seldom if ever mentioned. Although its primary component was a constant harping about the US being taken to the cleaners by moochers intent only on avoiding their fair share of the weight, Trump was obsessed with monetary outlays and had little concern for the first part of the “blood and treasure” equation. It always started and finished with how much they weren’t paying, or how much more he had forced them to cough up. It’s hard to recall any instance of Trump expressing even a modicum of concern for actual lives being lost in fulfillment of the obligations he always brought back to the financial bottom line.

Of course, that was hardly surprising since it was reliably reported he had scoffed at Americans who died for the alliance as “suckers.” Seditionists aren’t known for their devotion to those who defend what they seek to destroy, and that’s all Trump’s GOP is about these days. Memorial Day weekend is an appropriate time to consider what things will look like if they succeed. How the essence of our national being, what we project to the world and vow we fight to preserve, will suffer.

In Texas they aren’t even pretending anymore. The “vote integrity” legislation GOP state legislators have come up with behind closed doors over the increasingly desperate objections of Democrats they despise, is a buffet of intimidation and duplicity. Specifically aimed at Houston and vicinity, part of increasingly diverse Harris County, the list of outrages stacks up nicely with some of Jim Crow’s dirtiest tricks. The mark up of Senate Bill 7 was like a book burning, becoming ever more incendiary as a feeding frenzy of MAGA faithful, desperate to have their own contribution to brag about, piled on gratuitous disenfranchisement. From actually making it a felony for sending out an unrequested application to vote by mail to granting partisan poll watchers carte blanche to intimidate whoever they feel like, the package could only be created by those trying to outdo each other for OAN and Newsmax face time.

That Democrats walked out instead of helping to codify the destruction of 50 years worth of progress is only noteworthy because they ever even considered doing otherwise. Voting no on such an overt attack on voting rights would be like a Juan Williams objection on Fox’s The Five, it only adds credibility to what deserves nothing but scorn and disdain. In Texas, like Florida, and Wisconsin, and Arizona, and North Carolina, and every other state meaningful to the national Presidential calculus, Republicans are either finding a sliver of integrity and therefore exiled, wretched cowards and opportunists, or MAGA cultists… there are no other options.

What once was merely the rantings of a clinical megalomaniac has coalesced into a frontal and detailed assault on, not simply voter access and basic minority rights, but the very infrastructure of American democracy. Republicans want nothing less than to rig future elections, not to mention veto power over results that somehow evade their best efforts to manipulate. This is what their base demands because it’s all their Jim Jones obsesses about when he’s not kicking his ball out of the deep rough or railing about the witch hunt set to indict him. Turns out, surviving Trump was only the first round, just a battle in a war his eviction from the White House provided but momentary respite from.

Coming into Decision/2020 the principle worry was what would happen if the results were razor thin. It wasn’t near that close, but Trump created an insurrection anyway, which Republicans are moving ever closer to fully revising as the misguided good intentions of patriots. The fiction Trump conjured – why it wasn’t called the “ridiculous lie” is a mystery – was amplified by Fox/AM no more or less than all of his other falsehoods. That, along with relentless Twitter and Facebook activity, and the shameful cowardice or avid participation of virtually every Republican who mattered was plenty enough to engrave Trump’s mindless atrocity into the party’s mission statement.

Now it’s hard to see a path toward redemption. Does anyone really believe electing, say, Kamala Harris is going to be done without the most profound national trauma? Forget 2024, McCarthy and company are making clear right now that they aren’t taking no for an answer next year when it comes to a GOP House majority, a specter every bit the crisis a MAGA Presidency imposes. Millions of Americans now “have lost faith” in democracy in whatever measure Tucker Carlson prescribes, even as hundreds of bills similar to the Texas abasement flood legislative dockets across the country. Which is to say it’s not about “reform” at all; it’s about fascism. It is happening here… quickly.

Germany’s remembrance of its war dead is a far more anguished national exercise than ours. The emotional trauma of having to reconcile loss with the evil it served should be a stark cautionary tale to citizens of all countries. How horrible to know family and friends perished as part of campaigns to spread authoritarianism instead of self-determination. How awful to know loved ones were history’s villains instead of heroes. That’s a narrative no nation wants to bequeath its children and ancestors. One of our major political parties now pursues robbing us of the piece of mind and moral high ground we sent kids to die for throughout our history. They do it enthusiastically and without apology, pandering to a mob informed only by zealots and hucksters. Our past and future fallen surely deserve better. BC

In late 1946 President Harry Truman wanted nothing more than to have George Marshall, who had served with extraordinary ability as Army Chief-of-Staff throughout WWII, as his Secretary of State. At the time Marshall was serving as Ambassador to China and attempting to broker peace between Communist Mao Tse Tung and Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. Truman promised Marshall a virtual blank check in terms of the personal latitude he would be allowed to exert over US foreign policy. Ever the humble institutionalist, Marshall demurred and maintained he would only accept the position in line with the limitation of his role to merely an instrument of White House prerogatives. After all, that was how US governance was meant to work; he served at the pleasure of the POTUS.

That said, and times being as fluidly consequential as they were, Marshall would be involved in many momentous policy debates that occurred during his tenure at Foggy Bottom. Few of those controversies were as volatile, or carried such significant long-term implications, as the question of recognizing Israel’s independence. And no major decision by Truman would be opposed more adamantly by Marshall than his preference for aligning US interests with formal recognition in 1948.

For Truman it was a moral question… and personal. Eddie Jacobson, a lifelong friend, WWI comrade, and former business partner, advocated strongly and directly to the President in favor of recognition. As an American Jew, Jacobson humanized the predominant moral question few could seriously argue against as the Holocaust’s horrors continued to be documented: world Jewry required a safe haven from the relentless historical persecution the Nazis and their European collaborators had just proved was an existential crisis.

Whatever obstacles and conflicts formal support of a Jewish homeland might cause were worth risking to ensure such anti-Semitic pogroms never happened again. Moreover, Jacobson reinforced the arguments of White House advisors like Clark Clifford, who contended that supporting Israel offered domestic political advantages, providing a platform for the growing US Jewish community to become a dependable component of the Democratic base moving forward.

Marshall was forceful in his opposition to recognizing Israel, and even more against guaranteeing its welfare. He was certain Arab forces would immediately launch hostilities once independence was declared, and was pessimistic Israel could effectively defend itself against such an onslaught. While he appreciated the moral prerogative attached to Israeli aspirations, he was not willing to tie US forces to any future obligations as the infant nation’s protector.

But Marshall was most caustic toward the proposition that domestic politics should play any role in influencing foreign policy, particularly on questions involving complex geopolitical elements to which the American public gave little thought or consideration. Long after Marshall had passed, many did not hesitate to stain his otherwise splendid legacy by conflating his outspoken views on the “Palestine” question with either his own personal anti-Semitic inclinations or the prevalence of such bias throughout the upper echelons of the State Department. The former contention has been mostly discredited, the latter has not. Yet and still, 75 years later it’s impossible to argue Marshall’s many concerns were not prescient, as the US once again confronts the intractable bloodshed and recrimination tied to our evolving role as Israel’s patron.

None of the fundamental questions have dissipated; it’s still all about insecurity and displacement, enduring hatreds and the scapegoating required to maintain them. But the situation on the ground couldn’t be more different and perceptions have changed accordingly; Israel is now a hegemonic power, a nuclear-armed regional Goliath, who refuses to redefine itself as anything other than the David its national narrative began with. While it indulges this incongruity, most of the rest of the world does not.

The continuing specter of anti-Semitism can’t and shouldn’t alleviate the moral obligations that come with power over others; Israel struggles to balance that onus with the rhetoric from its neighbors that long ago vastly exceeded their capabilities to credibly pursue. But while Hamas mortar attacks on populated areas are illegal, reckless, unnerving, disruptive and too often lethal, Israel’s response is something else entirely. What its unopposed Air Force rains down on the dense Gaza skyline creates a stunning dichotomy that’s near impossible to reinterpret.

Cool Hand Luke may have been Paul Newman’s best work. Set in a classic southern work camp for convicts, one of its finest scenes is when “Dragline,” a much bigger and loquacious chain-gang veteran feels dissed by newcomer Luke and decides a boxing match is the proper venue to make him pay for his impertinence. What starts out as a proper lesson quickly becomes much uglier as Luke refuses to give up, absorbing blow after blow, knockdown after knockdown. The collective camp enthusiasm steadily wanes until nobody wants to watch the beating continue. “You’re going to have to kill me,” Luke tells Dragline. Finally, Dragline simply hoists Luke over his shoulder and carries him back to the barracks, cognizant he is a bit nuts.

What’s happening now in Gaza is not boxing, and launching mortars isn’t a flailing left hook, but the mismatch is far more pronounced. All of which brings the issue back around to what was George Marshall’s most visceral concern, the influence of domestic politics on foreign policy. For four years Bibi Netanyahu shamelessly took advantage of a dangerous US Administration’s complete disregard for decades of policy continuity regarding the Palestinians. Netanyahu was glad to allow Israel to become merely a box to be checked off of Trump’s “promises made, promises kept” list so long as it accelerated West Bank settlement, Likud’s constant preoccupation, and enhanced his own electoral prospects which, like Trump’s, he long ago conflated with keeping himself out of a jail cell.

Where this left the Palestinian’s situation, particularly in Gaza, was a whole new level of hopelessness. Trump treated the Palestinians as less than nothing, literally a worthless expense we could pretend our way out of considering. Now they’ll invite destruction rather than be ignored. Bibi seems content to deliver that. Of course, Trump’s GOP will cheer on the beating as long as it lasts, terrorists getting what they deserve. Fox/AM long ago brought “standing with Israel” under the ever-widening Islamophobe umbrella, slandering the traditional American “honest broker” role in the Middle East as just more liberal treachery.

Biden rightly came into office determined to provide Netanyahu with time to ponder how shortsighted his dalliance with Trump was. Pretending the Palestinians don’t matter within the peace process was imbecility only MAGA could embrace. “Accords” with the likes of Bahrain and the UAE were exactly what Trump expected them to be, nothing more than a couple of rally talking points. They may have been better than a poke in the eye, but not much, and certainly inadequate to offset the damage inflicted to America’s credibility as a good-faith partner by Trump’s enthusiasm to be nothing more than Bibi’s goon.

The deleterious consequences of the policy’s assured broader failures were a when not if proposition; now they’ve arrived in spades. It’s certain Biden has warned Dragline he better stop pounding Luke yesterday, there is a new Captain on the porch and there will be no “failure to communicate” US intentions moving forward, yet another MAGA mess to be cleaned up. Israeli policy that agrees to once again recognize Palestinian humanity as necessary to wider ambitions for regional peace and stability is a reset Biden is surely now demanding. The danger is whether it’s already too late. The worst thing for Israel’s future has always been adversaries with nothing left to lose. That day may be here with a fight Israel can’t win, no matter how powerful it has become. Perhaps all the Palestinians have left is their refusal to say uncle, which may be enough to badly injure what Israel was created to achieve… back when it was in exactly that same place. BC

Except for Barack Obama, and Joe Biden of course, I never voted more enthusiastically for a Presidential candidate than for Walter Mondale in 1984. Aside from the contrast his relative youth and mental adroitness provided to the increasingly addled incumbent, “Fritz” Mondale was to my eyes a decent and honorable man. Anybody who paid attention could see Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America” was nothing more than smoke and mirrors, what happened when one half of “supply-side” economics is employed while the other is completely abandoned, pleasure without any pain.

One didn’t have to be an economist to understand revenues needed to keep up with spending or the equation would tilt. Reagan decided to simply start swiping the credit card for no better reason than to provide immediate economic gratification and reap the political goodies that went with it, a previously taboo practice subject to bipartisan scorn. Balancing the books unless faced with war or calamity was a guiding tenet of responsible Presidencies until the Gipper’s team decided messaging could rebrand fiscal recklessness as prosperity. Today’s catastrophic balance sheet is the result of that disastrous precedent.

Near 40 years and many trillions in red ink later, Mondale’s candor that tax hikes would be necessary to offset Reagan’s first-term spending binge seems pathetically naive, almost politically irresponsible given the historic electoral rout it helped facilitate. Yet and still, given the depths we have descended to since his exercise in honorable futility, only the shameless and moronic – read today’s GOP – wouldn’t welcome a return to such guiless decency in our national conversation.

It’s now clear the principle lesson Republicans took to heart from Reagan‘s landslide in ‘84 was that pandering pays, there is no dignity in losing the right way that outweighs winning the wrong way. Mondale could congratulate himself for sticking to his principles and being honest with American voters, more power to him. Oh, and he did win Minnesota and DC, after all! Truth is for suckers. Tell the people what they want to hear and deal with squaring the inconsistencies later while in office; that’s what the bully pulpit is for. It’s a good problem to have because not having it means you lost.

In fact, while Reagan didn’t have the stomach to go to the mat for spending cuts true believers of supply-side like his OMB Director David Stockman insisted were necessary for the theory to work, he still felt guilt pangs about ballooning the deficit. When all was said and done he did increase taxes and impose a number of measures to enhance revenues just like Mondale said he would. But as Reagan’s chaotic second term wound down, the GOP united behind one myth after another that, not only revised history to canonize the man, but also created litmus tests for party membership based on such lore.

George HW Bush would pay a tremendous price for failing to obey the dogma Reagan himself flouted – “Read my lips, no new taxes!” Bush saw a 90 percent approval rating accrued for spanking Saddam dwindle as the economy suffered through a post-binge hangover. Senior was willing to run up debt, but wasn’t reckless enough to completely refuse to pay for it, even if it meant breaking bold campaign assurances. He found himself sorely lacking in the Teflon department, particularly when it came to a Republican base that doubted his conservative credentials from the outset. If Reagan thrived from humoring the faithful, Bush crashed and burned from failing to deliver what he never wanted to pledge, becoming the first official RINO.

The Republican purity tests that began with Grover Norquist have ended up at Mar-A-Lago. Instead of pledging to ruin the economy with mindless fidelity to Arthur Laffer and an economic theory that isn’t worth the napkin he wrote it on, the bar can now be set no lower. Forget merely imperiling America’s economic future to provide upper bracket tax relief, now it’s the big kahuna… destroying democracy in support of a lying megalomaniac in order to further some delusion of restoring Mayberry. Reagan worship sprung from a big lie about the wonders of supply-side economics. Trump adoration is simply what nihilist white grievance becomes after four years of a Fox/AM presidency and the electoral reckoning it deserved.

More than 60 years ago JFK called on Americans to both serve their fellow citizens and to strengthen the core idea that our government reflects the effort we all put into it. Twenty years later Reagan pronounced that notion bankrupt and claimed all government can do is fail… and cost money. Instead of calling for our best, Reagan sparked a GOP sensibility that “if you want it done right, do it yourself,” which left open the definition of exactly who “yourself” was. Fox/AM was from the start determined to render that essence ever more exclusive, fully in line with its customer base. By the time its first POTUS hissed his inaugural dystopian hallucinations in 2017, “doing it yourself” meant simply blame everyone but you and refuse to cooperate with anyone who doesn’t start each sentence validating your obsessive resentment about who is getting what they don’t deserve.

Walter Mondale’s death last month provided an opportunity to consider what decency looked like in a national candidate. It also allowed for consideration of the costs that come due when one of our major parties deems such nobleness little more than a liability, slavishly customizing its membership requirements accordingly. The Reagan Revolution has become the Gingrich Insurgency has become the Tea Party has become MAGA. Reagan to Gingrich to Cruz to Trump to Taylor-Greene, the slippery slope to ruin. Ask not what you can do for your country, but demand it get rid of your enemies and let you pack heat without a permit so you feel safe while burning your mask. A very long way to fall…and longer still to climb back from. BC

My daughter, Iz, is one of a kind. Fiercely independent and perfectly comfortable launching into adventure alone, she was often a daunting challenge to raise toward adulthood. One of the worst mistakes I ever made as a parent was using the old “once you are 18 and not my legal responsibility you can go off on your own” trope to decisively stave off rebellious adolescent outbursts. Problem was, and it’s utterly incredible I somehow missed it, Iz was a January baby, which made her 18 with an entire semester of her senior year still left to complete. Simply amending the language to “when you graduate from high school” would have made all the difference. Instead, with modeling stardom tantalizing her imagination, and several New York City shoots under her belt, not to mention an agent who thought a GED was a perfectly suitable option, my baby girl/legal adult simply refused to return home one weekend following a NYC gig.

The rest of the story’s details are a private family matter. Suffice it say it was an ordeal I wouldn’t wish on an enemy, but resolved itself with both Iz’s future and our relationship intact. She walked across the Constitution Hall stage on schedule to receive her high school degree and, more impressively, recently graduated from college within the regulation four-year time frame. We couldn’t be more proud of her. Yet and still, it is a certainty, had she not been thoughtful enough to entertain sensible counter-arguments to her rebellious delusions of grandeur, and/or was under the sway of more sinister outside influences willing to go all in casting her parents as the enemy, things likely would have turned out far worse across the board. Reason and rationality eventually won out. More drastic steps were never required, but surely would have been considered had they been.

Who knew my own experience with parenting hell would form a suitable context for assessing the existential threat American democracy now faces. Everyone is somebody’s child, even MAGA’s wretched core; but even with a responsible adult back in the White House, indulging the GOP base’s malevolent delusions in hopes this too shall pass is not an option. Labeling what’s happening now within the Grand Old Party as something akin to a family squabble is like calling leprosy a skin condition. A very bad situation is only getting uglier, and it’s a grave danger to the entire US bloodline.

Thirty percent of our polity now predicates its support, or perhaps more accurately an absence of its fear and loathing, on embracing the Big Lie and manic efforts to transform its baseless claims into injurious actions against both the machinery and procedures that undergird US elections. To be clear: the Republican Party now at the absolute minimum tolerates without hesitation the wanton sedition most of its rank and file understand as necessary to maintaining their office. At best the leadership is a pack of cowards, at worst a cabal of traitors determined to end the American democratic experiment in order to maintain power the ballot box will no longer support. To ignore the peril with the complacency Biden’s sane governance encourages is to facilitate the next nihilist onslaught, the next iteration of 1/6.

It’s now clear Donald Trump has little appetite for anything more than the Mar-A-Lago buffet. A morning round of 8-foot gimmes at Doral and some phone calls before his afternoon nap seems about the extent of his new work habits, a comfort zone he gives no indication he wants to leave. Whether the GOP leadership believes abasement lite will get the job done keeping Attila self-satisfied until his irrelevance affords a permanent break is uncertain, for now they seem intent on regular trips south to kiss the ring in exchange for something resembling cooperation.

But what difference does it really make? The sedition ship left harbor a while back, packed to the deck rails with all types of wayward malcontents… Proud Boys to recliner bigots, QAnon loonies to Tucker groupies, a Noah’s Ark of grievance and resentment. While Trump can always make things worse – although today’s decision to maintain Facebook’s ban of his posts, along with Twitter’s steadfast determination to keep his seditious gibberish off its platform substantially inhibits that ability, largely because Trump is simply too lazy to pursue anything more ambitious – the MAGA walking dead have already been unleashed and are gnawing away at our democratic infrastructure, whether he’s goading them on or not.

At a Utah Republican party convention this week Mitt Romney, GOP statesman, Mormon elder, former Presidential candidate, was vigorously booed by a crowd of more than 2000 delegates. He escaped censure by less than 100 votes. The resolution was clear and to the point, charging that Romney “consistently publicly criticized” Trump. It was reported many in the crowd called Romney a “traitor” and “communist.” It got so bad the GOP Chairman was forced to admonish the crowd to “show respect” to the guy who labeled himself “an old-fashioned Republican.”

Though Romney was vociferous in his criticism of Biden’s agenda, the fact he recognized the current President’s legitimacy is all that a large share of the crowd cared about. Maine’s Susan Collins was “appalled” at Romney’s treatment. “We Republicans need to remember we are united by fundamental principles,” admonished Collins, who had little to say publicly past praising grants for lobstermen and local business initiatives while Trump stoked his insurrection last January.

In Maricopa County, Arizona state Republicans are getting their customized recount, conducted by an outfit who has promised results. The latest focus? It will be all about detecting bamboo fibers on the ballots… proof they originated in China before being dumped stateside in favor of Biden! Not a typo. Kelli Ward, a MAGA extremist whose own election as the state’s Party Chair is the subject of heated dispute, and who seems to spend most of her day retweeting Fox/AM’s most unhinged elements, ensured everyone of the “forensic” audit’s “integrity.” After all, Ward exclaimed breathlessly, it is “color coded.”

Rep. Ron Wright had lung cancer but kept his Trumpist priorities straight, exhibiting servility toward reckless Covid ignorance up until the day the virus killed him. Masks, closed schools, social distancing and the like… lib power grabs all, reopen yesterday! Like the good MAGA eunuch his Texas constituents demanded he be, the 67-year old, awash in co-morbidities, went to his grave in February denying facts. Now his wife is carrying his torch forward. Susan Wright was the top vote getter in the crowded race for her husband’s seat. And just in case anyone thought she may harbor any grudges against the mentality that took her beloved, consider that she out of all the Republican field received Trump’s endorsement, which was more than enough to ensure her the top slot leading into a runoff. “You will be very happy with this vote,” cooed Trump to his Texas faithful, “Ron is looking down and he is so proud of Susan.” Indeed. Now that is what taking one for the team is all about.

Whether it’s a participation trophy from Rick Scott or a docile and defeated Nicki Haley bending the knee and promising “I will not run if President Trump does,” shiftless “establishment” Republicans are doing what they do so well… hoping the bully moves on and lets them keep their lunch money until he drops out of school -or goes to jail. Even as a seemingly endless line of preening show horses audition to take over incitement duties, all remain as servile as ever, each vigilant to avoid the tag of excessive ambition. When Liz Chaney resembles Joan of Arc things are very dire.

Regardless, Trump or no Trump, the genie has long been out of the bottle. Fact is, the Donald can do next to nothing and his toxin will continue to erode America’s core. He could croak tomorrow and the die is still cast. Like the plague of mice now tormenting Australia, MAGA remains a pestilence few have any idea how to contain, least of all Republicans without rabies, who were as horrified by 1/6 as the rest of us. American democracy now entertains a vibrant, well-funded political class with no other goal but to destroy its host. It’s not a family quarrel, or even a domestic dispute… it’s a national crisis that can only be headed off if enough people recognize it exists… and begin to consider more desperate measures. BC

Anyone who’s ever covered a stand on the Ocean City Beach Patrol probably has helped locate a kid separated from their parents. In the middle of a July scorcher the 10-mile strip of barrier island gets near shoulder to shoulder in some areas further downtown. Becoming distracted for but a moment or two can easily cause a mother to lose touch with her child amidst the sweltering throngs, happens all day long.

There are very few examples of a more striking dichotomy between the casual attitudes of those charged with resolving a situation and the abject panic of the people they are helping. Few of the lifeguards in OC have kids yet, so the empathy felt for parents stricken by the most horrible images possible during the longest 10 minutes of their lives is certainly less than it would be if they had endured a similar experience. Yet and still, it is a rewarding part of the job to have a relief-soaked mom express her undying gratitude for answering her prayers.

Several times I was directly involved with reuniting frantic parents with lost kids. Generally, I simply moved back to focusing on the ocean, but it wasn’t lost on me how traumatic the episode was for them. Each time a frightened parent came to me I made a point to exhibit a demeanor of concern and empathy their fears entitled them to, even though my attention was being diverted from the water for a situation certain to be resolved quickly and without incident. Years later, on the one occasion I experienced a similar scare with my own child in a public setting, I flashed back to that misguided nonchalance on the beach and figured a bit of karma had just caught up with me.

Undoubtedly it’s a tricky balance for public safety professionals to strike on the job, but a necessary one. Police in particular, common sense dictates, need to be cognizant that many of their routine duties are perceived as anything but by the public they serve. While arresting and processing somebody for, say, drunk and disorderly, may be routine stuff for them, it’s most always the apex of crisis for the suspect. As one who has been through just such a circumstance, not once but twice, I’m here to tell you each episode stands out near the top of my lifetime list of worst experiences. In short, getting arrested for anything is an ordeal no average person digests with anything other than shame and fear.

Any officer who ignores that fact and exhibits negligence or worse toward its significance is guilty of malpractice that warrants some form of a disciplinary response. One size does not fit all. An otherwise law-abiding citizen who has had one too many is not a hardened criminal, and should be entitled to at least the assumption that being arrested is a significantly more traumatic experience. Case closed. Moreover, it goes without saying that skin color should have nothing to do with such dispensations.

However, in an era of body cameras and daily YouTube videos we know just such callousness is anything but an aberration, and sanction is seldom imposed. Over and over the same pattern plays out: relatively minor situations escalating unnecessarily as cops expect suspects to calmly and crisply, without error follow their instructions and cede them total control. When they fail to do so, things quickly go south until, way too often, avoidable tragedy results. Worse, the Black community has disproportionately suffered such injustice, only to be continually denied accountability as one department after another circles the wagons and attempts to discredit the victim and/or rationalize the misconduct.

Everything about the sorrowful George Floyd story stinks, which is to say it epitomizes to a tee all the woeful deficiencies just summarized. From the farcical charge of passing a counterfeit twenty – who could possibly believe a white customer would face a comparable response – to the posse of cops summoned to contain him, George Floyd was targeted for abuse, his basic human rights trounced without thought. It was a casual atrocity performed in broad daylight before shocked witnesses, routine brutality dispensed with a yawn as it steadily extinguished a life of consequence, a man with many friends and loved ones.

Derek Chauvin’s trial isn’t much different from all of the many proceedings throughout the country that have proceeded it. More of the same. The most damning video possible reiterated by witnesses present during its creation, with a host of experts providing clinical affirmation of the injuries it documents. Meanwhile, the defense bases its case not on contesting the events that took place, that would mean imploring jurors to renounce what their own eyes see, but instead to understand that what they see is the defendant “acting within his training,” merely doing his job as he was taught. Any problems with what Chauvin did should be taken up above his pay grade; he was simply subduing a suspect who was more dangerous than you’ve been led to believe, and here’s why. Nothing new. Why change a winning formula. After all, look at the won-loss record when it comes to cops charged with such crimes. Think UCLA during the Wooden era.

What makes this case as bad as any is the hideous disconnect between the cops on the scene, who enabled the murderer, and the witnesses present, who grew frantic as Chauvin casually killed George Floyd. Despite being screamed at by citizens who pay their salary, including an off-duty EMT determined to aid Floyd, but prevented from doing so, all of the cops were utterly non-plused as the laconic Chauvin murdered the already cuffed Floyd. A fully restrained prisoner repeatedly gasping he can’t breathe, a crowd of onlookers screaming that the man is dying, an off-duty paramedic demanding to be allowed to provide medical care. Yea, just another day at the office. What is all the fuss about?

Genevieve Hansen did not mince words when she testified at Chauvin’s trial. “I don’t know if you’ve seen anyone be killed, but it’s upsetting,” the Minneapolis EMT declared. In fact, Hansen was determined enough to make her point that she had little patience for efforts by the defense to mine exculpatory nuggets from her testimony. At one juncture the judge felt required to dismiss the jury and admonish Hansen to not be argumentative.

“I was desperate to help,” Hansen swore under oath, “I would have been able to provide medical attention to the best of my abilities, and this human was denied that right.” As Floyd lay motionless Hansen was ordered to stay back, even as Chauvin continued to kneel on Floyd’s neck. Derek Smith, a paramedic dispatched to the scene, testified he believed Floyd was dead when he arrived, again, even as Chauvin remained on top of him.

Dispatcher Jena Scurry testified that while watching the scene unfold on her monitor, she was as bothered as the other witnesses. Scurry actually called the duty sergeant to express her concerns. After giving heed to the Blue Wall and asserting “I don’t want to be a snitch,” she nonetheless worried that “something doesn’t seem right.” Her misgivings would go unheeded.

Witnesses, paramedics, medical examiners, pulmonologists, fellow officers, and even the Chief of Police, all have become a chorus indicting Chauvin as a killer. But what their testimonies fail to provide, the video of the awful incident delivers: a cop devoid of even a scintilla of humanity, a time bomb with a badge, who arrived on the scene ready and willing to dispense abuse with, to paraphrase a Grateful Dead tune, a pulse that doesn’t rise above 72 beats per minute. As Henry Hill described mob whackings in Goodfellas, “…it was all just routine.”

Even after the ambulance had taken George Floyd’s lifeless body away, Chauvin is caught on camera musing indifferently to a witness – who would later break down in court relating what he saw – that “… we gotta control this guy, he’s a sizeable guy… looks like, looks like he’s probably on something.” The banality of evil. BC

Back in 1992 DC-area traffic was terrible and getting worse every week. And while there were plenty of aspects to recommend a career in outside sales for a single male quasi-degenerate horseplayer, daily exposure to gridlock frustration was surely not one of them. What to do while inching along Canal Road or crawling slower than a jogger on 395? I was never one for garish car stereos, and this was way before the Internet, let alone mobile streaming options, so there was the radio. One day I had had enough of “classic rock” repetition and other FM indignities – for me, a little “Greaseman” went a long way – and restlessly scanned the dial for something interesting. Impatiently turning the knob I came upon upstart Fairfax-based 106.7 and what do you know, who was holding forth but none other than G. Gordon Liddy.

My introduction to the infancy of Fox/AM sociopathic stream-of-consciousness happened just that randomly. Utter boredom led me to what would slowly, relentlessly abase and demean the national conversation, relegating issues for debate to endlessly circular sound blasts of white grievance, manna for totalitarian mania. But back then, to my ears, Liddy was little more than a guilty pleasure, a side show freak who came at you without apology as the Hitler-inspired zealot he had always been.

Twenty years after becoming synonymous with the inept fanaticism that would make the Watergate episode as absurdist as it was dangerous, part Keystone Cop incompetence and part unprecedented threat to US democracy, Liddy reveled in his culture war extremism. Obviously, had I realized his brand of lunacy would wind up as idolized dogma millions of previously apathetic but resentful nihilists-in-waiting would baptize themselves in to fully unleash their bigoted worst, I wouldn’t have indulged his on-air novelty near as much. Yet and still, he was a unique character, a genuine article, regardless of how unsavory or downright scary.

When Rush Limbaugh passed last month he was rightly recognized as a titan of AM malevolence. But it’s interesting and significant to note that back in the industry’s infancy, when the landscape was far less crowded, Liddy was much more entertaining to listen to. It was ironic that Limbaugh, a stochastic terrorist from the start, always disavowed any responsibility whenever a lone wolf adherent committed some atrocity by pleading he was just an entertainer. In fact, regardless of his lame “Snerdly” routines and idiotic dalliances with racist songs, Limbaugh always took himself far more seriously than Liddy. Back in ‘92, Liddy was having fun and holding forth as the larger-than-life reactionary legend he branded himself to be. And although Liddy was far more of an intellect than Rush could ever pretend to be, it was Limbaugh who was selling robust “conservative ideas” along with whatever his advertisers wanted him to hawk.

Most important though has been entirely lost in the countless retrospectives offered up since Liddy died Tuesday. It’s the unarguable fact that, the cartoonish banshee culture war and authoritarian posturing Liddy offered thirty years ago with tongue in cheek, consumed as more distraction than anything else simply because most all assumed it would never gain the necessary traction to be more, now reflects the worldview of 30-35 percent of the US electorate, not to mention three quarters of the GOP.

That’s right… the outlandish preening of a Nixon stooge, who served hard time for leading a bungled two-bit burglary he proudly fell on his sword and took full responsibility for, granting his White House superiors permission to kill him if they suspected he would rat them out – “just tell me what corner to stand on, and I will be there” – now more or less constitutes the basis of what the Republican Party offers both its most ardent supporters and detested enemies. Nobody knew it then, probably least of all Liddy himself, but thirty years ago Mr. “virile, vigorous and potent,” who once enthusiastically volunteered to assassinate columnist Jack Anderson, who Nixon himself mused “just isn’t well screwed on, is he,” is a founding father of today’s GOP.

Although Liddy was big on occupying his three hours of air time per day with jocular rants about his troglodyte sensibilities toward women and “hippies,” or a fetish for armaments nothing less than total deregulation would satisfy, the fundamental tenet of his untethered belief system was laid bare in one particular response he gave to a call-in question. Asked by a caller how he squared his support for constitutional conservatism and the police with the litany of felonies he committed and would have undertaken if asked by Nixon’s henchmen, Liddy replied without hesitation that the times called for extreme measures, the ends justified the means. It was striking how final his answer was, as if no other response ever occurred to him. There was an awkward silence as the caller seemed to understand nothing he could offer back would be recognized, so he simply thanked the G Man and hung up. And that was that.

That open-ended rationale for authoritarian descent threaded throughout Trump’s MAGA mob on 1/6; G Gordon Liddy’s legacy was on full display. Thousands of people convinced that only disorder could reconfigure things to make sense again. The silent majority demanding its due! In fact, much of Trump’s pre-insurrection spiel could have come directly from a Liddy monologue thirty years ago. The combat imagery, the toxic masculinity, the us-under-siege mentality, all of Trump’s pep talk was classic Liddy.

The difference between the two? When Liddy was ranting he understood how few actually took him seriously and thus felt free to let loose. Trump understood just the opposite, but felt just as liberated, wholly unconcerned with accountability for his actions. What was empty frivolity in 1992 has become deadly serious in 2021.

For all of his outrageousness, G Gordon Liddy was a thinker with at least a desire to pursue discipline for higher purpose, no matter how warped. His radio show was more a release, a reward he gave himself after suffering the consequences his principles created. Whether he appreciated how much his unhinged extremism would influence legions of AM trash talkers who followed him or the listeners they would radicalize isn’t clear. What is crystal certain is he was present at the creation of a format an Australian billionaire mutated into the most dangerous enemy America has yet faced, and that the fanatical sensibilities responsible for Watergate provided the seeds for 1/6 near half a century later.

Gordon Liddy is dead, but his mania has more than survived him, it now permeates the Republican Party. Fifty years ago the GOP ran for their lives away from Richard Nixon and lost 43 House seats. Today they are running at full speed to shine Trump’s shoes and believe it will win them back the majority. That will present a crisis the G Man could appreciate.

“Elected Republicans who are not bigots are generally cowards in the face of bigotry. And that is a shocking, horrible thing.”

Michael Gerson

In 2012 Barack Obama won re-election with as emphatic a victory as the split US polity could possibly dish out. Obama won 332 electoral votes and garnered 51.7 percent of ballots cast, a more than 5 million vote advantage. Worse for the GOP, most every demographic pegged to become more influential in the coming years – women, young people, minorities, college-educated whites, suburban voters, independents – went for the incumbent in a big way.

In short, the result fully validated what the equally decisive rout of 2008 clearly illustrated: America’s most critical electoral trends were leaving the GOP behind. The party either had to stop treating most of the nation’s voting blocs as adversaries of its flyover white base of support or enter future national campaigns up against it from the start. At the very least, unless a bigger tent was built, the Presidency could become unattainable. At worst, Republicans could become a permanent minority on Capital Hill, doomed to always be outside looking in for the indefinite future. Bleak prospects indeed.

But while the rational actor model may have presented such either/or certainties, Roger Ailes and the Fox/AM juggernaut he guided saw things quite differently. It’s only a numbers game, get out more of ours and keep away more of theirs… simple formula. If the prevailing storyline isn’t helping, create another one. If too many voters are against us, discredit their votes. Why accept the indignity of needing the support of those you despise when you can cancel them out? It’s not voter suppression, it’s preventing fraud. They aren’t growing sectors of the voting public, they are deploying illegals, felons and Black city political machines who are unfairly tilting the playing field.

That the GOP so readily adopted voter suppression and the lies required to justify it established beyond question it had been devoured by Fox/AM. What was a tiger it had been struggling to tame for its own benefit since the Tea Party took shape, now belched out the remnants of any decency Republicans once at least considered. All that remained was angry White vs. everybody else; the only thing open for debate was the proper means to an end, the direction was clear.

Brad Raffensperger, a Georgia millionaire and prominent Republican, was all in with that program. During his 2018 primary race, which led to his election as Georgia’s Secretary of State, Raffensperger enthusiastically pledged to reduce elections bureaucracy and aggressively enforce voter ID laws, well-understood subtext for making it more difficult to vote. In fact, in 2020 voting rights groups sued Raffensperger in federal court after he refused to print paper sources for registration and absentee information to be used to back up “poll pads,” which had failed previously and caused massive lines at inner-city polling places. By word and deed there was never any question but that Raffensperger was a loyal instrument for Trumpie Governor Brian Kemp’s ever more outrageous voter suppression agenda.

Of course, the nation witnessed after November 3rd there was a limit how far Raffensperger would go. Working the refs and employing various schemes to make it harder for minorities to vote was one thing, outright post-election fraud and criminality another. When the unhinged Trump demanded the latter, Raffensperger looked into the abyss and found character. For that he has been rightly praised by most all except the GOP, whose objectives he loyally pursued until continuing to do so became an overt felony. Now the party plans to remedy that heresy, both with legislation fully informed by the lies he resisted, and a primary opponent whose platform is simple: I would have done whatever Trump demanded even before he demanded it.

Jody Hice makes an impressive case for the crown as most loathsome member of Congress. He is the total package. A self-described “constitutional conservative,” Hice makes a habit of falsely citing various founding fathers to legitimate gibberish. Moreover, he is also a self-righteous Christian blowhard, always ready and willing to pass judgement on those living their lives at odds with his bigoted wretchedness. Whether he is condemning pro-choice proponents as “worse than Hitler” or declaring Islam “does not deserve First Amendment protection,” equating gays with pedophiles and gay marriage with bestiality or touting a husband’s “authority” over his wife, Hice is $174,000 a year of taxpayer-sponsored worthlessness. Now he wants to be Georgia’s next Secretary of State. His platform? Trump says votes, I say… how many?

In fact, Hice is about as capable of overseeing a state election apparatus as his biggest fan was to sit behind the resolute desk. It’s a marriage made in hell, which is all this GOP seems interested in consummating. Next to Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney, Raffensperger is at the top of Trump’s get-even list. Hice makes no effort to present himself as anything other than the vehicle to indulge that sociopathy. Peach state voters are going to be given the choice of a competent incumbent, fully committed to the GOP’s efforts to discourage and outright purge Democratic votes, or an ignoramus offering nothing more than the promise of whatever lengths of corruption are required to get the job done, on-demand criminality.

Georgia is near identical to what’s on offer within both chambers of the GOP on Capitol Hill. In the House, the battle is all but over, as the Trumpist Borg – dozens of Hice-like mutations – now dominate the caucus, rabid nihilists with no interest in either competent governance or democracy. In the Senate it’s the McConnell camp of craven competence vs. the Cruz-Johnson posse of just much more craven. Both groups are on the same ship, going in the same direction, but the mutineers don’t care much about sailing, only making sure their Bligh is captain because others will do the swabbing if he is.

Who is winning? Well, Missouri Senator Roy Blunt has been as loyal a McConnell lieutenant as any and he’s throwing in the towel. The early GOP primary favorite to replace him? Disgraced former Governor Eric Greitens, who is now intent on reforming his image by living the big lie with monastic devotion. Greitens has been attacking Blunt – who just this week was in a shouting match with Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar defending GOP voter suppression initiatives – on the Fox/AM circuit. Blunt “didn’t defend President Trump enough” says Greitens. Even worse, Blunt was co-chair of the bi-partisan Inaugural Committee, a cardinal sin that just can’t be forgiven.

Meanwhile, the scrum who seek to replace retiring Ohio “moderate” Rob Portman apparently all headed south to kneel before Trump in Florida. Reports have filtered out of an Apprentice-like session of backstabbing and trash-talking, the necessary self-abasement for an endorsement all four are certain is the golden ticket. There are two words to describe such a spectacle… North Korea. Imagine if he had lost by only 5 million votes like Romney!

The Republican Party’s survival and the well being of American democracy has become a zero-sum equation. What unifies the GOP is the seditious proposition that its electoral fortunes depend on the successful suppression of minority voters. What divides it is the purpose of the enterprise. One group ties its ambitions to a bankrupt governing philosophy meant only to serve the upper brackets, the other to the nihilist sociopathy of a Fox/AM Frankenstein. One understands destroying the game ends their relevance. The other is simply rabid and totalitarian, concerned only with the enemy du jour of its Fuhrer. The greatest fear of Trump’s election was that a fluke would become a political class dependent on patronage he would abuse his office to promote. That happened and now it fully infests the GOP. The condition is terminal for either the Republican Party or America. Both can not endure at the same time anymore. BC

Few who knew my mother would take issue with the proposition she was a saint. Her patience level was extraordinary, never more so than each morning during the jr. and high school years of her three boys. And as was the case in many other areas throughout those formative days, her first born tested her near limitless calm the most. I was a daily pain in the ass no parent deserved, least of all a glorified soul like my mom.

My junior year in high school, after we had moved several miles further from the Winston Churchill campus, things got particularly thankless. The bus came by at a God-awful hour, and worse, took a preposterously circuitous route through some of the area’s most bucolic roads, a trip that took almost an hour to complete, and seemed twice that. Since my little brother had to be prepared – with a bit less but still taxing amount of grief – for his departure to elementary school, the possibility my mother could drive me did not exist. Moreover, even when I secured a driver’s license, my father made clear I would not be driving my mother’s car to school… ever. Therefore, in an era just before Ted Bundy began to impinge on our personal safety sensibilities and hitchhiking went the way of the 8-track tape deck, my only available option to avoid the school bus was sticking out the old thumb.

Hitchhiking back then was like flying is today, it could be heaven or hell. Things could go just right or very wrong. I could get picked up by the pretty older sister of a friend on her way to school as well, making for a pleasurable, even intoxicating trip with zero delay; or I could shiver in the rain as one heartless ingrate after another passed me by. I could have a stress-free trip with commuters on their way to work, or a nerve wracking affair with a creeper who was certain I “sinned way too much.” But regardless how bad hitching could be, the bus never gained more luster in my eyes. Either way, getting me out of the house was near always more drama than my wonderful mom should of had to endure.

This family history has made for the richest of irony during the last half dozen years, as my son Luke has risen with the sun every week day on the school calendar, year in and year out, selecting his wardrobe and packing his lunch, part of a routine he only wants to repeat without anything other than full enthusiasm. Watching him joyously sprint up to the corner to meet his bus is something his parents never tire of; it always fills our hearts with love… every single time. My mother loved it as well, until she passed suddenly. We laughed together several times about how incongruous my parenting experience was to hers, even factoring in my daughter’s best efforts at making the AM difficult.

Covid did a number on my son’s piece of mind. Worst of all was cancelling in-person school. Autism is very much an anxiety disorder, and reliable routines are essential to providing the balance required for Luke to frame his present experience in a way he can link to future plans. It’s a process most modulate innately; for Luke it is work made tremendously more difficult when sudden variables replace constants he previously relied on. Without school everything else became chaotic. Left to his own devices with no set plans, he worried… and worried some more.

Throughout the last year Luke has looked to a return to school as the gold standard for “the end of stupid Covid.” Virtual classes have only reinforced his dismay, often becoming “trigger” events for meltdowns that take a couple hours to talk him down from. The gap between school’s cancellation and any sense of normalcy his mother could create with an improvised schedule of activities she would heroically put together throughout the week was often simply to vast for him to bridge without dread about whether things would ever make sense again. No matter how often we sought to calm his fears by promising a vaccine was coming and “as soon as everybody gets their shot, things will become normal,” we couldn’t promise what he needed most to hear… when that school bus would return. Now it has.

The American public wasn’t so different from Luke as Covid descended on the country. We are as wedded to routines as he is, and upsetting them is something we’ll go to extremes to avoid. The difference is the consequences created by the tantrums, not the measures necessary to preventing them. More than anything else, what real leadership would have looked like last March was telling us exactly what we didn’t want to hear, but then focusing on the steps necessary to get back what we were losing, one message always in pursuit of one goal: keeping people safe. The idea preventing infection and economic well being were mutually exclusive could only have germinated under the most bankrupt, even nefarious leadership.

That one year later we are now divided exactly along that deceitful notion confirms both how damaging a horrible President can be, and the relative ease in which the worst instincts too many harbor can assert themselves under societal stress. From the start, like Luke, the nation looked for honest assurance and certainty, united in a willingness to “flatten the curve.” But instead of a plan grounded in best practices, we got lies and chaotic recriminations that were only employed for one purpose… to avoid responsibility, the exact antithesis of leadership. Instead of the goal of keeping us safe, we got reducing Donald Trump’s political liability, which Fox/AM translated into mindlessly militant libertarianism, which predictably became 525, 000 dead and counting. The Biden team now simply provides what probably any other Administration save one would have given us. Tragically, the damage has been done… on many levels.

Last week, watching Luke once again run with a care-free gait to meet his early AM bus was bittersweet. His most important routine restored, our burden is now much lighter, even if neither Sue or I has yet to receive a shot. Seems we’ll be rolling the dice a while until our number gets called; I’ll take that chance. Luke has always asked for little and now again has much of what he needs to be happy. That is a blessed relief for me, worth more than most anything else.

Yet and still, how can we celebrate after so much needless carnage, after America failed so badly to address this crisis with our collective humanity in tact? Whatever the worst scenario was last March, more than a half million dead in one year was surely within shouting distance of it. We’ve more than normalized that tragedy; incredibly, the MAGA political class is despicable enough to actually take bows for causing it, conflating their servility to Trump’s manslaughter with courage in the face of political correctness, refusing to acknowledge the hundreds of thousands who perished as even collateral damage. Whatever light we are beginning to see at the end of this tunnel, they do their best to dim.

Tucker Carlson hissing for his zombie faithful to think thrice about getting vaccinated, while all of the usual MAGA suspects are railing for 100% maskless reopening just as Covid case numbers and deaths are finally beginning to dip, is par for the Fox/AM course, as criminally reckless as it is predictable. Recent CPAC absurdities portend a 2022 election cycle filled with revisionist GOP talk tracks at odds with the truth and eager to ignore a death toll created by shameful expediency to the wretched core’s fear and loathing.

Almost exactly one year ago the DR posted that, with a grave crisis upon us, our humanity was everything:

“It’s in us all and will get us through this; we simply need to hold it close…Never forsake it or we are lost.“

Indeed… BC

On November 5, with the Biden campaign team and prominent national Democrats expressing confidence Trump was on his way out, the President began to rail at full volume things were “rigged” against him. With the writing on the wall Trump would surprise nobody and effortlessly morph into the ugliest loser in US history. But Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona had his back, tweeting that Trump was “…the winner of the 2020 election.” Gosar went on and entreated MAGA fellow travelers to “…not let the leftists cheat, lie and steal this from us. We saw the Election Day numbers.“

Of course, it was no shock to get matching rhetoric from Gosar, a frontrunner in any race for the most unhinged member of Congress. But, not even 36 hours after the last polls closed, he was far more rule than outlier, in both tone and substance. In fact, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California was barely an octave or two softer in what he was putting out about the election that very same day. Appearing on Laura Ingraham’s Fox show that evening, McCarthy was in lockstep with the most militant elements of his caucus:

“President Trump won this election so everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet. Do not be silent about this. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes. We need to unite together. You don’t need to be a Republican. If you believe in every legal vote needs to count, you believe in the American process, join together and let’s stop this.”

So, while the votes were still being counted, there was near zero daylight between the messaging of Gosar, a zealot nutty enough to be disowned by his siblings, and the House Minority Leader. Moreover, near everyone in between echoed the same sentiments. That 140 plus House Republicans would enthusiastically object to certifying the election two months later seemed shocking unless one made the effort to track the public record of each between Election Day and 1/6.

Without exception, from November 4th until January 6th, the vast majority of the House GOP cultivated the brazen lie of a stolen election. Moreover, it was not something that evolved or synthesized as information came to light or accusations were lodged; it was nothing other than the full amplification of what Trump promised he would do if he lost, once that scenario started to become reality. Anyone who doubts that now need only study Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s just-released near 2000-page Social Media Report, which exhaustively chronicles the seditionists’ falsehoods in their own words, their own social media postings.

Central to the entire narrative was playing dumb about the different timetables established by each state for counting mail-in votes. Virtually every House Republican whined from the outset about why various states (read those crucial battlegrounds where Biden was beginning to bite into Trump’s vote lead) took longer than others to tabulate their votes.

There was no mystery to the answer… some states permitted counting of mail-in ballots before November 3, others didn’t. Near zero of the GOP inciters acknowledged this simple fact, instead equating delay with “increasing concerns about the process.” The “red mirage” that had been predicted for weeks played out accordingly. Trump started on top as the votes of his partisans, who he commanded not to vote by mail, were tabulated election night, but gradually gave way when historic numbers of mail-in ballots, as fully expected, favored Biden by lopsided margins.

Rep. Robert Aderholdt, a Trumpie from Alabama, was typical of GOP House members from coast to coast, complaining on Facebook November 5 about the “slowness” of the count, which “seems centered in Democratic leaning counties” and “leads to questions in people’s minds that undermines our democratic process.” While Republican Senators merely extolled Trump’s “right” to challenge anything and everything he could think of in court, most of the GOP House Caucus declared things rotten from the start, following Trump and McCarthy’s fact-free pronouncements.

The messaging was the same up and down the line, from rank and file to top leadership, from back benchers like Louie Goumert of Texas, who on November 6th was declaring “the election is in the process of being stolen,” to Republican Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana’s disengenuous 11/6 Tweet that “every American should demand” the election security he was falsely implying they weren’t getting if Trump lost. Lofgren’s stunning report catalogs a detailed chronology of uniform sedition undertaken by near every member of the House GOP. The tone and content dutifully mirror Trump’s incitement right up to 1/6. In retrospect the only term that fits is organized conspiracy.

As 1/6 approached, urgency morphed into a sense of reckless desperation that it was “now or never.” Combative imagery began to thread through posts, with 1/6 characterized as a reckoning for the nation’s survival. Throughout America Trump supporters were being beseeched by their Congressmen and women to resist, as Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania put it on January 5th, the “unconstitutional no excuse mail-in ballot scheme.” Most striking is the uniformity of the language leading up to what House GOP baiters warned was a showdown to rescue all America holds dear. To be clear, this was not abiding sedition, it was collectively demanding it.

With all legitimate challenges exhausted and dispatched with prejudice by one court after another, the common word became “instinctively.” Jim Jordan of Ohio was one of many declaring his objections to certification were justified on the basis “Americans instinctively know that there was something wrong with this election.” Two months of frivolous claims ended exactly where it all began, nothing other than Trump’s campaign guff that defeat was only possible if “they” cheated. Hardly anything more was cited by most of the House GOP to justify thwarting certification. Some used saucier adjectives than others, but all feverishly pursued the same common goal from the moment it became clear Trump’s re-election prospects were in trouble: destroy the faith of their constituents in the electoral process, convince them without evidence things were “rigged” against them.

That the mob they incited for two months actually followed through and rioted as directed seems almost inevitable when one grasps just how cohesive the effort was. Even less surprising is the same degree of homogeneity in the post-insurrectionist talk track, first seeking to absolve Trump of responsibility and then relentlessly creating false equivalence with the unrest following George Floyd’s murder.

The newest phase is to sweep entirely what motivated insurrection under the rug, instead focusing solely on the logistical and operational breakdowns that enabled the security breach, all the while tossing out fictions about Antifa et al highjacking the otherwise patriotic MAGA bystanders on 1/6 to see what sticks. Fox/AM will surely do its part to buttress such falsehoods. At the end of the day the cabal’s members will return to their districts and condemn “all violence” with a wink and nudge. Then each will brag about how they “stood with President Trump” start to finish, and that “election integrity” will always be at the top of their priority list. Few will ever recognize in public Joe Biden as a legitimately elected POTUS.

Just before the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln’s old political rival Stephan Douglas asserted that all citizens “must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots — or traitors.” Our electoral system and the peaceful transfer of political power it facilitates is synonymous with who we are as a nation. Faith in its fairness and legitimacy is the aorta of our civic lifeblood. If creating and relentlessly selling a lie that US elections are corrupt (except for the part that elected you) for no other purpose than to stymie defeat isn’t traitorous sedition, the concept itself is worthless and void of meaning. Lofgren’s report supports only one conclusion: the House GOP is a caucus of traitors. Chew on that next time Chuck Todd or Amy Walter cheerily discuss the prospects of a 2022 Republican majority.

“Cheating is not the American way. It is small, while we are large. It is cheap, while we are richly endowed. It is destructive, while we are creative. It is doomed to fail, while our gifts and responsibilities call us to achieve. It sabotages trust and weakens the bonds of spirit and humanity, without which we perish.“

Terrance McNally

It is clear now 1/6 will be no 9/11 within America’s collective consciousness. On the surface of it that shouldn’t surprise. Although many used to the Capitol’s open campus find fencing and barbed wire shocking, it is not stories-high smoldering Trade Tower rubble. Lily white nihilists roaming hallowed halls of democracy, as hideous as it was, could simply not pack the same punch as two of the world’s largest buildings being razed on the fly by Arab fanatics, killing thousands in the process. For enduring shock value that is a very high bar to meet… (setting aside the irony that the mayor who galvanized the response to 9/11 would devolve 20 years later into the lying huckster who helped incite 1/6!)

Yet and still, while 9/11 laid bare vulnerability to foreign zealots favorable geography could no longer protect us from, 1/6 provided a front row seat to how vulnerable the very basis of our democratic governance now finds itself at the hands of unhinged domestic cultists. To be clear, on that particular day, while whipped into a frenzy by a rancid demagogue, whose rabid conspiracy pronouncements they equate with the survival of their personal liberty, a mob of Americans had no trouble feverishly pursuing Al Qaudian benchmarks for rage and destruction of a go-to symbol for our way of life.

The difference in the ingestion of 9/11 and 1/6 clearly lies less in the acts themselves than in the variance of how large swaths of the citizenry believe what was allowed to happen affects them and theirs. We had near complete consensus on that question 20 years ago, enough to unleash two wars that we have yet to end; today we are fully divided. Of course that doesn’t make the assault on the Capitol any less awful; it simply clarifies a majority of Republicans don’t really have a problem with what went down, and certainly are not prepared to take part in a national reckoning if that means holding Trump accountable for the lie he was always prepared to foist if he lost. In other words, the degree to which 1/6 is diminished as a day of historic infamy mirrors MAGA’s consumption of the GOP going forward. That means it’s not if but when we face comparable peril.

Democracy is based on competition, and competition is impossible without rules that participants agree on and apply equally to all. That’s always been a sticking point with Trump. Pressed to use one sentence to describe his conduct throughout adult life, most who have paid attention would assert he lives as if established laws and sanctions don’t apply to him. Of course, his MAGA minions would rephrase it and gush “he makes his own rules.”

Either way, after his 90-minute borefest at CPAC yesterday, there can be no doubt the GOP will continue to embrace the notion a fair playing field is whatever works best for its prospects at any given moment. The cheating and rank hypocrisy are givens, the only open question is what will primarily motivate the party’s craven pursuits: fealty to its survival as a viable governing entity, or wanton servility to Trump as he faces a legal and financial reckoning he will make obstruction to a litmus test for his approval.

The two are mutually exclusive; any even cursory survey of CPAC sensibilities and the roster of “talent” it aims to rabidly promote at the expense of Trump’s long list of “RINO” heretics he wants purged yesterday supports no other conclusion. MAGA is giving McConnell et al a fait accompli, there will be no compromises. McConnell can be an empty figurehead of a MAGA monster or he can go to war… it’s Munich time!

Obviously, moving quickly past 1/6 fits the CPAC agenda to a tee. The degree to which House and Senate Republicans seek to recast events away from a singular national calamity and toward merely a breakdown in security procedures is an accurate barometer for how the party is falling in line as Trump’s personal appendage. Of course, the House leaves little to hope for in that regard, most of the GOP caucus still refusing to allow that Joe Biden is a legitimate POTUS. Now, recent signals from the Senate side also suggest rough waters for any standing against Trump or demanding a full accounting of the day US democracy was forced to the brink.

In committee last week for the purpose of investigating the various security breakdowns that enabled the Trump mob to breach the Capitol on 1/6, GOP Senators were glad to stray off toward whatever details reinforced the riot as more the result of logistic and personnel failures than the singular civic catastrophe it was. Rob Portman from Ohio, who went weeks without so much as mumbling that Joe Biden in fact won the election, was most concerned with why all security personnel were not adequately equipped. Roy Blount from Missouri, who even as he chaired the Inaugural Committee went well into January refusing to declare who would be sworn in, was all about finding out why the lowly DC Police had to step in and save the day.

Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, decertification ringleaders who each seem to have no other strategy for gaining the 2024 Republican nomination than inheriting Trump’s wretched core, were only interested in equating 1/6 with any violence anywhere, but most particularly DC, that followed George Floyd’s murder last summer. The entire line of questioning both pursued gnawed around those edges; 1/6 as just a run-of-the-mill riot – seen one, you’ve seen them all. Hawley and Cruz pandered accordingly at CPAC over the weekend, the former receiving an extended ovation after boasting of his decertification valor.

However, Trump-eunuch Ron Johnson from Wisconsin was most egregious, declaring it an open question as to what sensibilities motivated the mayhem. Johnson cited one “eyewitness account” to explain things. “Agent-provocateurs” of mysterious political inclination and at odds with the “festive” MAGA faithful present on the scene, were the primary villains. Incredibly, Johnson’s preferred depiction blamed Capitol cops themselves for inciting the crowd with tear gas, thus playing into the violent outliers’ hands. Johnson implied most on the grounds were victims rather than insurrectionists, their good clean fun hijacked by a cabal of instigators his “witness” doubted were MAGA-affiliated.

As the Biden Administration deals with the public health disaster it inherited, while moving apace to reset policy and operational parameters Trump demolished, the cloud of 1/6 continues to hover, as ominous as ever. As lazy as Trump is, the Fox/AM cesspool has no intention of allowing MAGA to wither on a Doral fairway, it will do whatever is necessary to facilitate his continued relevance. It’s a bit comical to believe Trump would opt for all the effort and uncertainty of spinning off a new party when the GOP platform offers a turn-key grift infrastructure requiring only his continued guff to power.

The CPAC proceedings served notice four years of a Hannity Presidency was more than enough to create a thriving nihilist political class, a band of craven neophytes that more than makes up for what it fully lacks in competence or legislative skill with levels of shamelessness and dishonor necessary to trounce those beholden to any limits propriety may demand. Overt lying and cheating is now the price of admission to the Republican table; it is now a caucus mostly comprised of bottom feeders with little to lose and even less concern for democracy’s well being. The GOP is now a state of nature. The rest of us would do well to understand it no longer just works the refs or cheats as it breathes; it now refuses to recognize the rules apply at all, other than as a vehicle to destroy the opposition… both within the party and without! BC