The Witness Chronicles January 9, 2024

The Party of Stupid? Is This Really the Strategy for 2024?

Shouldn’t we be electing our best and brightest?

I grew up believing that getting elected to Congress was an honor and an indication of patriotism and service to the American voters. I lost that innocent perspective years ago, when I actually had to interact with politicians close up.

But back then they were generally civil and respectful to each other, if not always to voters. Well, that went away with many things, with the election of the last Republican President and the current House leadership under Speaker Mike Johnson, who is already in the sights of his conservative caucus, the Freedom yokels.

I am no fan of the gay bashing, evangelical extremist Johnson who, this week, committed the cardinal sin of trying to work with other members of Congress to keep the government solvent, via a very basic compromise.

Because of a concession Kevin McCarthy, his predecessor, made to get the job, any one disgruntled House Member can request Johnson’s head on a platter and they must be taken seriously. This one change practically guarantees chaos in the House and we are witnessing that unfolding.

It’s the triumph of the stupid over the reasonable and this appears to be the actual strategy of the Republican Party in 2024. This is embodied in the antics and baseless claims of Representatives like Jim Jordan and James Comer as they pursue an absurd impeachment proceeding against Joe Biden.

The fact that they can produce no evidence or even specific charges to support this colossal waste of our time and money, doesn’t seem to matter to these guys. They are perfectly willing to risk ridicule to make their point, which appears to be ‘you went after our guy so we will go after yours’.

Their guy, being the one indicted on 91 felony counts, is former President Trump. The question is what do they actually think they are accomplishing with this impeachment stuff? It’s a question that can be applied to virtually every Republican policy right now.

It’s not like we are short of political problems to deal with. They’re lined up behind these guys’ sh*tshows and they are real problems, like Putin’s illegal war that threatens all of Europe, the Israeli/Middle Eastern powder keg, climate change, China choosing military ideology over economic prosperity, the pending default of the US government, and a few other minor issues like those.

If you watch Mike Johnson on the Sunday TV News shows, he projects a reasonable demeanor and a calm reflective attitude, which is downright terrifying when you learn what he actually believes in. We can start with turning the US into a Christian state. This country was started precisely to avoid mixing politics and religion because so many came here to escape religious persecution.

That might be Johnson’s big issue, but he has some other doozies, like his support of the January Sixth insurrection, his support of gay conversion therapy, the fact that he and his son feel compelled to use an app to monitor each other’s porn use (!), and a litany of things most Americans try to avoid like the plague.

It doesn’t really matter because his even crazier colleagues will throw him out eventually, once the dull shine wears off.

The question I am pondering this first month of 2024 is why the hardcore right in this country and others, like Netanyahu in Israel and Putin in Russia, don’t seem concerned with even the short term effects of their actions.

Looking beyond your day to day anger requires vision, and vision requires the intelligence to see consequences and try to anticipate the bad ones. For example, if they shut down the government in the next few weeks, then what? If we fail to fund Ukraine and Putin wins, then what? If the Israel Defense Force squeezes Gazans into a smaller and smaller corner, then what?

There is no end game in the House beyond the desire to crown Trump dictator for life, even when they know he can turn on them anytime and eventually will.

This plague of stupid extends throughout the Party to such a degree it can only be intentional. This morning we read that the state Government in Florida is actually getting more work done, because their governor DeSantis is out of town chasing a dream that will never happen.

Even his Republican colleagues in that state are sounding relieved he is out of the way, at least for now. DeSantis has certainly had his own policy of stupid, doing things like suing the state’s largest employer, Disney, and losing 2000 new high paying jobs as just one of the results.

Then there is this obsession with transgender people. Who cares? Are they an existential threat to the nation? No. Or with a bigger issue like abortion rights where they declared a victory even as it was losing them elections, even in blood red states like Kansas.

A huge majority of Americans support a woman’s right to deal with her own health issues. If you’re not getting the stupid, consider the fact that women are half the voting public and once they are in that voting booth no one can tell them how to vote. 

And they voted against taking away their rights in 2022.

There is one overriding aspect to the Party of Stupid stuff. It’s stupid, which means unintelligent, and we need smart governance, that is not solely focused on right wing hate and fear. We need politicians to do useful stuff, a lot of it, and that’s not happening on the right.

Instead they are doubling down on small mindedness and petty insults and fake impeachments. What they are really doing is stalling any progress until their dreams come true and Trump gets re-elected. We might ask them, what if he doesn’t?

We already know the answer. They will attempt to destroy all faith in the electoral system and the rule of law that is the foundation of the country.

But, not to sound stupid, why? Seriously, why are they doing this? And what happens after they get their goal? Do they think a Trump dictatorship will create a better world? There’s certainly not much evidence to support that.

Well, except for a mythology he has created that says truth is lies and lies are truth. That should work out well.

Here comes the stupid. Hopefully they are not a majority of American voters. 

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Yes, this issue is a bit of a diatribe, me venting my frustration at the level we are descending to in American politics. Unfortunately it seems there is just going to be more of this kind of ‘truth is lies’ stuff this year. Today, at a hearing to determine whether Trump has immunity, his lawyer claimed that because of that alleged immunity, Trump could order Seal Team Six to assassinate political opponents and not be prosecuted for a crime, ever.

Yes, they are arguing that a President is completely above the law in all cases. And this past weekend a Trump PAC released a three minute video claiming Trump was created by God. Which, combined with that immunity, is a claim to being a divinely appointed King.

You can’t make this stuff up.

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