The Witness Chronicles October 11, 2023
A glimmer of light in DC, will moderates wake up?, and Jim Jordan, dumbass, for Speaker of the House
The unexpected terrorist war outbreak in Israel has eclipsed everything in the news, for good reason, since I wrote this week’s pieces. I avoid writing about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for many reasons, but this is so brutal and close to home (many Americans have close family ties to Israel) that we can only watch in sustained horror.
We are once again reminded of the scale of man’s inhumanity to man and wonder if those seeds lie within ourselves. The divisions within this country threaten to escalate our society into its own levels of neighbor upon neighbor violence.
We all need to stop yelling and start talking.
I am reminded, as I watch the coverage of this war unfold, that the freedom to express ourselves is sacred and one of the uniquely American rights. But those conversations have to be carried out with mutual respect or we begin the slide into very real chaos.
Somebody tell the ranting and raving mess that is Donald Trump. The man is falling to pieces in public. I think that will be the big political story here in 2024.
On a personal note (and everything I write is personal, in the sense that these are my opinions), on Monday I launched The Remarkable, my newsletter about the recovery and new life process I am unexpectedly experiencing.
This wasn’t the plan but it is, as the name implies, a remarkable thing. My hope is that someone gets some small comfort in hearing my story as it unfolds.
A Glimmer of Positive Light From Washington?
Is the sun rising on the steaming wreckage?
As I write this I’m not sure it’s more than wishful thinking, but two things this morning struck me as signs of life for our dysfunctional political system and frozen government.
Moderates in the House seem to be slowly waking up and realizing they have the power to stop the insanity that has reigned for the past seven years. Moderate Republicans have basically been cowering in the shadow of Trump as he waged berserker warfare against any sign of dissent.
And Democrats in the House have watched the chaos and tried to open communications, even a bit. But the hellish revenge politics of the Mar A Lago Man have shut down any public attempt to try and govern.
Now with the House in shambles and no Republican leader showing any sign of rebellion, there seems to be a growing realization that a bipartisan moderate coalition could sideline the maniacs that took the whole thing down.
This is a fragile hope at best. But a coalition did hold off Armageddon for a few weeks without caving to the insane demands of the Freedom Caucus and the ex-president. The cost was incalculable for the Republican Party, as we saw their utter inability to govern or lead in a time of great crisis.
This should have been no surprise, as the Trump divide and conquer strategy is dependent on there being no other leadership in the Party. He has methodically crushed their best and brightest for even whispering anything like dissent.
The average American politico like me imagined a party where small groups gathered in dark corners of the Capitol whispering amongst themselves that their leader was a charlatan, but unwilling to risk their political lives by saying anything on the record.
But now, with the roof blown off, and startled politicians crawling out of the wreckage, some are realizing that it is possible to defy a man whose power is looking weaker every day, a man who cannot even speak in complete sentences and who is consumed with fear and uncontrolled anger.
A man who is visibly falling to pieces. A vulnerable man. It’s time to stick the knife in and end this.
And the American people, across the board politically, are showing signs of universal disgust with all of them. We’re out here working, paying bills, trying to enjoy an increasingly inaccessible American Dream, and watching grown men and women in our government acting in like sleep-deprived toddlers.
For anyone in DC paying attention, this is the time to show some backbone and take the risks we pay you for, and end this. Talk to each other and take power away from Trump and his brownshirts once and for all. That means using a word Trump fears above all others, bipartisanship.
This is a moment in our history that will be analyzed and every choice scrutinized by scholars. The question will be either be, how did the empire fall, or how did we rescue ourselves from the tyranny of intentional ignorance.
We are past any incremental change, any gradual thawing or rebuilding. Not only do we have a government on the brink of collapse, it is taking place at the exact beginning of a presidential election year unlike any other.
The presumptive Republican candidate faces the most serious charges any US politician in history has faced and they are substantive, with mountains of hard evidence backing them up. He is already watching his purported business empire being taken to pieces and revealed as the scam it is.
Legal bills are gutting his campaign war chest while failing to result in any strong defense of his actions. Yet somehow the Republican establishment has gone all in on him, risking all on a man who is flawed beyond anything we have seen in our entire history.
His opponent, the sitting President Joe Biden, had an enviable track record of concrete achievements that are now bearing fruit across our nation and economy. In ordinary years they would be enough to crush any opposition.
But he has a flaw not of his own making. He is eighty years old and being assaulted with a campaign designed to create an image of a man descending into dementia, despite being hardy and working his ass off to build on his achievements and bring them to all of us.
‘All of us’ is a phrase that scares the GOP into collective paralysis, because their entire political future depends on creating an atmosphere of hatred, fear, and violence.
But very recent polling shows we are not happy with living in fear and watching professional politicians rip their colleagues to shreds. We, and that means all of us, are disgusted across the board, finally.
The question is will the Republican sheep in the House of Representatives wake up and realize power is in their grasp, if they just reach out across the aisle?
They can end this, now, and it seems some are realizing it. We, as voters and citizens, need to cheer them on and make it clear that we are fed up. Not some of us.
All of us.
Does Moderate Equal Wimp? We Are About To Find Out
Fixing the House will not require rocket science
This is a terrible time for the Republican House to implode into legislative paralysis. One half of Congress, but the half responsible for initiating bills, is not currently functional and showing no signs of changing.
Unless you’ve had your head in a hole for the last two weeks, you’re aware that there is currently no leadership in the House after the unprecedented removal of Kevin McCarthy from the role of Speaker.
He was terrible at the job, always putting his own political aspirations above actually getting things done, and now he is out. And the options for a replacement are not only terrible (an ex-wrestling coach who ignored sexual abuse and a guy who described himself as ‘the ku klux klan without the baggage’) but so far right as to be somewhere out in the stadium parking lot.
Meanwhile, we’re charging towards a government default date and our ally Israel has suffered a massive terrorist attack that has resulted in American deaths, hostage taking, and a hot war that only looks to escalate at lightning speed.
The Israeli war is going to require major attention from the Biden administration, as the executive branch is largely responsible for foreign policy and military response to crises. But we can’t effectively respond to the biggest terror action since 9/11, if the government is shut down.
Shut down by a minority Republican right wing dedicated to chaos for its own sake. They’re getting it.
But the operative term here is ‘minority’. These so-called Freedom Caucus members are not even close to being a Republican majority, much less a congressional one.
We have a majority, but to their shame in a time of terrible crisis, they are paralyzed with fear, fear that has no basis in reality. I am of course talking about moderates on both sides of the political divide.
Somehow ‘moderate’ has acquired the reputation of not having the cojones to have ‘real’ beliefs. In other words, to not have embraced the willful ignorance of the far right or the political correctness of the left.
A fairly realistic way to view things right now.
But they are the wishy-washy center in this no man’s land of American politics, and they are the majority when you add the parties together. The irony of this is that they hold the power in their hands to get our government back on track.
All they have to do is join up in the middle and get their votes on the record as a majority, a bipartisan majority. I know, the horror! All the Republican moderates have to do is give Donald Trump the finger and take power. And all the Democrats need to do is remind them how to work together.
McCarthy demonstrated the power of the center when he turned to them, including Democrats, to stave off the shutdown of the government at the last minute. But he so thoroughly pissed off both sides that he was almost immediately kicked out.
He may be gone, and good riddance, but that coalition of Democrat and Republican members still exists and still has the power to change things for the better. But they lack a unifying leader and one side cowers at the thought of Trump’s vengeance while the other can’t stomach being in the same room with them.
It’s the triumph of the pussies.
Right now the war in the Middle East rightly owns the world’s attention. Along with Putin’s attack on the sovereign nation of Ukraine, and the rise of autocracies across the globe, we are on the verge of a new kind of world war between extremists and moderates.
If only the label moderate didn’t carry implications of being indecisive and fearful of change. And of being terrified of going against those minority charlatans taking down the government for nothing more than a photo op.
One leader, decisive and open to compromise and bipartisanship could own this thing in the House. The Senate is poised and ready to work with them. They have their own extremist problems but their point of view is longer term. Most will be in office for many years and have to take a longer view.
The stage is set. Wars rage in the distance. Cataclysmic storms brew literally all over the planet. A moderate leader could change the world right now.
The question is, where are they and who are they? I certainly do not know.
And that scares the hell out of me.
Jim Jordan Is Dumb As A Stick
So, of course, he is a Republican front runner for Speaker
Someone asked me this morning if I thought these disruptors in the House were actually Putin’s stooges or just actual crazed anarchists out to demolish everything, just for fun.
I hadn’t considered the Putin thing but now that former wrestling coach Jim Jordan is actually a legitimate candidate for Speaker of the House of Representatives, I’m not so certain it’s not a possibility.
This would have seemed insane but this morning we learned that Trump apparently shared nuclear submarine secrets, including numbers of missiles and where they were, with a wealthy Australian member of his Mar A Lago country club.
Who proceeded to share that information with 45 of his business associates. 45 people. He is reportedly cooperating with investigators from the Department of Justice.
The locations of subs are one of our closest military secrets because it is virtually impossible for enemies to track them. These are serious allegations, if true.
It appears that within the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, where Representative Jordan hangs his flag, it is perfectly acceptable to sell secret information to anyone willing to, for example, join an extremely expensive country club owned by an ex-president.
A guy currently indicted for stealing state secrets, lots of them, and known for waving them around at another of his clubs to make himself look important.
So, why wouldn’t Jordan and his crew be open to collaborating with an enemy foreign government? In this bizarre political reality we now live in, this is not an unrealistic question. And Jim Jordan is not only dumb enough to seriously consider Vladimir Putin, a war criminal, a legitimate partner; he has stuff to sell.
Like the sovereign independence of the United States Federal Government where he could very well become the third most powerful elected official.
I know, this is paranoid conspiracy theory territory. And even I don’t believe Jordan is a traitor. But these days we have to consider all the possibilities, as we see a former president allegedly shilling state secrets to the highest bidder, or maybe just to be a big shot.
The real question here is not Jordan’s IQ. It’s the bigger question of how stupid do the Republicans think we are and how stupid are we?
They appear to have decided the answer is either pretty stupid or willfully ignorant. Their entire GOP strategy, if you can call it that, is to assume enough voters are saps to get them elected.
This has worked extremely well for Mr Putin, whose huge population actually believes Ukraine started the war, despite overwhelming international evidence that Russia invaded a sovereign country, Ukraine, for the purpose of gaining territory and building an empire.
And Jordan and the Freedom Caucus, among others, seem to think this is just fine, if not admirable, ignoring the fact that Ukraine has a right to defend themselves against a massive country destroying their people, their infrastructure, and their identity.
The selection of Speaker will be a test of the loyalty of the entire Republican Party to the Constitution of the United States, the rule of law, and everything this democracy has been built on.
And it looks like they will fail that loyalty test, at least until it is time to vote for someone like Jordan. Then we will see if the rank and file Republicans in the House are patriots or patsies.
Plans are only useful until they run into reality, to paraphrase Dwight Eisenhower, a former Republican President and retired Major General who warned us about the rise of the military industrial complex. He saw the reality that we live in, that war is business.
But my own little plans went haywire recently and I could not be happier, even though I now have two newsletters to write and manage in addition to writing nearly daily on Medium about the topics you read here.
The only reason I’m taking this on is because it is a fascinating experience, this life, and I have to follow it these days. And, because I write, I have to write about it.
But writing has no power if it is not based on personal experience, something many online writers need to figure out, while they are trying to get rich. Take it from an old guy, experiences are what you remember and learn from, not some self-help pablum*, an interesting word:
“Pablum refers to worthless, empty ideas. Pablum is a big load of hooey. Pablum is one of many words for ideas that are worthless, dumb, silly, and especially empty. If someone is talking and talking but not saying a whole lot, they're spewing pablum.”
~ Vocabulary.com
Great definition!
Well, it’s wintry looking outside and unseasonably cold, good writing weather I guess, but I’d prefer the warm sunny days we had last week. So it goes.
Did you write today?
Martin
2728 words
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