Politics

Matt Labash Chris, thanks for stepping with me inside the squared circle, the Octagon or whatever they call the place where the kids like to fight these days. (The Capitol Rotunda?) Ordinarily, in one of these types of dialogues, this is the part where we’d exchange pleasantries, make throat-clearing small talk, and tell each other how much we admire each other’s work. But let’s skip it, because I’m feeling a bit vexed. Can’t quite put my finger on why. Oh yes, I just flipped on ‘MSDNC’ and opened my Failing New York Times, and now I remember: because I’ve been watching my country set ablaze, and Donald Trump and his faithful Trumpsters are holding the flamethrower.

In January of 2017, the news outlet I was working for at the time asked me to go to downtown DC and cover the protests during President Trump's inauguration ceremony. #DisruptJ20, an activist group with ties to the violent left-wing group antifa, was planning 'bold mobilization' and 'widespread civil resistance' during the event. What I saw there was horrifying. Rioters dressed head-to-toe in black and wearing bandanas over their faces smashed storefronts, set fires, harassed and threatened Trump supporters and attacked police officers. I watched from about 10 yards away as one antifa member grabbed a metal pole off the ground and swung it at a cop, who responded by pepper-spraying the area. Over 200 people were arrested that day.

On the eve of making Donald Trump the first twice-impeached president in American history, the Democratic House majority attempted a clever workaround: passing a resolution exhorting Vice President Mike Pence to invoke an obscure constitutional provision for dealing with presidential disability to remove Trump himself. The 25th Amendment was ratified in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in order to clarify presidential succession and establish continuity of government in the event that a sitting president became incapacitated. It normally involves the temporary, voluntary transfer of power to the vice president during presidential colonoscopies and other medical procedures involving anesthetics.

Andrew Cuomo, the Emmy-award winning governor of New York, made a dangerous U-turn into the cold-hearted world of Trumpism during a speech and series of online posts Monday, in which he appeared to advocate for the wholesale slaughter of more old people in his state. The comments, which but a few months ago would have got any doctor or plebeian banned from social media and branded a heartless granny-killer, were a statement of the obvious: lockdowns aren’t working and New York has held its citizens hostage in an economic and mental vice-grip over nothing. Well, not nothing. The timing of Cuomo’s hard-right shift cannot be ignored.

You’ve got to admire the left. Granted, they own the internet, the media, the courts (apparently) and now the government, so it’s not like they’re working against insurmountable odds. But still, it’s remarkable that they’ve managed to achieve the seemingly impossible: uniting America. I beg your pardon? Oh yes, they’ve united America — or the America that counts, anyway: the ruling class — and in the cleverest way imaginable. Instead of issuing boring platitudes like 'we must unite for the sake of our nation’ and 'this is not a time for stoking divisions’, they’ve found a scapegoat we can all come together in condemning. No, not Donald Trump; a good half of the country still likes him and clearly isn’t about to change its mind.

There was a glimmer of hope amid the events at the US Capitol building on Wednesday. Could this be the moment of American political violence that causes a revolt against over-heated rhetoric? After such an embarrassing display of emotional incontinence, cooler heads might now prevail across both political aisles and in the media. That glimmer has been quickly extinguished. Democrats were handed another opportunity to impeach Trump on a silver platter, and the media gleefully, and perhaps rightfully, indulged their West Wing fantasies about invoking the 25th Amendment. Common sense melted instantly like the face of a Nazi staring at the Ark of the Covenant. We are right back at Ludicrous Speed.

If the people who stormed the Capitol building in Washington, DC on Wednesday accomplished one thing, it’s that they effectively killed any legitimate inquiry into voter fraud. Spurred by concerns over in-person voting during the pandemic, Democrats successfully changed local and state voting rules at the last minute and pivoted to allowing the bulk of voting to be done via mail. Any major change to the voting system in such a short period of time deserves a full and comprehensive audit, even if the outcome does not change upon its completion. However, because some pro-Trump demonstrators resorted to violence in order to have their concerns heard, politicians will refuse to ever again discuss any voting irregularities.

When he was in his twenties, Missouri’s precocious junior senator Josh Hawley authored a biography called Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness. Might he have been projecting?  Sen. Hawley chases moralizing populist causes like Wile E. Coyote following the Road Runner straight off a cliff. The difference is that the cartoon coyote only ended up hurting himself. Hawley, in his antics worthy of the ACME Dynamite Corporation, could deal a blow to American democracy. Hawley has managed to make a lot of enemies, or at least caused a lot of eyes to roll, over the past few years.

Enough is enough. There really is no other way to contextualize perhaps the darkest day for America since airplanes hit the World Trade Center in 2001. Donald Trump is not going to quell his mob and odds are his followers aren’t going to listen to him anymore anyway. As rioters stormed the Capitol building, several Republicans and pundits demanded Donald Trump speak up and 'call it off’. Who are they talking to? It’s not Donald Trump’s responsibility, apparently. He had his opportunity earlier in the day as he addressed a crowd in a long rambling grievance-fest. Now it’s time for Congress to speak up and use its constitutional authority to end this. Congress has the absolute power to do so. Make it final. Make it unanimous. Make it known.