Politics

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.

Two things seem to be agreed upon by most reasonable people debating the November 3 election. First, there was election fraud. There is some degree of election fraud in every cycle. Second, the presidential election of 2020 was susceptible to more than the usual dosage of deceit because of the large number of mail-in ballots. Whether or not you believe that enough fraud existed to change the election results, these realities seem to share consensus. So does the lack of interest in doing anything about them. Republicans care only about election fraud on a scale that would tip the results to President Trump. Democrats care only about election fraud on a scale that might tip the results to President Trump too.

Steve Bannon’s plan to build a great populist ‘movement’ in Europe hasn’t quite yet come to fruition. But the former White House chief strategist has formed an interesting relationship with Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, who these days talks as if he’s been avidly listening to Bannon’s War Room podcast instead of reciting the rosary. The two men have just released an extraordinary interview, in which the prelate describes the connections between what he calls the global ‘Deep State’, that serves China’s interests, and the ‘Deep Church’, led by Bergoglio — or, as most the world knows him, Pope Francis I.

Like most Greek stories, the tale of Pandora’s box is fraught with ambiguity. Most of us, when we first encounter the story, learn that it is a fable about the dangers of curiosity, not unlike the story ‘of man’s first disobedience, and the Fruit/ of that Forbidden Tree’. As Eve sneaked the apple, so Pandora took the lid off a box that she was forbidden to peek inside. Bang! Death, illness, famine and all the other miseries of the world escaped to blight man’s life, leaving behind only hope as a sort of consolation prize. But is hope a consolation? Or is it a subtler, more insinuating evil?

The American middle class is in a precarious position. After decades of decline — the percentage of Americans in the middle class fell by 10 points between 1971 and and 2011 — the most important income group in the country seemed to be stabilizing. That likely won't be the case much longer if the government-ordered economic shutdown continues to put the squeeze on everyday Americans. The middle class was largely left out of the conversation as politicians and pundits spent months debating a second round of COVID relief. Republicans re-discovered their fleeting affair with fiscal conservatism, advocating for slashing unemployment insurance bonuses and sneering at the idea of more substantial stimulus checks, both of which would provide huge benefit to middle income earners.

In a speech to the Federalist Society in November, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito reiterated his concern that ‘in certain quarters, religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored right’. Small wonder that the subject was on his mind. A week earlier, the Court had heard oral arguments in the latest religious-liberty case, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. In it, Catholic Social Services — one of some 30 agencies used by the city to place foster children in private homes — claimed religious exemption for its policy of placing kids in traditional mom-and-dad family settings. So far, one might think, so unremarkable: a Catholic agency conforms its good works to Catholic principles. But what about nontraditional couples — like those of the same sex?

How many passes does Anthony Fauci get? How many times must he be categorically wrong before people stop ogling his every facial expression and treating him as some sort of minor deity? Let me state unequivocally that enough is enough and it’s time for him to step aside. ​He won’t, of course. He’ll sit for magazine covers, attend sporting events the rest of us don’t get to go to, perhaps take CBS up on their offer to appear on Dancing with the Stars or sign a multi-year cable news contract. As COVID-19 tears through the country, and more importantly, through the parts of the country like California where elected officials worship Fauci like a sun-god, he continues his tour of the television studios. He continues to mislead the public.