Politics

When Rep. Liz Cheney recently said she would vote to impeach President Trump, most of the national GOP and Wyoming Republican party came down on her hard. She could be in real trouble in 2022. I loved every second. I celebrated on social media with other libertarians who also enjoyed her comeuppance. But some libertarians didn’t agree. They stood with Liz Cheney and even praised her stance and her as moral, good and righteous. That is something I can’t wrap my head around. This is Liz Cheney. You are a libertarian!

Tomorrow, attorneys Bruce Castor, David Schoen, Michael van der Veen and William Brennan plan to speak on behalf of Donald Trump to defend him from the charge of having spurred on Duck Dynasty to take over the nation’s Capitol. They are likely to point to Trump’s First Amendment rights and claim that he was merely an accidental tourist as the mob trashed the Capitol. But so desultory has the performance of Trump’s lawyers been that their efforts could turn out to be even more devastating for him than anything the Democratic House managers have presented to the Senate. How do you defend someone whose own conduct impeached him each day of his sordid presidency?

As Donald Trump goes on trial in the Senate, the Republican party faces the possibility of a crack-up. Trump will almost certainly be acquitted, but the vote will be the third time in two weeks that GOP disunity is in the spotlight. Last week the attempt to oust Liz Cheney from her leadership role in the House saw the pro-Trump wing of the party come up short. Then 11 Republicans voted with the Democrats to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga / Q-Anon) of her committee assignments. Now it’s the Senate GOP’s turn to showcase its divisions. ​Cheney’s survival showed that the Trump faction isn’t strong enough — in Congress anyway — to purge the anti-Trump faction. Trump’s acquittal will mean his enemies inside the party can’t get rid of him, either.

Royal summits are often lavish affairs shown to us lowly peasants through photo spreads in Us Weekly and People. Cockburn was surprised therefore to learn of a clandestine meeting between three members of the Californian aristocracy in the British tabloid the Sun. According to the newspaper, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had a video meeting with California governor Gavin Newsom two weeks before the 2020 election. The Sun points out that Newsom was ‘under pressure to replace California senator Kamala Harris…with another black woman.’ Perhaps the purpose of the Zoom chat was innocent enough — as podcasters, Harry and Meghan are essential workers in the Golden State and deserving of the governor’s thanks.

Both political parties have always had oddballs entering their ranks, elected officials who probably aren’t fit for the job. Sometimes these situations can end in disgrace — such was the case when Republican congressman Steve King lost his committee assignments over racist comments which led his own party to back his primary challenger. But it’s often easier for parties to protect their own. So it is with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a newly sworn-in firebrand conservative representing Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. Greene checks some of the more traditional Tea Party/populist boxes, but she also brings some quirks all of her own. She’s a well-known adherent of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

There’s something about Marjorie. That would be Marjorie Taylor Greene, a freshman Republican congresswoman from Georgia who has filled a void as big as Donald Trump’s hair in the media since the Orange Man left the White House to hit the links full-time. Greene is by all accounts bonkers, or at least appears to have driven herself mad in a way that is all too common in the Trump era. She also seems to be a real nasty piece of work, at least in terms of how she comports herself with ideological — if that is even the right word — foes. The last four years have created a phenomenon by which people work themselves into a lather about Trump and 'doom scroll' to confirm their wildest hopes and worst fears. Add in a year of social isolation and voila!

President Biden has stirred some controversy in recent days by his apparent preference for the word 'equity' over the word 'equality' in dealing with social issues. Most notably he issued an executive order on housing on January 26, framed as a step toward realizing his 'agenda for advancing racial equity’. The White House 'Fact Sheet' mentions 'equity' 11 times, and 'equality' not at all. In his 'Remarks by President Biden at Signing of an Executive Order on Racial Equity,' the President employed 'equity' 10 times, stumbling once where he began to say 'equal…' Elsewhere, Vice President Harris has helpfully explained, 'There’s a big difference between equality and equity. Equality suggests, "Oh, everyone should get the same amount.

Christopher Gadsden’s famous 'Don’t Tread on Me’ flag needs to updated to 'Don’t Deprogram Me’. That’s the latest threat; if you supported the wrong candidate, you won’t just get trodden on, you’ll get therapy. Is it just me, or does being trodden on sound preferable? 'There are millions of Americans, almost all white, almost all Republicans, who somehow need to be deprogrammed. It’s as if they are members of a cult,’ Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said of Trump supporters on January 12. Former CBS news anchor Katie Couric agreed. 'How are we going to really, almost, deprogram these people who have signed up for the cult of Trump?’ she asked Bill Maher.

Many Trump supporters are rightly upset over the Republican establishment’s abandonment of the 45th president. But those calling for the the establishment of a new ‘patriot party’ are making a grave error and could inadvertently guarantee Democratic party victories long into the future. Whether the senators, congressmen, governors and party chieftains like it or not, the Republican party has been recast as the ‘America First’ party by the most recent inhabitant of the White House. They may all want to go back — but the genie is out the bottle. The Trump agenda is still both popular and dominant in Republican primaries. There is no reason for conservatives to leave what Sen.

To this day, my iPhone still changes the word ‘too’ to ‘TPP,’ a reminder that about five years ago I must have texted frequently about the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Although my phone still can’t figure out that I’ve never once intended to write the word ‘ducking’, this annoying correction happened again the other day when I happened to be watching old footage from the 1999 World Trade Organization riots in Seattle. The scene looked nearly identical to antifa’s summer of discontent just a few months ago, with largely Caucasian, black-clad, masked-up youth throwing a temper tantrum in one of our nation’s central business districts. Even those rioters’ chants were identical to today’s far-left. ‘Whose streets? Our streets,’ they bleated in the video.

What’s the worth of the 'word as a Biden'? President Joe Biden seems sure that his family name is as good as gold. He repeatedly tells the American people that they should trust him because, well, he’s a Biden! ‘I give you my word as a Biden: When I'm president, I will lead with science, listen to the experts and heed their advice, and always tell you the truth,’ Biden tweeted back in March 2020. He used the line again after taking office, tweeting, ‘I gave you my word as a Biden — and I kept that word.’ But what’s the actual value of a Biden word? The American people still haven’t received an additional $1,400 to bring the total of their recent stimulus check to $2,000.

‘He’s keeping us safe.’ So goes the mantra of the COVID-19 pandemic. In places like New York and California, shutdowns were excessive, harsh and mostly redundant. But what the leadership in those states offered was the perception of safety. And people bought it. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom was caught dining out at his state’s top restaurant with a large group of lobbyists in November. He needed to show he meant business in fighting the virus, even as he himself engaged in pleasure. So he closed all dining, indoor and outdoor. California had to fight. California had to win. California has a higher seven-day case rate now than it did then, and much fewer ICU beds available, yet the stay-at-home order is lifted and restaurants can open for outdoor dining once again.

The fog of the Trump wars is lifting, the road from COVID-19 rising before us, the outlines of the 21st-century American system emerging. Like the bankruptcy in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, the change has happened ‘Gradually, then suddenly.’ The age of the democratic republic is over, the age of the American oligarchy beginning. Oligarchy is the ‘rule of the oligos’, the few: the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a self-sustaining elite. It sounds quaint, classical even, as though it couldn’t happen here because it already happened there. But it has, in fact, already happened here. Augustus Caesar, who made himself Rome’s first emperor in 27 BC, would recognize the symptoms of our American novelties.